Artwork Systems

MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—Graphics of the Americas (GOA) is becoming an important annual meeting venue for brand owners and printers looking for anti-counterfeiting technologies and techniques, says GOA President George Ryan.

SAN LUIS OBISPO, Calif.—The Business of Green Media Conference—which will address "bottom line" issues about not only how to implement sustainable practices, but how to do it profitably—will take place on the Cal Poly campus on January 22.

EskoArtwork announced its first worldwide customer conference, scheduled for May 17th through 20th, 2009, in Orlando, Florida. The EskoArtwork Users Group International (EUGI) will continue its 17-year tradition of providing a learning and information-sharing event.

GENT, Belgium—At Graph Expo, EskoArtwork will announce the integration of BackStage and Nexus, which will allow users of the Nexus automatic workflow system to tap into the extensive job management capabilities of BackStage. “The integration of Nexus and BackStage creates an exciting new level of modularity and flexibility for customers, who now have a clear growth path with many product possibilities,” explains Jan Ruysschaert, EskoArtwork vice president sales & marketing commercial printing. “Our customers and prospects both understand that this creates exceptional benefits—for example, the ability to coordinate multiple output devices, improved color management and proofing, more powerful impositioning workflows and most importantly better

Vandalia, Ohio—Rochester, NY-based Label World, a supplier of custom labels in the Northeast, is reporting improved productivity and higher quality flexo printing due to its recent implementation of an EskoArtwork Software workflow solution and a Cyrel Digital Imager (CDI) 2530 flexo platemaker. For more than 20 years, Label World has provided quality custom labels, enhanced by value-added services, to meet its customers’ product branding, identification, tracking, and security needs. Its 50 employees work with a variety of flexo presses and one HP Indigo ws4050 digital press. Until recently, Label World had used an analog, film-based plate system, burning flexo plates and working with prepress

ROSEMONT, Ill.—Despite the current unstable economic situation, Labelexpo Americas—which took place in Rosemont, Ill., Sept. 9-11—still saw a good turnout, with numbers exceeding 12,000. By the end of the show, more than 80 percent of the exhibition space had already been rebooked for Labelexpo Americas 2010. The show saw 420 national and international suppliers bringing their latest developments in technology and materials to demonstrate to the North American market. There were many new presses launched by market leaders: Nilpeter introduced its new FG-line of UV flexo presses; Mark Andy unveiled the Comco C1 ProGlide and demonstrated its updated XP5000 shaftless press. EFI Jetrion

In both conventional printing and package-printing environments, the term “workflow” denotes the steps in an end-to-end production process designed to yield a specified product. In commercial environments, these steps include trapping, screening, RIPing, imposition, color management, proofing, and platemaking, in addition to other labor-intensive front-end tasks. Package printing adds layers of complexity, due largely to combining graphical and structural information in a single, production-ready file, as well as to handle innumerable matched inks and varnishes, step-and-repeat, and a variety of packaging-specific production challenges. Workflow integration is playing an increasingly important role in decision making for consumer product companies (CPCs) and retailers concerned with

CHICAGO, Ill.—At Labelexpo this week, Avery Dennison announced that it has joined forces with EskoArtwork and ExxonMobil Chemical in extending PacVantage™ software and technology for digital labels. Last year, EskoArtwork and ExxonMobil Chemical introduced PacVantage™ software and technology for digitally printed labels at Labelexpo Europe. In this market segment, where the predominant printing technology is provided by HP Indigo, these companies broke new ground by offering a color guarantee. This guarantee provides converters that prepare their jobs using EskoArtwork software with PacVantage™ technology and print them on ExxonMobil Chemical’s Digilyte™ polyolefin films the assurance that they will be able to make color adjustments during

When considering the gains and losses that result from automating the product development cycle, it’s helpful to take a look at what lies outside the realm of package production—namely, the creative process itself. As a package travels from a creative idea to the retailer’s shelf, the opportunity and challenge for suppliers of packaging preproduction software lies in identifying and eliminating steps in the development cycle that can compromise the integrity of the design process and prevent the speedy execution of a project. “The function of packaging prepress is to find the best possible compromise between the greatest creativity and the limitations of the

What will I look like? How will I perform? If a package could ask questions, these might be among the first and most important it would pose. The answers are less elusive than they used to be, thanks to the development of automated workflows that understand the complex nature of packaging work. However, for mixed commercial and packaging printers wanting to increase the amount of repeat packaging work they take on, or for pure commercial printers wanting to tap the potentially lucrative packaging market, it is important to grasp that their familiar thinking in pages and jobs no longer applies and also that