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Web may boot design gurus

Two out of five printers and graphic designers believe that the Web will wipe out more than half of their traditional revenue, forcing them to hunt for profits in non-printing services such as database management, according to a new survey by Xerox. The same applies to the printing giant: On the brink of bankruptcy and maligned as a photocopying stalwart of the Old Economy, Xerox is trying to reinvent itself as an e-commerce document-management and business-to-business company. The survey, released Friday on the show floor of a major printing and publishing conference in New York, found that 64 percent of respondents expected at least 20 percent or more of print jobs to come through the Web in the next three to five years. Three-quarters of the print professionals have an informational Web site, and 69 percent use the Internet to allow submissions of print jobs by e-mail or over the Web.

Two out of five printers and graphic designers believe that the Web will wipe out more than half of their traditional revenue, forcing them to hunt for profits in non-printing services such as database management, according to a new survey by Xerox. The same applies to the printing giant: On the brink of bankruptcy and maligned as a photocopying stalwart of the Old Economy, Xerox is trying to reinvent itself as an e-commerce document-management and business-to-business company.

The survey, released Friday on the show floor of a major printing and publishing conference in New York, found that 64 percent of respondents expected at least 20 percent or more of print jobs to come through the Web in the next three to five years. Three-quarters of the print professionals have an informational Web site, and 69 percent use the Internet to allow submissions of print jobs by e-mail or over the Web.