IAPHC

It certainly is an exciting time to be a part of the world of flexographic printing. Print results are being achieved today that would have been determined unimaginable by this process as recently as a couple years ago. Even more exciting is to be a part of the team that is making this possible...with the award- winning Kodak Flexcel NX Digital Flexographic System.



I had the opportunity in early March to be onsite for the printing of the Canadian Printer magazine "over-cover" at the Cenveo McLaren Morris and Todd facility in Mississauga, Ontario. Given the rare chance to demonstrate the current capabilities of the flexo print process compared side by side to the traditional offset-printed magazine cover, the enhanced reproduction gamut enabled by the Flexcel NX system proved itself once again!

With challenging four color process graphics expertly prepared by the staff at Autumn Graphics, and printing on what can be considered as a somewhat unforgiving substrate, it was immediately recognized by everyone present how quickly the job came up to and fell into color match. Of greater significance is that the graphics were output with screening of 20 micron stochastic on the outside and 200 line AM on the inside-all reproduced in four color process and printed in-line over a printed white. Attempting to pull something like this off before the introduction of Flexcel NX in this industry would likely have seldom been considered possible.

What had been scheduled for the possibility of an all-day "tweak and coax" was wrapped up and mission accomplished in only a couple hours. A great deal of the credit for this, naturally, goes to Marcelo Marziali and his staff at Cenveo, as well as Ben Abray and the folks at Autumn. While it does require the right combination of components to accomplish these types of results, Flexcel NX proved to be the enabler.

With Flexcel NX providing the capability for expanded tonal range and repeatable, consistent results, flexo is reaching uncharted waters in competing with offset and gravure on a daily basis and providing even greater value for our customers.
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Ben Abray's father, the late Jerry Abray was an IAPHC member and entered some gorgeous award winning National Hockey League trading cards created by Autumn Graphics in the International Gallery in 1995, and traveled to the IAPHC Convention in Jacksonville FL that year to receive his honours.

When we read the above article penned by Paul Lancelle of Kodak, we encouraged our IAPHC-Toronto chapter to reach out to Cenveo's McLaren Morris and Todd plant in Toronto to see about entering the Canadian Printer cover in the 2009 International Gallery.  (Please note the article posted in this Gallery section of the IAPHC website on January 26th, 2010 about the upcoming Toronto Gallery awards gala on March 4th.)

Meanwhile, we made contact with many virtual friends inside Kodak with regard our admiration for Kodak's ONE magazine, especially the issue that celebrated the use of Kodak's dimensional ink process on the NEXPRESS.  The cover of the edition we liked so much showed the Eastman House and truly had a sense of several dimensions much as one obtains from thermography.  Many IAPHC members have fond memories of the 1998 IAPHC Convention which featured opening ceremonies at the fabulous Eastman House mansion once owned by Kodak's founder George Eastman.

So we asked Jeffrey Hayzlett, Chief Marketing Officer and Vice President of Kodak, and Kevin Joyce Chief Marketing Officer for Kodak's Graphic Communications Group and Mark Weber, Kodak VP who is much involved in the dimensional ink marketing about entering the ONE magazine cover.  Joe Noble, long time IAPHC-Rochester member, and long-time Kodak team member encouraged folks he knew inside Kodak and Krista Fennessy ultimately entered six beautiful examples of Kodak's emerging technicolor capabilities, of which 5 won awards as listed above.

The Kodak news release was featured on WhatTheyThink on January 27th, and is also displayed on the news scroll bar on Kodak's main home page,

www.kodak.com

As Kodak's heritage reminds us that a picture tells a thousand stories, here (a wee bit below) is a 2007 picture of Jeffrey Hayzlett presenting the Kodak sponsored award to IAPHC member Charlie Clark who was then a director of C&C Offset Printing Company of Hong Kong and has subsequently hung out his own shingle as Charlie Clark Books, LLC.  Charlie entered two award winning book projects in the 2009 International Gallery. http://www.charlieclarkbooks.com/  Here is one of them: