Latest Print News

The Marketing Communication Consultants Association (MCCA) is all set to provide digital print training in the New Year. There is a lot of demand for digital print technology and keeping this in mind MCCA has rolled out a programme to train people with digital printing technology and its applications. According to HP, they have noticed a growth of almost 40% in the volumes of digital pages that were printed last year.

Simon Addinall, market development manager of HP, said that they are planning to grow the number of agencies that are using the techniques of digital printing. They are also trying to integrate digital printing techniques with other media so that the performance of campaigns can be enhanced.

MCCA’s Managing Director, Scott Knox, explained that over the past few years digital printing technology has proved beneficial for both customer retention and customer relationship management. It also provides great savings to agencies and brands. The main aim is to get people and agencies familiar with this advanced printing technology. The program will be rolled out in February next year. The company will be offering various training seminars in order to showcase the technology.

There has been a steady increase in the number or companies opting for digital printing technology in the last few years.

Kodak has said that they will remain committed with their Graphics Communication division in spite of rumours which suggested that they will no longer spend on digital printing technology.

The confirmation had come when the US based corporation announced that it will be missing revenue growth targets in the upcoming year, blaming the reduction in their business. Analyst at Cross Research, Shannon Cross had said that the company needs to have some serious decisions over their inkjet business. However, the capital that is required to be invested in their Nexpress and Stream technology would continue to grow.

However, Kodak said that they were very confident with their strategy and they are in a good financial position, and will continue to invest in digital printing solutions to strengthen their position.

Chairman and chief executive, Antonio Perez, said when the forecast of company was announced that there was a doubt related to the economic environment. Some signs indicate that they can be facing a long-drawn-out global recession. He also added that Kodak is a financially strong company and will easily manage to escape from the economic downturn.

The Graph Expo in Chicago, USA, has always been on every printer’s itinerary. In fact many product manufacturers and printers geared up to showcase their ranges at the Graph Expo. Presstek took the opportunity to display its UV printing option for its 52DI and 34DI digital offset presses.

The UV printing options offer printers access to a wider range of applications and markets. The UV option will be demonstrated on the Presstek 52DI. The UV printing option will be offered commercially for the Presstek 52DI and 34DI digital offset press.

Presstek are confident that the UV option will help printers expand their range of applications. This will help them in offering their clients a whole new set of services. The best part is that printers can even print on foils, plastics and vinyls. The press can print on anything ranging from 0.0024in to 0.02in (0.06mm to 0.5mm) thick.

Well while Presstek showcased its new wonder at the Graph Expo, you could continue to take advantage of some of the finest services from printers across the world. Modern printers offer a wide array of printing solutions - be it banner printing or billboard printing or even posters for that matter.

Have you checked out the latest font-rendering system from Monotype Imaging? Well the new product called Edge Technology is a wondrous font-rendering system and is designed for low memory consumer electronics devices. Edge technology comes in as an add-on plug-in for the company’s I Type scalable font engine v4.1.

With text rendering and font ‘hinting’ techniques Edge technology seems interesting. The new plug-in is aimed at achieving superior visual results. The entire technology is designed as per the greyscale rendering technology. Previously, consumer electronic devices suffered with memory limitations and low screen resolution.

Currently, Edge technology supports more than 28,000 Chinese characters. The company has even introduced a greyscale tuning capability. On the other hand, stroke-based Edge fonts have been tuned for greyscale output. These fonts are best suited for memory-constrained, low-end devices. The first Japanese version is expected to be released in November 2008.

Powered with four fonts Edge Technology is sure to change a lot of things in the printing industry. This is just one of the examples of the ever-growing printing industry and the constant innovation leading to wondrous banner printing, poster printing and billboard printing options.

Xante is all set to exhibit its wondrous range of printing products at the Graph Expo in Chicago, the US’s major printing trade show. The main attraction will be the Ilumina digital colour press, which has the ability to print directly onto lenticular media.

In case you are looking to increase your colour database then the OpenRIP Symphony and OpenRIP Flexo Professional workflow software from Xante will help you do just that. The software is designed to strengthen the abilities of small and mid-sized traditional printers (specifically digital and flexographic printers).

With an ever-growing number of quality products being offered by some of the finest manufacturers, customers these days have a wide choice in the digital printing domain. Constant innovations are taking place within the industry and are indicative of the growing demand for printers and their expertise. As technology moves on apace, high quality results are coming within the reach of everybody. You can now take advantage of the finest banner printing, billboard printing and poster printing solutions, whoever you are and whatever your needs.

In a first of its kind, a new non-proprietary e-commerce platform has been launched to connect the buyers and businesses with local printing suppliers in the UK.

The new platform, known as Earthtone will facilitate e-procurement of printing supplies and needs for business in the UK. The platform will connect online printing providers with the local buyers.

Earthtone aims at providing additional revenue stream for the printers without having to make any additional investment by providing them the tools to benefit from the fast growing online digital printing industry in the UK.

The platform will help digital printing companies to find new customers through the internet and at the same time enable the customers to find a local digital printing company for their banner printing, poster printing, custom banner printing and custom photo printing needs.

The new e-commerce platform will support over 100 different image formats and online payment support. This would help the printer in reducing his transaction costs and processing time.

This is a win-win situation for both the customers who are looking for online printing companies as well as the printing companies who are looking for more customers.

Ricoh, one of the world’s leading printer companies will showcase its high volume Pro C900 digital printer at the Total Print! Expo 2008 for the very first time.

Ricoh is all set to be the biggest exhibitor at the expo that would run from 14th to 16th October in London at Earl’s Court 2.

The latest digital printer from Ricoh has the Fiery RIP and can print up to 90 pages per minute. The digital printer uses paper up to 300gsm.

Besides this multi-function colour device, Ricoh would also demonstrate a wide range of in-line finishing kit like perfect binder, ring binder, GBC punch unit and Plockmatic booklet maker for the colour digital printer.

Ricoh would also display many other digital printers from its range like the MPC7500 with E7100 Fiery server and Pro 1356 EX

Ricoh wants to expand its range of offerings in the UK market. The company sees a great opportunity in this print expo to showcase its entire product portfolio along with comprehensive software solutions and support network.

EFI, the world leader in digital printing and innovation, has recently announced an investment in Jettable.

Jettable is an inkjet company that specialises in digital printing with the help of ceramic substrates. Jettable is an Israel based company and it offers specific and advanced solutions for inkjet printing.

Jettable, founded in 2003, offers a variety of ceramic inks and unique ultra fine pigments of ceramic. These pigments come with distinct benefits that create a substantial competitive advantage. Inkjet still continues to be a high profile strategic growth engine for the company, and has been for a long period of time.

The new product offering reaffirms the company’s commitment and dedication for inkjet printing solutions. EFI has an extra edge compared to other players in the domain of design and architectural market.

The unique characteristics of the ceramic composition have created a need for specialised inkjet printers that have colour management as well. The colours get tuned to the distinct ceramic colours to generate the most attractive and widest colour gamut.

EFI has been constantly offering the best services in the industry.

Offset printing has undergone a lot of change owing to automation features. Offset printing has now become much faster and can do shorter print runs. With the rapid strides in technology, offset presses can now offer its customers short run colour.

Offset printing still occupies the dominant position and it will continue to dominate for another, at least, in the immediate future. In fact, a vast majority of printing is still being done on offset presses, but digital printing will rule the roost in the years to come.

Digital prints offer the quality that offset printing can barely match. For example, photo books are always printed in low quantities. They cannot be printed on offset presses. Here digital printing will add the value. The quality also gets improved.

An example of futuristic digital printing technology is XMPie. This technology helps in delivering personalised messages via print, sms messaging and email. Hewlett Packard (HP) is positive that the digital printing technology will gradually replace offset printing. HP plans to focus on the quality of the print pages. This will be the company’s strategy in the years to come.

Hewlett Packard (HP) entered the industry of digital colour production after acquiring Indigo in 2002. Indigo is the company that launched the revolution of digital colour printing about fifteen years ago.

HP has recently recorded its most valuable contract of single purchase in the history of Indigo. The deal includes an installation of thirty six Hewlett Packard Indigo presses for a North American firm which deals in consolidated graphics. HP Indigo presses satisfy the fast growing demand for photo books and direct marketing materials that are digitally printed.

Sales opportunities have already emerged in countries like Brazil, Columbia, Argentina, and Mexico thus expanding their presence all round the globe. There has been a significant growth in the graphics art division of HP.

Production applications from the large format printing business include high productive printing in outdoor and indoor displays and signage. It also features high quality, fine art and professional photographs. The latest jet printer of HP L65500 uses latex inks from HP. This helps in reducing the environmental impact in printing.

The web press inkjet of HP delivers a breakthrough performance in quality, productivity and format size.