Print’s not dead. Regardless of what the digital purists say, there are plenty of uses for print. As I’ve noted before, I don’t foresee the complete migration from print to digital for graphic novels and comic books, baseball cards, direct mail pieces, or the brochures they give you when you walk into Disneyland or that you find in racks in front of tourist attractions. I even think you’ll still find paper newspapers 10 years from now and beyond.

Print is evolving, however, and nothing characterizes that evolution quite like print-on-demand (POD). There is no shortage of dunderheads out there who think POD is a new synonym for vanity press, but the two have little in common. Vanity presses did large press runs for wannabe authors who couldn’t find a publisher, while POD lets anyone produce just the number of copies they want, when they want them, of just about anything. The possibilities are unlimited.

Take, for example, the deal that Blurb just inked with The Dead, the current iteration of the The Grateful Dead, featuring all four surviving members of the iconic Bay Area jam band along with a couple friends to fill in the gaps.

The Dead is touring this spring, and the band will produce a book of photography for each of the tour’s 17 stops. The photography will be provided by longtime Grateful Dead photography Jay Blakesberg. And fans will be able to replace the cover image with their own photo. Each book will be available within 72 hours of the end of the show.

Blurb developed the Personal Cover option just for this offering, although undoubtedly it will be extended to other products down the road.

From the press release:

“The band wanted to enable the Dead Heads to visually experience the show in a totally new way,” said Jay Blakesberg, photographer for the upcoming DEAD tour. “Extending the concert experience via personalized, professional-quality photography books, available within days following each show, is unlike any band merchandising I???ve ever seen. The speed of Blurb???s publishing platform meant we could create books with unique content for every tour stop. By also allowing fans to add their own magic to the cover, The DEAD are once again breaking the rules with this awesome new technology!”

“Working with The DEAD presents an exciting opportunity for Blurb to help a band create a new, cool type of merchandise item,” said Robin Goldberg, SVP of Marketing and Business Development, Blurb. “This partnership was attractive to The DEAD and to Blurb because we???ve been able to allow Dead Heads to work with licensed content but still add their own personal touch to each book.”

Since I’ll be at the show in Mountain View on May 14, I’ll just have to bring a camera so I can personalize a cover and order my own copy. It’ll most likely sit on my coffee table, where a digital version could never replace the tactile pleasure of flipping through a book of high-end printed images on high-quality paper.

Now, put on your thinking cap. For your company or clients, to what uses could this kind of near-instant printing, with the personalized touch, be put? The company holiday party? Images from trade shows or product launches? What ideas pop into your mind?