中文For years the printing industry has repeated the same lament: “We can’t find good people.” Press operators, prepress specialists, finishers, installers, estimators, customer-service reps, salespeople, production managers — the list of hard-to-fill roles is long. But Debbie Nicholson, writing for American Printer, reframes the problem with a sharper question: who is actually teaching the next generation to love print?
Her answer is uncomfortable. The industry likely has less of a recruiting problem than an exposure problem. Ask a young person what a printing company does and many still picture business cards, brochures and a big press running sheets of paper. They don’t see wall graphics transforming empty spaces, vehicle wraps, dimensional and ADA signage, window graphics, labels, packaging, floor graphics, fabric displays, architectural graphics, décor or CNC-routed fabrication. They don’t see automation, robotics, workflow software, colour management, digital cutting, artificial intelligence or sophisticated production equipment. And whose fault is that? Ours, Nicholson argues.
The fix starts with telling people outside the industry what insiders already know. Stop hiring only for printing experience, she urges. Of course prior knowledge is easier — but somebody has to open the door. Look instead for mechanical aptitude, curiosity, creativity, computer skills, problem-solving and craftsmanship. Teach them what PVC is and why it is used; teach bleed, resolution, RIP software, substrates, finishing and colour. “It’s much harder to teach someone to care,” she writes. “Find the people who care — and then teach them print.”
Retention matters as much as recruitment. Don’t seat a young employee at one machine and expect a decade of excitement doing the same task. Show them the whole business: let finishing staff spend time in prepress, put new production hires in customer project meetings, explain why one substrate works and another fails, send them to equipment demos and trade shows, involve them when testing a new application — then listen to what they think.
The bigger cultural shift is an invitation. Bring students into facilities, build relationships with high schools, technical programmes and colleges, offer internships and apprenticeships with real learning rather than sweeping floors. Take younger employees to industry events, put them in front of new technology, give them mentors and responsibility. Most of all, give them a reason to believe this is a career, not just a job.
Nicholson’s prescription is blunt: stop asking where the next generation will come from and start creating them. The industry turns ideas on a screen into things people can hold, install, wrap around buildings, walk across or experience in an environment — still, she notes, pretty cool. The next generation won’t discover that magically. Show them, and the “talent shortage” starts to look more like a storytelling failure waiting to be solved.
Source: American Printer (Who Is Teaching the Next Generation to Love Print? by Debbie Nicholson).
Nicholson’s argument lands in a demographic reality the industry cannot ignore. Across the US and Europe, the printing workforce is ageing, and younger entrants often arrive with no mental model of what modern print involves. Automation, software and digital finishing have transformed daily work, yet recruitment messaging frequently still describes the industry in decades-old terms. Closing that perception gap is cheaper than outbidding tech employers for the same applicants.
The prescription has practical teeth. Hiring for aptitude and curiosity rather than print experience widens the funnel immediately; the technical vocabulary can be taught. Exposing new hires to the full business — from prepress to customer meetings to trade shows — builds the engagement that retention requires. Internships and apprenticeships with genuine learning, not menial tasks, convert curiosity into career commitment.
It also reframes mentorship. Senior operators and finishers hold craft knowledge that automation does not replace; structured opportunities to pass it on protect quality while giving veterans a visible role in the industry’s future. And inviting schools and colleges into facilities plants the seed with people who have never considered print.
The uncomfortable implication is accountability: if the next generation does not appear, the industry has mostly itself to blame for not showing them what print has become. Nicholson’s closing line — stop asking where they will come from and start creating them — is less slogan than operational instruction for every shop worried about its pipeline.
The payoff for shops that act is compounding. Employees who see the whole business and feel ownership stay longer and perform better; interns converted to apprentices become loyal, trained operators; and a visible community presence quietly refills the top of the funnel. Nicholson’s point is ultimately economic: treating recruitment as someone else’s problem is more expensive than opening the door yourself. The printers who thrive will be the ones that teach the next generation to love print before they need them.
None of this requires a large budget — mostly intention and access. A single open day, a standing internship, or a partnership with a local college can outperform any job advert. The shops that treat workforce development as a core operating function, not an HR afterthought, will find the talent gap narrower than the industry’s gloomier forecasts suggest. The tools to create the next generation have been available all along; what was missing was the invitation.
