Artwork Systems

SHANGHAI—Labelexpo Asia 2005, taking place at the Shanghai New International Expo Centre on 7-9 December 2005, is set to be over twice the size of the last event in 2003.  All the leading international suppliers who were at the last show will be there again, such as Avery Dennison, Esko-Graphics, Gallus, HP Indigo, Kocher + Beck, Labelmen, Mark Andy, Nilpeter, Omet, Purlux, Rotoflex, Rotometrics, Raflatac, Shanghai Auclean, and Yupo - plus there will be many new exhibitors such as H-Shine Printing Machine Company and Orthotec Wan Am (Concorde Precision Technology). Package and label printing in China accounts for some 48% of the country's total

As always, companies exhibiting at CMM International 2005 put on a display of impressive new products and technologies for converters and package printers. A SUCCESSFUL TRADE show is always measured on an individual basis—foot traffic, promising leads, or signed contracts. While attendees weren't exactly carried down the aisles in a swell of people, CMM International 2005 still offered a wide array of new products and technologies from the exhibiting companies. The following is a small sampling of what CMM International had to offer. Company news Enercon and Ciba Specialty Chemicals announced a joint development agreement which will combine Enercon's surface modification Plasma3™ technology

Integrating packaging design with the realities of process capabilities is key to a project's success. WHY DO WE reach for one package and not another on the grocer's shelf? What makes a package unique? On the continuum from concept to production, where does innovation live? The answer, in a word, is design. The transformation of an idea into a dimensional shape with identifiable characteristics begins with a designer's aesthetic and emotional connection to that idea. As the creative cycle builds, additional factors come into play: the requirements of the product engineers, marketers engaged in product development and brand extension, procurement personnel, and printer/converters, whose

CARMEL, IN and BATAVIA, OHIO—The two user group associations devoted to Esko-Graphics products, the Artios Users Group International (AUGI) and the Association of Esko-Graphics Users Group (AEG) announce that their 2005 annual meetings will be held during May 15-18 and May 12-14 respectively at The Pointe Hilton Squaw Peak Resort in Phoenix, Arizona. AEG meeting focuses on Scope During the AEG annual meeting, members will have an opportunity to participate in training sessions, roundtable discussions, seminars and hands-on labs. As always, the days will be full of valuable information and the evenings will be full of entertaining ways to network with industry colleagues and

In the world of packaging and package printing, digital asset management is also dynamic asset management. IT HAS BEEN suggested that packaging and advertising will mount the last defense of ink-on-paper against the onslaught of digital and virtual technologies. Try packaging a box of Wheaties on CD-ROM or wrapping a birthday gift in a graphical user interface. Now that the drama has subsided, the rhetoric has also cooled, leaving the industry to deal with new and evolving realities, among them, the proliferation of digital workflows and data requiring identification, categorization, and storage. What? Why? How? Any digital media file with value to an

Shrink sleeve label printing requires a lot of work, but the rewards can make it all worth while. SHRINK SLEEVE LABELING has taken aim at the product decoration market in a big way. It's not doing this with a single-shot sniper's rifle, either. It's blasting away at market opportunities and market share with both barrels. Shrink labels represent a high-growth segment in product decoration, and those package printers with the technical savvy to make it work are reaping the benefits of its market appeal. Technical savvy is the key, because a shrink label is a moving target—it starts out in one shape and

JDF offers three prominent features: the ability to carry a print job from concept through completion, to bridge the communication gap between production and MIS, and to do so with most any precondition. JDF IS AN open-standard, job-ticketing language that provides a foundation for users to build next-generation printing environments that encompass both the content and the business aspects of production workflow. The Job Definition Format is a comprehensive, XML-based file format for end-to-end job ticket specifications, combined with a message description standard, and message interchange protocol. JDF was created to develop an open, extensible, XML-based job ticket standard, as well as a mechanism,

Easy to integrate—and packed with JDF functionality—today's robust RIPs are tagged "revolutionary" and "central" for any workflow. THE RIP OF of today is a master of all trades: color management, advanced screening, JDF-functionality, ticketed workflow, soft proofing finesse—a wide range of performance targets for a new era of prepress automation. Central RIP (raster image processor) for any workflow; revolutionary RIP architecture; JDF-enabled—and proud of it. These descriptions fit the latest trends in RIP technology targeting prepress environments today. Xitron, for example, has been giving high emphasis to its Navigator Harlequin RIP, XiFlow workflow, and Xenith Extreme Adobe RIP—all of which introduced new functionalities at

Progressive package printers are finding new ways to open new levels of communication with their customers and attract new business. Digital workflows—and the Internet—are helping. ADVANCED DIGITAL WORKFLOWS, sporting Internet collaborative tools, are significant time savers for prepress departments—and are targeting the package printing environment with fervor. Gee Ranasinha, director of marketing at Dalim Software, reports one way a package printing operation can differentiate itself from its competition is by offering its customers the advantages of a more digitized workflow and online collaborative services. One such workflow is the DALiM MiSTRAL PACK, which provides converters a complete view of their entire prepress production. It

A symbiotic relationship between packaging prepress professionals and their customers can lead to the right prepress environment. TREND OFFSET PRINTING is a full-service, commercial and publication printing company headquartered in Los Alamitos, Calif. The company—innovative in its approach—offers a clear snapshot into the technological movements impacting the offset CTP environment at this time. For example, let's take a look at some of Trend Offset Printing's recent technology upgrades: • To handle an increasing volume of new customers, it has purchased Creo's Trendsetter AL complete with V-head, and has initiated plans to double the capacity of its existing Creo Trendsetter with the addition of