The Grafik’Art Show April 14-16 at Place Bonaventure in Montreal attracted about 6,000 visitors who walked its 120,000 square feet of floor space exploring 87 booths – compared to 82 exhibitors in 2009. There was everything from small specialty printers to large press and pre-press equipment to finishing to sales and marketing solutions. However, as with all similar shows I’ve attended, I was impressed not only with the high level of technology, but even more so with seeing long-established companies survive and thrive in this current troubled ecomomy.
I remember my very first day on the job as a copywriter for The Toronto Star newspaper in May of 1969. I toured its Composing Department and watched rows and rows of men set “hot metal” lead type for pages for the next edition. So you can imagine how the fast pace of today’s technology simply blows me away when I attend shows like Grafik’Art.
Just imagine if I had asked someone in 1969 to print full colour on the surface of water (that I saw turning a lot of heads at the NuStream Booth)! Well, I’d be the one in deep water – at the bottom of Lake Ontario in a straitjacket!
Some of the show’s highlights, in my opinion? Well, let’s start by congratulating Konica Minolta, whose bizhub Press C8000 earned a Five-Star “Exceptional” rating from BERTL, placing it near the top of the industry list for high-speed digital colour that is comparable to the quality of offset.
Ricoh’s Pro C901 and C901s Graphic Arts Edition printers, geared to high-volume shops, were also very impressive – with a long list of power, speed, productivity, workflow, “near offset quality” and substrate flexibility benefits.
Fujifilm’s booth was a major centre of attraction at the show. “Fujifilm had an excellent show with sales of Acuity wide-format printers and Xerox digital printing equipment, along with tremendous interest in our digital inkjet J Press 720, Epson GS6000 and Fujifilm environmentally sustainable plates,” said Jay Lalonde, Product Manager, CTP, Workflow & Digital Printing (Graphic Systems).
The KBR Graphics Canada technical team was showcasing the MGI DP-60 multi-substrate digital press and the MGI Digital JETVarnish press, as well as other solutions from leading manufacturers such as Standard Horizon, Petratto, Esko Artwork, Graphic Whizard, Drylam, Challenge Machinery and more. Established in 1977 by Karl Belafi Sr., KBR Graphics is a unique success story and today represents many of the industry’s leading equipment manufacturers.
As I mentioned earlier, it was very inspiring to see not just the industry’s big manufacturers, but also the established small and medium-sized companies, the real backbones of our industry, continuing their great work under such difficult economic circumstances. Names like Terry C. Stapley (75 yrs.), Unigraph (26 yrs.), Value Rite (21 yrs.), and many others too long to mention in this single article. I salute you.
Finally, I met so many printers and designers just entering our industry. I saw the gleam in their eyes, I sensed their enthusiasm and I was equally impressed. We need more people like them to enter this key industry and bring their energy, work ethic and innovative marketing ideas. Bravo!
Here are a few glimpses from this year’s Grafik’Art Show. Good luck to all in 2011 and beyond.