CWES appointed sole UK HP reseller of GMG ProductionSuite

GMG UK has appointed City & West End Solutions (CWES) as the sole UK HP reseller for its new wide-format colour management and workflow solution, the GMG ProductionSuite.  The alliance between GMG and CWES was sealed at Sign & Digital 2012 and is effective immediately.

“City & West End Solutions has vast experience in the wide format sector and a tremendous reputation for delivering first rate products and service nationwide. This is a strong and symbiotic partnership that unites GMG’s new workflow which is designed to streamline wide format production with the UK’s largest HP sales and support operation,” says Ian Scott, MD, GMG GMbH. “It’s great for CWES, great for GMG and, most importantly, great for the industry.”

The 30-strong CWES team sells and supports the full range of HP Designjet printers from 42inâ€"3.2m width.  The agreement with GMG comes soon after CWES’ move to bigger premises just south of London to accommodate the company’s growth, in addition to its established Sheffield office.

“Having our own experienced nationwide technical support team, not only to provide the best support for our customers, but also to assist our ever growing sales force, has ensured our growth is driven by delivering the very best tools and technology in an ever demanding market sector,” says Doug Gilbertson, CWES Managing Director. This serves to confirm the reason the company has received the largest HP reseller award for Signage & Display in UK for the second year in a row."

He continues, “GMG ProductionSuite is a very powerful workflow management tool. It takes the headache out of managing production to deliver consistent and comparable colour across multiple printers and media mix, while saving time, saving ink and increasing capacity. What’s not to love!”

With ProductionSuite, GMG enters the wide-format sector with the market’s most complete solution for automated, standardised, colour-consistent production of indoor and outdoor advertising, sign and super wide-format printing.  It combines GMG’s renowned colour management technology with new job automation and file preparation capabilities in a single system for wide-format pre-press, print and finishing.  Target applications range from inkjet-based wide-format production of banners, POS material, displays and vehicle wraps, to industrial wide-format production in very large-format production environments, such as billboards, POS-material, large-format lettering.

Matan Barak iPhone application brings efficiencies to Moscow print provider

Moscow-based print provider, ArtDoza, has been relying on Matan's iPhone application for Barak printers to bring greater efficiencies to its business. 

Print shop owners and managers and are very busy people. On top of being responsible for the smooth operation of the production floor, streamlining print jobs across several machines and various media, managing operator teams, controlling ink supplies, and keeping track of tight deadlines, they also often are the ones to deal with clients and engage in sales activities.  The new Barak iQ iPhone application has been specially designed to alleviate some of this workload.

Mr. Ruslan Bairamov, CEO of ArtDoza, a leading Moscow super-wide format print provider, uses the Barak iPhone app daily, sometimes up to ten times a day. It allows him to control the print queue, wherever he happens to be.  He comments, "It helps me motivate my staff to perform their job and to make sure there is no machine downtime...  Thanks to the Barak app I am always able stay on top of what is going on."

With the application, Barak iQ users can keep track of the printer production status via their iPhone or iPad, anywhere, anytime. The app displays the job queue. Clicking on a job allows previewing the file, viewing details such as size, media, printing mode, estimated duration and more. At any given moment it is possible to view the status of the currently printed job, including print speed, ink consumption, estimated time left to completion time and more. The ink level in the printer status is also available and the app can be configured to issue text alerts in case that ink levels run low. All completed jobs appear in the History View, with all the pertinent info.

A shop that owns several Barak iQ printers can track and check on each of them, allowing for total production control even when away from the production site.

Matan will be demonstrating its print solutions at drupa 2012 in Hall 9, booth A56.  These include superwide format hybrid UV printers as well as specialty printers for a variety of applications including traffic signage and durable graphics.

For more information, please visit www.matanprinters.com

Sihl's wallpaper used for artist Ai Weiwei's Zurich exhibition

When Zurich’s Fotomuseum Winterthur was tasked with the job of hosting the first major photographic and video exhibition of contemporary of Chinese artist Ai Weiwei’s work, it had to ensure the impact of the images weren’t lost by poor reproduction, as the works would be displayed across the museum’s entire wall space.

The museum commissioned the Zurich print service provider, The Image Factory, to print the exhibits, who in turn made the decision to use Sihl Direct UK’s Wallpaper Persomural in combination with the Epson’s Stylus Pro 9900 and 11880 printers.

Ai Weiwei is an architect, conceptual artist, sculptor, photographer, blogger, twitterer, interview artist and political activist who concerns himself with current themes and social problems. He deliberately questions social relationships in China by means of photographic documentation.  This first major exhibition and book project dedicated to his photographic and video work, sheds light on the diversity, complexity and interlaced character of Ai Weiwei‘s work, with hundreds of photographs, blogs and explanatory essays. Ai’s work is extremely impactful to the viewer but needs to be printed on the right material.

Ian Turnbull, operations director of Sihl Direct UK, said, “They chose our wallpaper for several reasons. It has an attractive structure, the good dimensional stability of the fleece material â€" in both a dry and wet state and easy bonding and handling. Of course one of the main reasons they chose the Sihl Wallpaper was because it offers the best printing results, which is most important when printing images on such a huge scale.”

He adds, “Also, because this display was the first in a series of Ai Weiwei exhibitions, the fleece basis of Persomural170 matt 3260 made it possible to reuse the prints. By using the adhesive supplement Tylose (methyl cellulose), the paper can be moistened and removed after the exhibition. It can be moistened again, pasted and then remounted in other locations. Even after repeated use, the dimension of the material remains unchanged and the printed image is as brilliant as ever.”

This huge benefit was demonstrated earlier this year when the exhibition successfully moved to the Kunsthaus Graz Museum in Austria. Ai Weiwei’s work is currently on display at the Jeu de Paume in Paris until 29th April 2012.

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