In Episode 20, Andy MacDougall interviews Dan Gilsdorf, of Sefar USA about the hidden and lucrative world of functional and industrial screen printing. The world of functional and industrial (F&I) printing is hiding around us in plain sight. Since first appearing in the 1940’s, F&I has managed to avoid the U.S. and Canadian governments, who still consider print as predominately on paper. The average person wouldn’t know about F&I printing and, I have to say it, the average T-shirt or poster printer is blind to it as well. That’s even though we collectively use the products that rely on this category of printing in their manufacturing process hundreds and thousands of times every day. You’re reading this on a device full of print.

How big is this market? Massive. And growing. Imagine we stack up every cell phone and tablet ever made. Next, add all of your consumer electronics and appliances. Then we throw every car windshield on the pile. Dashboards and touchscreens. And we add all the solar cells. Include hydrogen fuel cells and let’s scrape the inside of every Boeing airliner. The wallpaper technically is graphic screen printing, but its function is fire-resistance. Next, we dump on all the Covid rapid tests, diabetic test strips, and a bunch of nicotine patches. Pretty big pile? We’re only getting started.

All this and more on this episode of the “Art, Ad, or Alchemy?” podcast and companion column from the March/April 2024 digital edition.