The Incredible History of Printing...Short Version

by Terry October 18, 2023

Printing...At The Beginning

The history of printing is ancient, diverse, and bloody. There is no other invention so integral to the advancement of mankind than printing. Think about it for just a minute. What other invention lets you express yourself to the masses of the world without ever having to leave your neighborhood?

Of course, we all live in a digital age now. It is a wonderful time to live with the technology available. However, without printing to paper all of the books of history, before the computer, could man have built upon the knowledge of others to even invent the telephone? I doubt it. If we did make it, it would have taken a lot longer. While many cultures and civilizations had forms of writing down by hand, things really got moving with the press.

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Movable type printing started making it’s mark (so to speak) around the year 1450. That is when Johannes Gutenberg, the print industry’s most famous founding father, invented the first printing press, although there was dispute over it. There was even a lawsuit at the time between Gutenberg and his partner, Johann Fust. Gutenberg lost.

Ever since, the printing press has been credited with inspiring ideas, fomenting revolutions, and toppling governments. Printers have celebrated murder (and condemned it), changed hearts & minds across the globe, and have sparked imaginations around the world ever since. Yet the printed page is so much more than what you find by the physical contents of the binding and paper.

Printing contributes to man’s greatest intellectual heights with shared ideas, abstract thought, and collaboration from afar. Are we not still able to read H.G. Wells, Mark Twain, or Jules Verne even after their deaths so long ago? And we do not have to decipher some ancient handwriting to do so. Printing has also led some to utter depravity, despicable wretchedness, or lady justice. How did printing accomplish all of this? By dragging literacy rates through the roof and leading to the Enlightenment, among the rich and ruling classes.

Literacy did take time to gravitate downwards to the average man or woman, and still does today for some parts of the world. However, that did not stop printers from expanding their talents into different typesets, inks, and more. Printing the word to the page took hold like a python and circled the globe. While China and others had printing to paper long before Gutenberg, it is the movable type printing press which revolutionized printing for everyone. We owe so much gratitude to those print masters that came before us. Those people that risked their lives throughout history to pass down stories, facts, ideas, imagination to the public.

When Paul Revere created his image of the Boston Massacre to rile up public sentiment against the British, he knew his life might be forfeit. As a printer himself, Benjamin Franklin knew the printing press was the only way to inspire his fellow countrymen to think, and be aware. Duty compelled both men (and many others) to inform the public, raise awareness for unfair taxes, and strike out a new path for a new country.

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Prior to the press...

Before Johannes Gutenberg started creating commercial products for the Catholic Church on his press, creating a manuscript, or book, by hand was painstaking work that not everyone could perform. These hand-made books were truly works of art and needed a special person with a steady hand. The calligraphy captured in these old tomes is exquisite to behold for sure. However, very few people saw them. Written-by-hand texts and scrolls existed long before Gutenberg, but few people were literate enough to read writing of any sort. It was also not thought of as a needed skill for the majority of the public in most countries. Back then it was good to be the king. We have come a long way in a short time.

Today, we use electronic computer boards, integrated circuits, and a whole lot of wire to get our “printing press” humming. No need to crank the screw to bring down the typeface. Everything is digital, electric, and fast. Today’s production printers print over a hundred pages per minute, in color, both sides. I would say that is a long way from Gutenberg.

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Mass printing may have started with Guttenberg and his press. Recording our history for posterity has been a human trait since we learned to think. The first “artists” drew their masterpieces on rock walls in inks we would probably not want to know about today. Later came their descendants using carved tools upon rock tablets. First needing to make the tool, then producing a message for history upon their tablet. For all time, right? Think of the Rosetta Stone. A message passed through time allowing us a glimpse to an ancient history we may have missed without it. The ability to pass along our history, our truth, is priceless. We should all embrace our own unique history.

As printers ourselves, The Document Group loves talking the history of printing, or anything printing really. We love the thought of our small contribution to this wonderful industry. We invite you to join us in honoring those printers who came before us, printed a new road through the wilderness of civilization, and shined the light of knowledge upon the world.

Copy Services

How Litigation Copying Helps The Litigation Process

by Terry April 14, 2023

How Litigation Copying Helps The Litigation Process

Litigation, especially large-scale cases, requires massive preparation time beforehand. Tasks like document copy, eDiscovery, or serving notices will take up too much of your time. However, nothing can be as overwhelming in a litigation case as paperwork.

Even with the introduction of e-filing, modern litigation cases still require a staggering amount of paperwork and copies. Large cases that involve multiple parties can involve potentially thousands of filings and millions of documents exchanged during discovery, but even small cases involve a mountain of paperwork.

Check Which Copy Service Best Suits You

A service like document scanning can make the paperwork process less overwhelming, since it’s often more convenient to have an electronic copy of a document instead of having to keep track of a hard copy. However, there are times when having to create multiple hard copies of a document is unavoidable, such as when you have to file petitions with the court.

For large scale litigation cases, it’s good practice to hire litigation support just to keep track of all of the paperwork rules and deadlines for a case . A specialized litigation copying service helps since the service is familiar with the litigation process and the frequent copying that comes with it. A litigation copying service can also provide scanning services to create digital copies of paperwork to keep for your records.

Digital documents are easy to cross-categorize and produce less waste than traditional paperwork. It’s true that modern day office scanners make an easy job of creating a digital copy of a document. However, multiply the process of placing a document on the glass and pressing “scan” hundreds, or even thousands, of times, and you have quite a task ahead of you. In certain situations, it’s much more practical to outsource the job to a firm that specializes in legal scanning and litigation copying.

Additional Benefits To Consider

When creating and copying documents for a litigation case, there are some valuable benefits that litigation support brings to the table:

A systematic approach to organizing documents for best efficiency
eDiscovery services that free up your time to take care of more pressing tasks
Tracking correspondence and pleadings
Tracking dates and deadlines
Practical things like not having to replace office toner and ink cartridges

Few professional areas involve as much paperwork as litigation, so it’s best to hire a copying service who is experienced with litigation matters and your needs as a law professional. This is especially true in large-scale cases, where litigation support is needed the most.

To learn about litigation copying services from The Document Group in Houston, Texas, contact us at (888)316-4670 or (713)343-4005.

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Data Processing, eDiscovery

How eDiscovery Services Can Help A Solo Practitioner or Small Firm

by Terry April 14, 2023

How eDiscovery Services Can Help A Solo Practitioner or Small Firm

In this eDiscovery age, more and more important evidence is digital. Even small law firms may find themselves in need of information that is electronically stored. Electronically stored information, or ESI, encompasses many different types of documents. They may include emails, presentations, databases, voicemail, audio and video files, social media, or whole web sites.

When the discovery phase of any legal matter becomes e-discovery, small firms and solo practitioners can find themselves overwhelmed. The requirement to meet the requirements of the Federal Rules of Civil Procedure (FRCP), Federal Rules of Evidence (FRE), and state and international laws can be overwhelming in the least!

Either way you do decide to go, remember that you will need all the time possible to process the data. Data processing timelines depend upon many factors. The size of the data is a major determiner of how long the process could take.

Should Small Firms Attempt E-Discovery In-House?

As an attorney, it is wise to learn the basics, even if your cases are seldom dependent on it. When it comes time to request electronic data, you can get what you need in two ways: invest in an in-house solution or outsource the process.

Acquiring in-house capability can be a cost-effective approach if you have the capacity in staff, time, and dollars to devote to it. Collecting date for e-discovery can be complex and confusing. Because the amount of data can be overwhelming, it is important to know how to harvest just what you need. The court seldom requires that you copy a whole hard drive, but just wants to verify that a “forensically sound” method of collecting data is used, so that the files have not been altered or deleted in any way. Those inexperienced with e-data collection tend to over-collect, which increases costs.

Modern software allows a savvy user to effectively collect needed data for a case without just copying hard drives. While this can save time and money, it is important to gather all that is needed as evidence without altering, destroying, overlooking, or collecting it too slowly and as a result, facing court fines. The learning curve can cost you.

Why Outsource Your E-Discovery

Many small law firms circumvent these problems by outsourcing e-discovery to Houston-based The Document Group. With years of experience with cases of all sizes, the company knows how to gather just the right data to support your case. Prior to beginning the process for your case, we can estimate the cost of retrieval so that you know your budget outlay. The work will be done right, and at a reasonable cost.

Our Disco software will extract relevant information from all digital files including databases, word processing files, spreadsheets, email, instant messaging logs, and website visits. We go beyond the scene to examine web browsing activity, demonstrate evidence of tampering with electronic files and/or file deletion, reveal the content of temporary files, obtain data fragments, identify metadata, unlock/search password protected files, and establish data usage histories.

Database Hosting

If you are interested in using our cloud software to store and maintain e-discovery materials, especially large files, just let us know in our quote form. TDG offers hosted document review utilizing CS Disco that allows you to login from anywhere. This can be an asset for a large case where you may need to review a file on the fly, or the beach.

When you need e-discovery, The Document Group can save you time and money. For more information, contact us at (888)316-4670 for a free quote.

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Binding, Digital Printing, Offset, Printing

Why Use Print On Demand Services For Book and Paper Printing

by Terry April 14, 2023

Why Use Print On Demand Services For Book and Paper Printing

You don’t need to be told that producing a book or research paper is a very time and research-intensive process. From penning the first outline to approving the final copy, creating something that will benefit those who read it is a very worthwhile endeavor. This is why it’s important to present your creation in the best way possible. After all, presentation is almost just as important as the content itself.

This is why affordable print-on-demand services so valuable for authors.

Advantages Of Print On Demand Services

Using a professional print service in Houston to print your book or paper has its advantages. First, you don’t have to worry about doing a massive print job all on your own. Commercial printing ensures high-quality copies without any hassle to you, the customer. Just bring in your files, and the print shop takes care of the rest.

Another advantage to using a local professional print service is that you’re dealing with a print shop in your neighborhood. You don’t have to email your files to an online printer, only to receive printed copies that have some sort of error or defect. You can deal with the printer directly, see the proof in person and make changes on the spot, have your order fulfilled onsite, and best of all get your order faster instead of waiting impatiently by the mailbox.

Lastly, commercial printing ensures a certain level of professionalism in your work. Unsightly DIY errors like low DPI, “bleeding” colors, and misaligned type aren’t a problem in copies created by a truly professional print service. When you have your copies created by a professional printer, it shows. This is especially true since the printer will want a satisfied customer to come back to them for future business.

Trust A High-Quality Houston Print Service to Print YOUR Book

Purchasing materials, printing, and binding your own copies can quickly become an overwhelming ordeal, and it can also add to the stress of your upcoming debut or presentation. Not only that, but when it comes to quality, home printing machines simply can’t compare with the efficiency of a commercial printer. With a professional commercial printing service, the difference will be clear. Color pictures and illustrations are sharper and more defined, the paper quality is higher, and the copies will be more uniform.

At the end of the day, a professional Houston print service will give you a book or published paper that you will be proud to present to your recipients. Best of all, establishing a relationship with a local print shop ensures you know who to turn to next time you have a big publishing job.

To learn more about fast, affordable print on demand services for paper and book publishing, contact The Document Group in Houston, Texas at (888)316-4670 or (713)343-4005.

Company Business, Digital Printing, Printing

Cool Marketing For This Season’s Trade Shows

by Terry February 17, 2023

Prepare for Your Trade Shows Today!

With The Document Group digital print department, you can be prepared for your trade shows be it this year or next. As the season ramps up, you may already be thinking about preparing your booth for next year’s schedule (or trying to catch up with this year’s). If you want a fresh look for the fall shows, you may have already dismissed getting another booth, given the costs involved. Refreshing your collateral marketing materials and the look within your booth is quite another matter. By updating banners, signs, presentations, and brochures, you can make a major change in appearance for a reasonable cost. At The Document Group, we excel at providing those materials on time, every time!

Why Refresh Your collateral?

Maybe your company has made changes in its logo or added a tagline to its branding. Maybe you have launched a new product or service. Or maybe you just need a refreshed look. By replacing your back wall banner on the booth, adding exhibit stands, or even adding technology to your display, you can add new life to the display.

Many companies have multiple sets of marketing collateral to accommodate different shows they attend. Even if your company hits the same shows every year, alternating collateral changes things up. If you have three or four sets of graphics, that means that you only display a particular set once every three or four years. Even the most seasoned tradeshow attendee is likely to be vague on details of what they last saw three or four years ago.

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Finding The Right Printer

Once you decide you want a new look, you may want to get your marketing consultant or at least a photographer into the mix to design and get any needed photos. Once your materials are prepared, you next need to find a company that can print the small format and large-format and who is equipped to make other products such as brochures, presentations, training materials, ect. In Houston, that is The Document Group, experts in printing graphics of all types, and providers of many related services.

TDG can also supply you with collateral marketing materials you take to the show to distribute to attendees and, if your company is presenting a workshop or seminar, they can even print other materials such as brochures, information packets, presentations, and banner or signs. Many visitors to shows want to travel home light, so what you have to show need not be complex or expensive. Trifold brochures, one sheets, and other easily transportable materials that introduce your company can be enough to trigger interest.

When preparing for tradeshows, having the right promotional products that fit your company’s image and your budget is a part of show planning you do not want to take lightly. These days, quickly ordering cheap ballpoint pens and other cheap giveaways may not be as valuable as putting more thought and money into the process. Cheap and useless items end up in the back of people’s drawers or are given to their kids to play with, not kept on a potential buyer’s desk. Since personalized giveaways imprint your company name on an attendee’s mind, you want a printer who can produce your lowball message in small but readable type so that it has impact.

Whether you are looking for new tradeshow graphics to enhance your group or printed materials or promotional items, call us today at 888-316-4670.

Disaster Recovery, Scanning

Disaster Recovery – How To Review Your Plan

by Terry February 16, 2023

Disaster Recovery – Reviewing Your Plan

Disaster Recovery – Mother Nature does not respect our intentions or plans. That is clear. The unfortunate yearly flooding in Texas, and in the neighboring State of Louisiana, serves as a wake-up call to businesses to guarantee that their data, and original paper documents, are properly stored in the case of disaster. Once nature has carved its destruction in your community, you can finally understand the need to have a plan. A plan that addresses all of the possibilities. File cabinets, servers, tablets, or boxes full of paper documents can be lost in an instant once nature strikes. Your plan must address all aspects of your data.

Starting With Electronic Data...Ending with Paper

Even tiny unforeseen circumstances happen every day that can activate your plans. An auto accident makes an unlikely catalyst for your recovery plan to go into effect. Think on this though. If that auto accident hits the right telephone pole, or the exact transformer, it can knock out power to a lot of commercial and residential real estate. This is just one example, but what if you are targeted. That warehouse storing original documents from land deals since 1956 is mysteriously set on fire. Or is hit by a tornado? Either way, the documents are gone.

While the process you use to anticipate your technology and document related disasters is going to be unique to you, there are basic guidelines to follow when creating your plan. You will need to closely examine your situation first. Determine what data needs to be saved and from what sources. Again, your methods may be different but as long as you gather the same information about your data, it does not matter if you are paper and pen person, or cannot use anything but your tablet to take notes. Get everything into a form you can best keep organized, both in your head and out of it.

When you have your list of sources, it is time to get down to crafting your plan. You plan should include where those sources are, either digitally or in the real world. You should know how much data there is in each source. If it is paper, find a standard measurement you can identify with. Boxes are a good measure. A standard office box will hold approximately 2,500 pages of letter size paper. If it is digital, you will need to know how much storage you will need in gigabytes, or even terabytes. This can include a document management system in place at the main location as a best case scenario as well.

When discussing electronic data backups and disaster recovery, often it is said that it should be an easy thing to just set data to flow where you want. Most people do not understand that to properly have systems in place that provide that flow of information takes a village, and more, to accomplish. Our best advice for this part of the equation is to contact your preferred IT vendor to help you determine the best solution for your situation. However, some generalizations are true. You need to replicate data across multiple networks at some point. You need to verify data integrity always. You need to secure your data against the best hackers out there.

Best practices suggest you have multiple copies of your data across multiple locations geographically. Your live data (working data) at the office is one copy. A local backup of your data on site to a different server location or to a local location in the surrounding community for quick recovery options due to less serious disaster recovery situations. You will also need another location off site, and hopefully, across the country from you geographically. This gives you three separate copies in three geographic locations that will best allow you to recover quickly. Think in terms of your situation. And get help if you are unsure.

Once you have your data figured out, it is time to tackle the paper. As everyone tries to tell us, paper is going the way of the dodo bird. We believe it, but just have not seen the decline yet. So we will address those ancient items also, the paper. Back file scanning, archive scanning, or paper to digital conversion. Whatever you call scanning your old, not accessed documents you absolutely have to save due to regulation, sentimentality, or legality. That is where we come in at The Document Group. We can help get you on a path to peace of mind for your paper documents. We start by imaging your archive boxes and any non-active files you must keep. We move on to active files once those are stored on your servers. Regular scanning of current paperwork to your servers can be accomplished as well if you have that need. Although paper documents are our focus when scanning, The Document Group understands that there is so much more to disaster recovery than the paper.

What Would Be Lost For You during A Disaster?

Even though many documents within organizations are produced and transmitted to others electronically, there is still plenty of paper that circulates within an average business.

Every day’s mail brings a new supply of invoices, correspondence, orders, and other documents.

Electronic documents may be printed out, annotated, and filed.
Files containing medical records, taxes, legal documents, and more from the past may still be in hard copy format.
Blueprints and other large-format documents may be in hard copy.
Irreplaceable photos may have no backup copies.
And the list goes on…

Water damage could wipe out years of compiled information or destroy projects in progress if there is no electronic backup system for your disaster recovery plan. While small amounts of flooded materials might be recoverable, saving boxes of documents after the fact is not feasible, nor is it safe as mold quickly grows in piles of soggy paper.

single tugboat at sea in rough waves avoiding disaster

tornado carving a disastrous path in a field

streets burning, buildings collapsed, disaster everywhere

Prevent Information Loss Through A Scanning Plan

The best way to prevent future damage is to work with an experienced provider of scanning services such as The Document Group of Houston. We are prepared to scan your materials on-site or back at our facility. Because we use experienced scanning professionals and state-of-the-art equipment, we can get through large quantities of documents quickly, while ensuring that quality and resolution of scanned images is high.

Besides providing a needed service that can help disaster recovery, The Document Group can develop a plan to get you on track. For example:

We can help you prioritize the documents you have to scan if you are new to the process. We will develop a schedule for getting it all done.
We can add permission to limit and access specific documents if your files include medical documents, legal documents, or other sensitive financial or confidential information.
We can obtain hard copies of materials for a specified time or indefinitely store your documents in a safe, off-site facility.
We can back up your documents on secure servers, so that even if a natural disaster affects your facilities, you would still be able to access your documents.
We can schedule to scan any materials on a periodic basis, or work with your personnel to make sure that pertinent files are entered into the system.

Consider The Impact Of Document Loss On Your Business...or Your Home

As a businessperson, you may be concerned with the cost of the initial disaster recovery, scanning, and file maintenance. However, consider the impact on your business if all your files were destroyed by fire, flood, explosion, or other unplanned events.

How could you reconstruct your customer files or your recent transactional history? Could you figure out your corporate documents or any of the historic files you might need for tax purposes? What about your historic photographs of company personnel, Christmas parties, and all kinds of events? All of these materials could be irretrievably lost in the case of a flood or other disaster.

A call to The Document Group will prove to you that the cost of safe, efficient disaster recovery is not as costly as you might imagine. For more information, contact us at 888-316-4670 or via our free quote form.