PrintWeek Awards 2010 – Photo Gallery

Hi friends,

Its good that Print Week have uploaded their 2010 Awards photo gallery so that I can share with you, so heres the link to follow:

http://www.flickr.com/photos/40206589@N04/sets/72157624705076585/

There are two photos you will see where I am handing over awards to Amit Shah & Anil Shah of Spectrum Scan Pvt. Ltd. for the Best Screen Printer of the Year and one to Nikhil Ahuja of NBA Studio in Pune for Special Award in Screen Printing. Nikhil is the lucky winner who received Grafica’s NANO-PRINT for his outstanding creativity in wedding cards and special effects screen printing.

Below are few photos taken from my camera.

Print Week 2010 Awards

Print Week 2010 Awards

Print Week 2010 Awards

Wishing lots of fun and luck…

Bhargav

14 point to become successful in printing

Hi folks,

Received a nice SMS from one of my friend which had a good management lesson so I thought to share with you because most of the time we loose our temper for no reason. But now you got the solution.

A profound and breakthrough thought:
“If U can’t change the ‘Person’
Then
‘Change’ the person..!!

Also few important points to share with all my students because I am noticing this as a regular problem with all the new comers. So kindly read them carefully because these points may help you to be a successful person in life.

1. Take up printing as your profession only if you love it. It’s a grueling life and only one’s passion to become printer can overcome that. Remember that initially you may need to sacrifice quite a bit, especially your personal life.

2. Printing is nothing but fine art according to me. Printers, on other hand, is that much more. It is a way of life. You need to constantly look for new techniques, ideas and innovations.

3. A successful printer always prints for himself and for his satisfaction.

4. You need to maintain and sustain the efforts and results; and this requires years to resolve, dedication and hard work not just in printing but in every profession.

5. Talent does not matter much, yes frankly I believe that talent is overrated concept. You can cultivate your skills. Anyway, talent is not much use without the other ingredients – hard work, keeping oneself focused and staying motivated.

6. There are talented printers, there are hardworking printers, there are smart printer and there are printers who are great in getting access. However, it’s rare to find someone who possesses all these qualities.

7. Concentrate in quality rather getting quantity. Keep patience because that’s the key towards success.

8. Never get tired of failures, keep experimenting and develop new ideas.

9. Competition is healthy:
Once I was waking on a beach early morning all alone. I was assuming my waking speed was very fast unless someone overtook me.

Competition in business or amongst students is the same because it make you realize what you are and where you currently stand, competition alway strives you to deliver your best.

10. Academics are important:
Education helps you understand the basic of social behavior and also teaches how to write and talk, which is very important to launch a new career.

11. Experience is the best teacher
Read a lot. Develop a systematic reading habit in your life. But remember that experience is your best teacher, especially when it come to printing. You need to carve your own space in the organization, which happens only with time.

12. One should alway have some hobby in life. All successful person in life has one.

13. Adopt a GURU
It’s unfortunate that India does not have a history of printing education. To overcome this problem, I recommend you should assist someone. Your GURU will not only guide you and help you develop your skills, but also let you access high-end equipment.

14. If you respect your colleagues, seniors and customers, you will be respected by them.

So, relax and enjoy this beautiful rainy Sunday.

Good news and ideas are on the way so keep in touch.

Bhargav

PrintWeek India Award Results

Hi,

Just came back home from the PrintWeek India Awards Grand Finale and as promised let me proudly announce the names of the winners in particularly screen printing category.

“Screen Printer of the year” goes to: my friend Amit Shah of Spectrum Scan Pvt. Ltd…

And the winner of “Special Award” in screen printing to win Grafica’s Nano-Print goes to NBA Studio, Pune…

I shall post other photos of this event once I download files from my Canon DSLR camera.

I also felt great to handover these awards personally to the winners of screen printing category.

There were many other great printing companies who won this prestigious PrintWeek Awards. If you are interested to know more about he winners or want to get the list of winners then kindly log on to the PrintWeek India website.

But as far as my knowledge the highest award winner was my good old friend Shabir Muchala of Silver Point press. I met Shabir after a long time but when ever I meet him he is always cheerful cool and friendly.

It was a compliment from him when he mentioned that he always reads Grafica News and Grafica’s eNewsletter with great interest and be finds it informative.

There were other many good friends and industry stalwarts to whom I met during this event.

Till then good night.

Bhargav
00:35 Hrs: 27th Aug 2010

PrintWeek India Awards Grand Finale

Since my last post there are many news and ideas to share with all of you. Very important about DMI’s creative innovations and workshop news. But since last 2 weeks I am getting very little time to compile and put all information together. It’s almost ready now, DMI workshop creativity, students update and their training photos and many more experiments which I have successfully completed in screen printing. This all shall be updated by this week so please look for it…

Currently I am posting this news from my iPhone as I am on the way to attend the Grand Finale of PrintWeek Awards at Grand Hyatt, Kalina, Santacruz as Grafica being the sponsor for the screen printing category.

I am very eager to know who will be the lucky Screen Printer of the Year and the most lucky to receive Grafica’s Nano-Print as special award in screen printing.

If possible I shall update about the results tonight.

So keep in touch as more to come soon.

Wishing you a lucky weekend.

Bhargav

Adobe Illustrator CS4 Tip – Layer Groups in Illustrator?

Question:
“In Illustrator, why can’t I combine individual Layers into a Group folder like in Photoshop?

Answer:
“Illustrator’s Layers panel may not have Layer Groups, but you can do something very similar to what you like doing in Photoshop. To give it a try, open a new document (File>New) and click twice on the Create New Layer button at the bottom of the Layers panel, so that you have a total of three Layers. Click on each Layer listing in the panel, one at a time, to draw some objects on that Layer. Now, click on the top Layer listing in the panel and Shift-click on the bottom Layer to select all three. Look under the Options menu of the Layers panel and choose ‘Collect in New Layer.” All of the Layers will be collected into a new Layer. This is really quite similar to a Photoshop Layer Group.”

Let’s group…

Bhargav

Happy Independence Day

Happy Independence Day to all my friends, colleagues and students.

This special T-Shirt was gifted to me by one of my best friend and customer Bharat and Tarun Shethia of Tarun Printech one of the best textile printing house. They have won more than 100 national and international awards. Some of their jobs on direct T-Shirt printing which I have seen in their company and in many exhibitions are truly outstanding.

The T-Shirt has a printed circuit design in each letters of INDIA, using thick film they printed to get the feel of each components when you touch which we know as high density printing.

I love to wear this T-Shirt because it makes me patriotic. It also exposes the capability of Indian Screen Printers. India does not lack talented people also work very hard. But time has come that we all need to dream out of the world. Today for Indian Printers world is the competition.

Jai Hind.

Regards,

Bhargav

Screen Printing @2500 to 4000 sq-ft per hour

Hi Folks,

When I came back from FESPA Munich show I had sent an email to Michel that lot of Indian printers think that Digital is taking over Screen business and that’s not true. Now let’s here from our GURU what he has to say about this myth.

———————————————————————————————-

I deny and I cannot follow you totally in your pessimistic approach of the screen printing market : first of all, what is true in Europe and USA, is quite different in Asia, South and Central Americas and India of course, but remember once again : what we see in all our “mostly Visual Communication” Shows, as FESPA, SGIA, etc. “graphic, POP, sign” – represent in the world only 20% of screen printing applications ! 35% are in textile and 45% in industrial such as electronic, glass and ceramic, automotive, containers, etc. = 80% of screen applications quite alive and developing.

But only a few shows concern textile (FESPA Textile included) and almost none, except very specialized segments, concern industrial applications. Those applications are most of time in hand of powerful and secret industrial groups using screen as a part of their manufacturing process. And, as I know as consultant, quite often relatively secret.

These parts of screen extend and develop every day new application (cf. solar cells, RFID or nanotechnologies) but for the above reason, despite we try a lot, FESPA or even SGIA cannot reach directly this segments for their exhibitions. As a result, the visitors – printers or services provided – “SEE” Visual communication – now pretty much digital – and have the feeling that screen is disappearing.

The manufacturers in screen, at the noticeable exception of GRAFICA in India (you know that company?) cannot innovate all the time in graphic technology and ink manufacturers work for both digital and screen (graphic, textile, industrial). This, plus the demand of the market explains that ! But, there are adjacent and often perverse effects:

* The Western countries are widely in over capacities of production for a graphic print market not so extensible and even reducing – crisis oblige – those last two years.

* After a few years and often only months, many purely digital companies, big or small, goes to bankruptcy in Europe and USA.

* As 50% of wide format digital is, from the beginning 1994/95, in the hand of companies of which the core business was or still is screen printing, many of them start to re-use their screen press and often buy new screen equipments, multicolor and big size, because financially more profitable than digital.

* The market of digitally printed items, as it concerns smaller quantities, often customized, needs a ver strong sales force simply because you need several times more staff and more numerous customers, with often the necessity to react very fast with extremely short delivery times.

* If we take DOG (direct on garment), my 45 audits proved me that the “big producers” are totally uninterested in all the companies and countries I audited: too slow – 10 to 20 times slower than screen carrousels or even long tables !

* Here my position is that DOG is a very different market to sale differently to specific and different customers by the net for example.

For the graphic market, my position did not changed since 15 years : I do believe that screen and digital are complementary and help us to offer a more complete service to the customer and end-user. It is up to us to choose the best technique (and most cost effective) to serve the customer needs : he is only interested in the efficiency of images of POP and sign items to sell his products… not in the manner it is produced or printed !

Lot of special loves to all my Indian friends and fans.

Michel Caza

———————————————————————————————-

So to all my industry friends who had asked me this question about Screen vs Digital I hope you must be satisfied to certain extend about the power of screen printing.

To be honest my company Grafica sold screen printing machines to more than 10 hardcore digital printers since 2009 Jan. Why I am specifically mentioning them because they were purely digital printer and started their business from digital machines and have entered into screen printing, think it over WHY they required to go for screen after you feel digital is taking over screen?. In fact here it says that screen is taking over digital…

I also see many customers approaching us for screen printing machines for signage business. That means signage business in India is growing in screen printing due to higher quantity, faster speed, good outdoor life of ink, better durability, lower cost of print and many more other advantages.

Can you imagine with an investment of approx. less than Rs. 75 lakhs (or less than approx. 160,000 USD) in screen printing setup you can print 2500 to 4000 sq. ft. per hour. which presently no digital machines can offer considering with this investment cost.

So be smarter and have a meaningful week.

Bhargav

Convert an ordinary job into extraordinary piece of creativity thru screen printing

DMI's Creative Folder

First the impression what one gets by looking at this folder is innovation. That is how I use special effect techniques by using screen printing process.

This folder is designed and printed jointly by me and my 6th batch of students as their project work. It was printed on laminated foil with 16 special effects UV inks and varnish including process color CMYK screen printing. I used 100 LPI screen to print very fine halftones.

Practically and commercially this may be not economical as a regular job unless some premium customers demand for it and ready to pay the price. But my point was to show how speciality inks can makes a normal product to an extraordinary piece of creativity folder. I am sure there is a market for high end corporates who wants to use it for their conferences etc.

I started first operation using Matt varnish which was to be printed below CMYK flower image.  The reason we printed on Matt Varnish to is give a soft metallic effect which reflects from the foil.

There after I printed CMYK process color UV inks. The image was also over printed with a gloss varnish to give a SPOT UV effect only on the flower.

Then I printed solid black leaving some fonts reverse to give a foil stamping effect. On the solid black and some part of silver foil was printed with 3 different micro embossing effects using only one screen at one time. Also some parts of black was overprinted with transparent ink with rainbow color glitters to get some sparkling effect.

Some portion of black was also overprinted with wrinkle varnish to give a leather like effect. There was also the title of the folder “INNOVATION” was printed with thick varnish using 150 micron stencil on a 24T polyester mesh to give an embossing effect which we always call as ticky in Indian language.

The logo of Grafica and DMI was printed with special metallic orange for giving a vibrant look of the logo.

Since the folder had one side foil laminated so to add dramatic effect on the other side I printed solvent based pearl two tone ink overprinted with light yellow UV ink to add some sort of soft designing which can also be called as water mark.

I am sure its very difficult to get the same effect by offset or any other printing process considering the richness of multiple effects.

The advantage of screen printing process is that you can convert an ordinary product to an extraordinary high value product with the availability of speciality inks and varnish thus you can also produce jobs in small quantities with very high profit margins.

This is an classic example what I produced in making this folder but such effect and design can be implemented in packaging in a very effective and large scale using fully automatic screen printing lines where you can also achieve higher speeds.

DMI's Creative Folder