10/10/2004
 Canadian MetalFX Licensed printer Colour Innovations has produced the front cover for leading graphic communications magazine, PrintAction.
The cover features a swirl of different metallic blocks, with the centre line:
"This cover would normally need 394 separate colours...
Colour Innovations created it with just five...
That is visual freedom".
Inside the magazine is a five-page spread all about Colour Innovation's use of MetalFX. MFX Marketing Manager, Philip Sheppard, comments:
"The Print Action piece is one of the most thorough and inspiring articles written about MetalFX, it uses and its licensed printers yet."
Below are some extracts from the article, followed by Colour Innovation's contact details...
Before leaving for Europe in the summer of 2003, Matthew Alexander made a couple of phone calls and let people know he was coming to find new technology for his printing company. He would be travelling through five or six countries and if there was anything exciting out there, he wanted to see it. One of his contacts in Germany went to work.
When Alexander showed up at Eckart, six men were waiting for him. Eckart practically controls the worldwide metallic ink market because it owns most of the viable patents for producing such pigment.
For decades now, the company has been making a gold mine out of filling huge drums with metal particles, ink and steel balls and then shaking and sieving out materials for further refining. The six men began telling Alexander about a colour technology they had just licensed from British software developers, called MetalFX.
"The day I saw it, I phoned my partner and said this is the most exciting thing I have ever seen in my entire printing career," recalls Alexander, president of Toronto-based Colour Innovations. "It is so phenomenal: 104-million colours. How do you comprehend that?"
Alexander brought MFX back to Toronto and the company immediately began applying decades of craft-based printing knowl-edge to establish a repeatable manufacturing process.
"...the most exciting thing I have seen in my printing career"
Earlier this year, Issue Number One of a poster-sized magazine, alled Fiber, arrived at hundreds of design firms across the country. On the cover, a sexually sug-gestive tree as photographed by world-renowned photographer Yuri Dojc. Inside, more woodland eroticism, as well as an interview with Dojc about his vision for Amorous Nature, which sits opposite of copy that explains the FM screening process.
The purpose of Fiber is to illustrate how design can be combined with paper and printing technologies to create new value in the printed medium.
"When the Fiber piece about MetalFX went out, it developed a lot of interest. MFX is bringing technology to the design community and that will drive more value-added printing for the entire industry. Now designers will talk to their printers," says Alexander.
About a dozen live MFX jobs were moving through Colour Innovations at press time. While Alexander has listened closely to the design community for what they want from print, he believes Colour Innovations' distinct advantage in the marketplace has been fostered by actually driving the client with technology that is new to them. He suggests that the design community is quite hungry for new printing technology.
This was clear the first time he showed MFX to a designer, and within a matter of minutes a dozen others were standing around the desk to get a look at the software kit, which Alexander provides for free to firms that sign partnering con-tracts.
"MFX... will drive more value-added printing for the entire industry."
Bringing technology to clients without being asked to do so is a rarity in the printing industry, but clearly Colour Innovations will take advantage of that, never losing focus of their strategy.
There is pure value to be found in using MFX to accurately portray products like cosmetics, jewelry, credit cards and cars. Alexander strongly believes that metallic print is a hot market. The company so far has spent close to $50,000 on researching the potential applications of MFX.
Ideas for the metallic software are everywhere. Just by walking into the appliance department of a large department store like a Future Shop, Best Buy or Wal-Mart, Alexander suggests the current need for MFX will immediately jump out at you.
"You can buy an $180 microwave that looks like a $1,000 microwave, because it is all brushed chrome."
"Metal sells"
When Colour Innovations' MFX work was shown to a cosmetics giant, that company was enticed to start a major initiative for their products.
Eckart had Colour Innovations produce advertisements that will run through 19 large-circulation publications in the United States. Alexander suggests cor-porations with significant high-end accounts have nine to 18 months before most of their competitors are using the technology to make their customers products look better.
If such a groundswell does in fact happen, it will certainly be pushed into the minds of many printers, particularly those who might face losing one of their major accounts.
"I know one printing company in particular that is actually testing [MFX], because right now we are doing a test for one of their biggest clients," says Alexander". We are forcing clients to question their printers because all of a sudden we are presenting a lot of interesting options."
CONTACT COLOUR INNOVATIONS
To find out how Colour Innovations can help you, contact them using the details below:
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