When you hear CSS, you think of websites. And rightly so, of course. CSS is THE design language for the internet. Every browser, whether on desktop, laptop, mobile or tablet, reads CSS to understand the size, color and layout of web pages. But CSS can actually do much more.

CSS3 introduced the Paged Media Module. It is about the styling of media that have pages, for example a PDF. The Paged Media Module (colloquially known as PrintCSS) is already very mature. PrintCSS can essentially do everything that print needs: spot colors, bleed, registration marks, and so on. PrintCSS works very simply: HTML or XML + CSS + (possibly JavaScript) = PDF. The PDF is generated by PrintCSS renderers. The landscape of providers is very broad:

PrintCSS: HTML/XML + CSS + possibly JavaScript= PDF

• There are open source renderers (e.g.: PagedJS, Weasyprint, Vivliostyle)
• Medium-priced offers (e.g. Typeset.sh)
• Enterprise solutions (e.g. Antenna House, PDFReactor, Prince)

Of course, there are also functional differences here. Some renderers also offer automatic separations in German, some can display footnotes, others not.
The different renderers have partially specialized in individual functions and application fields. Therefore, it is recommended that you consider different renderers for different projects and, if necessary, question the choice again after 1-2 years- the PrintCSS renderers often bring updates.

Tip: A great overview of the features and comparisons between different renderers can be found here: print-css.rocks/lessons

Why PrintCSS?

PrintCSS requires new skills in the publishing industry. What used to run in InDesign and the like is now written as code. Processes that have always been the same are turned upside down. In order to justify such an implementation, valid arguments are needed. Allow me to explain a few advantages of PrintCSS.

One advantage of PrintCSS over classic layout programs is that it uses a single language to serve multiple channels. PrintCSS is only slightly different from CSS for the web. This means that someone who already has a template for web output only needs to adapt it to create a print version. This allows for efficient and time-saving content creation for multiple media.

This leads directly to the next advantage. Because PrintCSS builds on the already familiar rules and conventions of CSS, developers and designers can easily switch between channels and ensure a consistent look and feel. Instead of learning a separate layout program and making complex adjustments, they can use their existing CSS skills and apply them to print materials. That means- it‘s easy to find PrintCSS developers, or retrain CSS developers to become PrintCSS developers.

A significant advantage of PrintCSS is the consequent separation of style and content. You can’t feed in any additional content via PrintCSS, which means the data structure in XML or HTML must be as complete and as clean as possible for it to work. Of course, this is sometimes a challenge. At the same time, one is forced to this separation, which is sometimes not so bad for content-first projects.

Another point, of course, is competitive pricing. Especially for SMEs, rendering services such as InDesign Server are not an option, simply because of the licensing and infrastructure costs. With PrintCSS, there are renderers for every budget that do not have such high server requirements. That means; in the long run, PrintCSS may be significantly less expensive.  

Is PrintCSS already usable in practice?

This is the crucial question. It is important for me to emphasize that PrintCSS is not always the right thing in all cases. For example, if manual intervention is necessary in individual outputs, this is hardly possible, if at all, because with PrintCSS the result is always directly a PDF. With classic InDesign workflows, it is usually still possible to intervene in the open InDesign file.

But if you have a fixed template and want to set the content always in the same layout with a clear set of rules, PrintCSS is wonderful. The ideas and possibilities are of course versatile

• Menu cards that are both in the website (as HTML), but also printed. For this we have extensively documented a project on morntag.com/referenzen/menukarte-automatisiert

Digital and analogue menu cards

• Data sheets, for example for industrial products, can become a PDF directly from the PIM.
• Annual reports and statistics with PrintCSS you can also generate charts from bare numbers via JavaScript. Very exciting!
• Typesetting scientific papers usually follows a very rigid set of rules. Ideal for PrintCSS!
• Already happening, e-books and also printed books in the fiction sector are being generated with PrintCSS. This is particularly worthwhile for very small print runs or self-publishing.

So it becomes clear; the possibilities of PrintCSS are easy to underestimate. The danger is that the print industry will miss out on this trend because they don’t have CSS on their radar. However, I believe that CSS has the potential to go from being just a web technology to a print technology. It can disruptively change the print world. If you don’t watch this trend, you may be surprised by it one day.