Tag: Articles
Caked In Snow
First of all, apologies to our customers who we could not meet their deadlines. We managed to get some staff in during the worst of the weather but unfortunately mother nature stopped us from getting more. They said it was gonna be a long cold storm... and they were right. Here are some pics of the white stuff. The benefits of having a 4 wheel drive were plain to see, moving a two wheel drive wasn't an easy feat (see pic of Daryl)! Hopefully we don't get another event like this for some time. It's par for course for many cities around the world, but we are not geared up to cope with this in Christchurch. The fun wears off pretty quickly. I think the kids are the winners when it comes to snow!!!
Greening Digital Printing
We'd like to introduce a recent addition to our line-up. HP in recent years have been pushing more environmentally conscious large format digital printing solutions. One of their biggest drives has been latex ink printers. Surprise surprise, the picture above happens to be one. The environment is not exactly being kind to us at the moment here in Christchurch, but we are still looking to improve our stance towards it. The HP Scitex LX850 uses waterbased latex ink, yet the finished prints are comparable to mild and eco solvent as far as scratch reststance and durability goes. It's our second latex machine. Without boring you to death with details, we get high resolution prints (truly stunning), with brilliant colour, durable for indoor and outdoor use including vehicles and then add to that the fact it does a great job on fabrics which is enhanced by it's ability to image on material up to to 3.2 metres wide (that's billboard size!!!).
A Day In The Sun
What a great day! We've endured a lot of aftershocks for nearly two months and this was a welcome break. It was a really good day as the sun shone, the bands played and the ground didn't move. The Band Together concert turned out around 140,000 people. New Zealand has some damn good musicians. Who would have thought The Exponents would be finishing a concert with Christchurch (in cashel street I wait) 25 years after it was recorded. For those who don't know what it was about... Band Together was a free concert for the people of Canterbury which featured some of New Zealand's top musicians. The purpose was to give Cantabrians a day to try to forget about their stress caused by the earthquake and chill out for a day.
True Colours
In previous articles, I covered how we control colour with software and hardware using design programs and the printers. There is another important piece of hardware too. It's a colour matching booth. Not a weird device that you climb inside and lock the door, but rather a station that has special fluorescent tubes that illuminate vertically mounted prints and proofs from above. The big problem to overcome with manual hardcopy matching of colour is the lighting conditions. There are so many different conditions, fluoresecent warm to cool tubes, halogen, daylight sunny and cloudy, incadescent blubs and now led lighting which all emit different colour. There is no easy solution but a good start is an industry standard, which just happens to be D50 or more commonly known as daylight.
Adgraphix Wins International Award
We were the only Australasian competitor to gain a placing in the inaugural HP Digital Print Awards 2010 (Asia Pacific & Japan). The awards were open to owners of HP Scitex industrial printers in the Asia Pacific and Japan regions. This makes for a massive customer base eligible to enter. There were 5 categories with gold, silver and bronze being awarded in each. We entered our bronze winning Glassons Westfield Riccarton entry in the 'Interior Advertising' category.
Glorious White Ink
(Updated July 2020) Have you thought about how you could benefit from white ink? Digital has changed the way we think about print. Short runs are so common now because digital printing has made them affordable. But digital printing had always had its limitation, you couldn't print white. This meant all materials printed had to start off as white to get vivid colours; the advent of white ink changed everything. We've been printing white ink since 2008.
Burning The Toast
Matching colours correctly; it is a process that happens behind the scenes. You might not realise how important it is and why we take it so seriously. A number of years ago I read an article which is a great way to describe why colour management so important. It's all about making toast!
You Just Push Print Don't You?
It's true, the easiest thing about digital printing is buying (if the bank likes you) the machine. Yes, the printers are automated, but they require quite a lot of user interaction to make the difference between a good print and a not so good print. Taking a closer look at the not so good prints, it comes down to a few important details which require additional skills, than just sending files to a machine. Here is a small snapshot of some baddies we avoid in the background.
