Two related, but completely independent, digital output moments. First, in the process of buying my son a Flip Mino pocket video camcorder, I was dazzled to discover that I could custom design and output a picture/graphic of my choosing directly on to the face of the camera itself.
(My son is a dedicated rider of the vintage railcars that run along the Embarcadero in San Francisco so I digitally affixed the adjacent snapshot, which I’d taken some time back.)
Then, needing a fanciful way to surprise my son while waiting for the camera to arrive (mea culpa, I ordered the camera the night before Christmas), I took some screen caps of the rendering of the camera (Flip Video, makers of the Mino, provide a simple, elegant WYSIWYG designer tool) and laid them out into a glossy one pager.
Then, the dilemma. Print it at Kinko’s or Ritz Camera? After all, it’s just a digital file, paper stock (glossy or matte) and hi-res output. In the end, the decision purely came down to price - $1.68 at Kinko’s versus $3.99 at Ritz.
But it got me thinking. When the only decision on Kinko’s versus Ritz Camera is price, when output can be placed on the face of a video camera as easily as photo paper stock or stationary or a t-shirt or a mug (user-generated/customized product creation service, CafePress is Pure Video’s digital output partner), the age of mass customization is so totally upon us.
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