“Education through inspiration” best describes the strategy adopted by flatbed printer manufacturer Inca Digital to promote the potential of UV inkjet to the creative professionals who are increasingly switching on to what the technology is capable of.
Starting just over a decade ago with the pioneering Eagle and Columbia models, a succession of Inca Digital printers - most recently, the Onset Series - have continued expanding the range of applications for flatbed UV inkjet technology. And every two years the Inca Digital Excellence Awards (Ideas) benchmark that progress by rewarding the creativity and ingenuity of Inca users around the world.
‘Time to inspire’ is the slogan for the 2014 Ideas, the winners of which were announced at Fespa Digital in Munich, and Heather Kendle, Inca Digital director of marketing and product development, says it was a mission to inspire that drove the company to launch the first Ideas in 2010. “If you look at the history of groundbreaking technologies in the printing industry, from electronic page composition and desktop colour in the 1980s, through digital printing in the 1990s, to Web-to-print in the 2000s, the technology really caught on when people grasped just what it made possible. That was the thinking behind the Ideas - to hold a competition that would enable print service providers to show agencies, retail brands, in fact a whole variety of companies - the stunning effects they achieve with wide-format printing and encourage them to consider what the technology could do for their business.
“As an industry, we rightly urge each other to shout about the unique contribution creative print brings not only to multi-channel marketing campaigns, but also to a whole range of other applications such as décor, sports, and exhibition products - even shoes! We believe there’s nothing more persuasive than actual examples of what the best PSPs are producing and the Ideas give them a platform to do just that.”
The titles alone of the five Ideas categories are evidence of the ever-wider capabilities of flatbed UV technology today: 3D POS, display graphics, interactive display, product decoration/unique designs, and the Special Award for Creativity. So too are the home countries of the winners this year: the UK, Morocco, Ireland, Brazil and the US.
Entries are judged on a set of demanding criteria - originality of the job, complexity of the substrate, ability to overcome design and concept challenges, success of producing something special, benefits to the client, and overall visual and structural impression. Among this year’s winners were the UK’s Kolorcraft, which took the 3D POS award for retailer New Look’s Spring 2013 window scheme. The display included decorative elements with changeable graphics to match seasonal trends, made from 10mm and 18mm honeycomb board, display board, boxboard and polypropylene, and supplied flat-packed to stores with easily-assembled slot-together pieces.
The Display Print laurels went to Electroprint, Morocco, for an exhibition booth in the style of a medieval fortified city with Moroccan architecture. Printed on 16mm Re-board on an Inca Columbia Turbo, components were produced in under two days and designed to be installed in less than one day.
Color Ink from the USA deservedly took the Special Award for Creativity for a full-scale realistic-looking replica bobsled designed for Century 21 Realty, sponsor of the US bobsled team. Described by the judges as a “unique design with complicated specs”, the bobsled was created from lightweight 40mm White Styrene and one-inch Ultraboard and printed on an Inca Onset Q40i.
The other winners were Smurfit Kappa Display, Ireland (Interactive Display) for an innovative display unit featuring a smartphone/tablet application and Artwork Digital, Brazil (Product decoration/Unique Designs) with brightly-decorated storage boxes for the costumes and props used by students in ecology and environment lessons.
While the winning PSPs get the plaudits (and received an expenses-paid visit to the awards ceremony at Fespa Digital) - each Ideas event gives Inca Digital’s marketing department priceless insights into the products coming off its printers, which the company can use to spread the word further abroad.
“With the best will in the world, we can’t discover all the applications for flatbed UV inkjet, but the Ideas regularly throw up new vertical markets that we can then explore and address. For example, in 2012 the product decoration award was won by customised rubber flip-flop sandals designed for Fiat. As a result we promoted the winning application into the footwear industry. Other sectors that have come to our attention through the Ideas include the sports industry, interior design, hospitals and furniture design. It’s great to have a really innovative ‘real world’ idea to talk about,” says Kendle.
Inca also used the greater knowledge about how its products are being used to shape the content of the inaugural Inca Digital Summit alongside Fespa Digital, at which industry game-changers, including Coca Cola and Novalia, investigated prevailing and future trends and opportunities for creative print in all formats. If you think you’re producing work on an Inca printer that merits an Idea entry, your next opportunity will come in 2016. Details can be found at www.incadigital.com/ideas