Features

Drupa saw the launch of this larger version of SwissQprint’sexisting UV flatbed models. Nessan Cleary takes a closer look.

Among the new large-format printers launched at Drupa came the Nyala from SwissQprint, which will be handled in the UK by Spandex. The Nyala is a UV flatbed based on the same platform as SwissQprint’s existing Oryx and Impala flatbeds, but with a larger chassis giving it a 3.2 x 1.6m bed complete with a 3.2m wide roll-to-roll option. It has the same solid engineering approach as the other models, hardly any surprise giving that most of the people behind SwissQprint used to work on Zund’s UV printers, setting up their own company when Zund opted to concentrate on cutting tables.

Melany Rocque-Hewitt finds that walls have never looked so good, thanks to the growth in bespoke digitally printed coverings.

Excuse the pun, but digital wallpaper is on a roll. Digitally produced, bespoke wall coverings (wallpapers or feature wall murals) are gaining momentum not just in the commercial sector but have segued their way into the domestic, consumer zone.

Building an Ark may be going a bit far, but you certainly need to make preparations for the chaos climate change may wreck on your business as environmental consultant Clare Taylor explains.

We read a lot about preventing climate change, but what about preparing for it? It is happening, and we are already feeling the effects: research for Defra found that almost a third of UK businesses had been significantly affected by extreme weather between 2007 and 2010.Checking the possible impacts on your business and being prepared makes sense.

Nessan Cleary reckons this new latex printer is likely to drive further take-up of this environmentally friendly inkjet technology.

One of the more exciting announce-ments from this year’s Fespa Digital show was Mimaki’s move into latex printing with its new JV400. This is built on a brand new chassis, developed as a platform for several new printers to come, including one using SUV inks that was announced at Fespa and will be launched later this summer.

With the main trade shows of 2012 done and dusted it’s time to assess the technological trends they highlighted in the wide-format arena.

So, we’re midway through the year and we’ve had three big exhibitions - Fespa Digital, Sign and Digital, and Drupa - with all their attendant announcements and product launches, but have we seen anything that's really new in terms of technology for the large-format display graphics sector? Rather than simply list the various announcements, which we’ve already covered through the previews and the news pages, here we’ll look at the bigger themes and trends highlighted by the events.

We shall overcome…rather than be overcome by the double dip-recession if we follow certain housekeeping rules according to the Forum of Private Business.

Forget the film stars, now thanks to digital printing technology; it’s the carpet itself that’s hogging the limelight finds Melony Rocque-Hewitt.

Are you optimising your existing wide-format digital printing equipment? That’s the question that Jon Price director at Wokingham-based CMYUK Digital has been asking his customers of late. The reason? CMYUK has become the exclusive UK distributor for the European product range from Printing Carpets – the Netherlands-based supplier of plain, white, ready-for-printing carpet stock and vinyl flooring.

The importance of being boring

Why weren’t Canadian banks hit as badly by the credit crunch as American and British banks? One answer is given in ‘Other People’s Money’, Justin Cartwright’s exceptional novel about a Rothschild-style banking dynasty. In the final chapter, a spokesman explains a Canadian bank’s resilience by saying: “We are boring and we don’t go to the opera.”

In boom times, great business leaders are lauded for their eccentric, audacious genius. But in an era where every week reveals another business that doesn’t seem to fully understand its own business – the bank J.P. Morgan being merely the latest example – many pundits now feel there is a lot to be said for leadership that is quiet, shuns the limelight and doesn’t indulge in what ‘Time’ magazine columnist Joel Stein calls “a lot of alpha male yelling and inspirational speechmaking”.

In Stein’s book ‘Man Made: A Stupid Quest For Masculinity’, he interviews leaders from all walks of life and finds that the most effective – like the captain of a fire station in Hollywood – “weren’t particularly charismatic, or funny, weren’t the toughest guys in the pack, didn’t have a Clintonian need to be liked or a Patton-like intensity. They were, on the whole, a little boring.”

Yet the firefighter, Klein suggests, has learned that “inspiring people through your personality is a risky, exhausting endeavour. But if you make people feel like you’re going to help them accomplish something far bigger than you, you can let the belief do the work for you.”

HR specialist consultancy Page Meir Global considers how your HR policy needs to grow and adapt with your business.

How a more efficient approach to colour management can dramatically boost your environmental credentials and bottom line by cutting ink use and waste.

Somehow we seem to have assumed that being environmentally friendly is going to cost us more. This idea is so endemic to the way we think that green policies have become one of the biggest casualties of the current economic crisis. Yet one of the biggest threats to our planet’s health is the sheer amount of waste that we all produce. It’s no surprise that reducing waste is also a pretty good way of increasing profit margins.

As the UK member of the EDP, it's great for Image Reports to be able to announce the winners of the association’s annual awards and to applaud all those manufacturers who continue to push the envelope.

The Out of Home Media session in the DrupaCube made it clear that print needs to be more vital if it’s to take a serious slice of the OOH advertising budget in years to come. Here’s what some of the speakers had to say on the topic.