Turn on the news and get depressed. Listen to the radio and start to gently weep into your morning tea. Read the trade press for the commercial print sector and reach sharpish for the nearest blade and a hot bath. What a year this has been for misery and for misery-mongers. The mass media has had it in spades both from a reporting perspective and when it comes to keeping its own house in order. So saying, for many people the comeuppance of News International has been a welcome shard of light in an otherwise overcast sky. But surely there must be some other silver shining through the dreadful drear?

Of course there is. People in the sign and display industry seem to be thriving, judging by the traffic at the various sign and display events. FESPA in Hamburg was especially buzzing and brimming with excitement and enthusiasm for the new technologies and what could be done with them. Imagination was to the fore both at FESPA and at the various other wide-format shows and seminars around the world. People are excited about the technology and its applications so, despite the financial misery enveloping much of the global economy, companies are still interested to invest in wide-format digital printing. The installations of new engines has continued this year, despite the fact that finding the dosh to pay for them for many buyers has been a Kafkaesque experience.

Businesses are succeeding despite immense barriers and we continue to see boundaries shoved back and rules broken. Printing companies are coming up with ever more inventive ways to solve customer problems and develop their media concepts. Think Christinger in Switzerland and its ISO 12647-2 certification for an industrial wide-format press. Think Stander in Madrid adding a sixth wide-format engine because they needed more capacity to meet rising customer demand. Or pixartprinting in Venice upping its stable of HP Indigos to ten, HP Scitex machines to seven, and adding a brace of offset presses. And these are just a few of the interesting installations we have seen this year. All of them are in response to customer demands, and all are encouraging signs that print is far from dead.

Not to say that all is rosy, as the trials of traditional press manufacturers show. Clearly the idea that the traditional business model for print should continue unchanged is fundamentally flawed. It's been fantabulous for 600 years, but it must change to be more engaged with its markets. This is what is happening in the wide-format sector and it is what must happen elsewhere in print.