They publish a wide range of books, from children’s books and picture books to general books such as literary books, pocket books, and paperbacks, as well as art and craft books. One of their publications is the Unkei Daizen, a collection of works published in conjunction with the Unkei exhibition held in 2017. We asked them about the background and results of the book’s creation.
The growing potential of digital printing in recent years
As one of the three largest publishers in job function email list Japan, Shogakukan publishes educational magazines for infants and children, as well as magazines for infants and general magazines for a wide range of generations. In addition to picture books, picture books, dictionaries, and literary books, Shogakukan is also strong in the art field, publishing various collections and complete works of art and crafts.
“In recent years, the publishing industry has been in a slump and people have been moving away from print media, but art books have been relatively stable,” says Kenji Hayami, senior manager of Shogakukan’s production department. The genre of art books has many core fans and regular customers, so sales are less volatile than comics and magazines.
Shogakukan publishes Unkei’s collection of works digitally printed
to this was the ongoing project in cooperation with Nissha Printing Communications to digitally archive out-of-print books, cultural assets, and artworks, and print them out using a digital printer. The proposal was to print using Nissha Digital Printing (NDP) with Konica Minolta’s AccurioJet KM.
Benefits of the introduction
Konica Minolta’s “AccurioJet KM-1” creates the Unkei Encyclopedia
After introducing the AccurioJet KM-1, Nissha Printing Communications worked with Konica Minolta to improve the quality of its output. “When shops 9177 Hayami told me about the Unkei Daizen, I thought it was time to finally debut the AccurioJet KM.
Hayami also said, “Since Shogakukan is using it for art books, we cannot be satisfied with the conventional idea of digital printing, which is to approach offset printing. We thought we had to surpass offset printing.The finished product was of overwhelming quality that completely changed the perception of digital printing.