With the rise and rise of the Internet and millions upon millions of PCs and laptops with connected home printers, many people think that the printing industry, if not dead, is certainly about to die.

In fact, nothing could be further from the truth. Walk down any high street, look around your house, visit a supermarket or department store or simply open your wallet or purse and pull out a ten pound note. Printing is everywhere. Indeed, without a printing industry, life as we know it would be almost impossible.

Printing in a sense is the same as the Internet: it transmits information. The Internet does this electronically, and print does the same thing “hard.” But both achieve the same end of conveying information.

So print jobs aren’t going away any time soon. There will always be great career prospects for those looking to break into the printing business.

While it hasn’t been unheard of for printing companies to go bankrupt, it’s little different from any other industry in that regard. Walk into any printing factory and those big machines will be rattling around all day, every day. In fact, sometimes there is only a few minutes of silence when the current run ends until the new job loads and the noise resumes.

For those who wish to print, there are several options. There are two universities dedicated only to the printing industry and many more, which offer graphic and media design courses as part of their curriculum.

Next, many printers take on apprentices or offer internships where you can “earn while you learn.” This used to be the prerogative of the young, but today there is no age limit. You can change careers, say, in your 40s and still find a company willing to train you, which indicates how vibrant the modern printing industry is.

There are also courses, which give you basic knowledge and training in key skills such as numeracy, literacy, problem solving and computer science. Printing Technician Certificates are courses that offer training covering management, estimating, printing, and print finishing.

Print finishing is the part of the industry that covers everything that can be done to produce a finished product after the ink has been applied to the paper. There are many companies that specialize solely in print finishing and offer specific training on print finishing jobs.

Therefore, finishing the print may include laminating, mounting, image transferring, trimming, coating, creating point-of-purchase display models or, for example, a cardboard “Shrek” ten feet tall for display in the auditorium of the local movie theater.

And printing doesn’t just mean putting ink on paper. Printing continues on aluminum cans, bottle caps, plastic bags, lipstick holders, cardboard, wood and sheet metal – the list is endless. In fact, if you can think about it, it’s pretty safe to say that someone somewhere has printed it.

So to conclude, it is safe to say that if you are considering a career in the printing industry, you will have a job for life. Not only that, but it is a job that can pay very well.