Entradas Por :

Elías Cueto

at RUBRICA magazine

The last number of RUBERICA magazine shows many details of PRINTODECO Project. The current issue is number eight and it offers a two-page review on the Project development, its objective and the most relevant facts.

The magazine target are private companies and industries who want to be updated to the state of the art of design, communication strategies and marketing actions. In this context, PRINTODECO is interesting as it will provide fully customized products and shows in a very clearly manner, the huge possibilities of product personalization by means of digital printing.

Therefore, the review of PRINTODECO project at RUBRICA magazine focuses on the possibilities of the digital printing. From one hand, it presents the possibilities of innovative products such as melamine boards. From the other it suggests a revolution concerning the relation between customer and producer.

at EASD Antón Faílde

The Escuela Superior de Arte e Deseño (EASD) Antón Faílde reached 35 years of history in 2017. As a celebration of this long trajectory, a large program of conferences and exhibitions was prepared. It took place between the 3th to the 7th of April, and it was hold in Ourense, at Centro Cultural Marcos Valcarcel.

On Thursday the 6th, the head of R&D at SEISTAG shared his experiences at product design and explained PRINTODECO Project. At the event, more than 30 experts were present, including scholars and professionals of design. After the presentation, a large debate was held regarding manual skills and industrial revolution. Also a large debate took place in relation to the authenticity of solid wood vs. melamine boards as fakes. ¿Moral prejudices?

Along the public presentation, the attention was focused on the collaboration between designers and the industry. This is a topic of big interest and PRINTODECO Project is a clear example of new possibilities for creative collaboration between designers and industrials. In this context, a challenge was launched to the people present at the meeting. Anyone should design a surface; he will get a couple of boards to make a unique furniture with it. We will see the results of this competition within 2017…

ensuring quality

Ensuring quality

Digital production of melamine boards should accomplish the standard quality of boards produced by means of rotogravure printing. Therefore, a quality control ought to be stablished in two different processes. From one hand, the digital capture of a physical motive should be as good as possible. From the other, the printing should reproduce precisely the colours of the digital motive.

Within the first’s months of 2017, PRINTODECO partners have reached a process for digital capture of physical designs. The process has been developed at lab scale and is suitable for industrial scale up. This is possible thanks to the use of algorithms and rules suitable to any design. Those algorithms and rules might be ran over any design providing a automatically a digital image with high quality and accuracy.

In order to check the accuracy of the process for digital capture, it has been tested under UGRA-FOGRA standards. CIElab coordinates of the original motive and the digital capture have been contrasted. The result is a value for colour deviation “delta e” under 4. The high accuracy added to an automatic workflow makes possible for small melamine board producers to pass from traditional printing to digital printing self-production of designs.

PRINTODECOreadytoprintcatalogue

Ready to print

PRINTODECO partners have fulfilled their compromise: the Catalogue of “ready to print images” is ready and public. Download it following this link.

Catalogue of “ready to print images” is a 32 pages document. It shows different designs developed during the first months of PRINTODECO. In order to produce the designs, the people involved in the project developed different technologies. Digitalizing real textures, painting from scratch and getting feedback from existing designs.

From wood surfaces to flat colours and original fantasy. The catalogue offers close-up views to the designs, but also 3D renders of kitchens and domestic spaces. By means of PRINTODECO partners collaboration, graphic designers have been able to paint a new product in their PCs allowing furniture makers to render that design on its final use.

cosme data hub

PRNTODECO at COSME Data Hub

COSME data hub is already available at the internet. It is a new website showing all the funded projects over a virtual map of Europe. Moreover, the web shows a brief review on the project objectives, partners and milestone. You can find details on PRINTODECO project at that website.

The project focused on self production of melamine decorative suraces by means of digital printing is included and mapped in the database of COSME data hub. The Project is among three other funded projects funded at Consumer Orientated Design first call. The other three funded projects are the following ones:

  • BETTAIR LAMP which aims for safer indoor environments by means of anti-pollutant and anti-bacterial demonstrated properties applied to indoor lamps.
  • BIOsenSHOES project, that will develop novel children footwear to monitor motor development and healthy life styles and,
  • VISAGE project, which is focused on developing a virtual sample generator for 3D textile design and virtual prototyping solution. The objective is the integration of production, cost calculation, sales and mobile interaction, for 3D sample preview of new fabric and yarn styles.

As there has been two calls for design based consumer goods, in total there are 10 successful stories involving 27 participating SMEs. You can get more information at COSME data hub. This data hub is part of the communication efforts of Enterprise European Network EEN.

lab scale digital capture

Digitally captured

Special products reach market with high prices. Therefore, they support the costs of a dedicated design work. Meanwhile, the conventional products ought to compete in the market showing low fares. This means that producing that kind of beings should be based on low design and development costs.

During the development of the project, the industrial partner has noticed that large-scale production is needed to sustain the industrial case profitability. A business based on spot sales and spot production of special products does not reach the equilibrium point. For that reason the Consortium faced a challenge: producing designs with lower consumption of resources.

One of the paths in order to deal with that challenge is digital capture of materials, patterns or any surface design. For that purpose SEISTAG build up a lab-scale machine for digitalization. That tool is completed with a workflow and an algorithm that processes images automatically to produce digital designs.

West meets East

Two people from SEISTAG visited China in order to identify the key questions for market introduction of PRINTODECO outputs. The travel took place during the week of 14NOV to 18NOV. The cities of Shanghai and Qingdao were visited. The feedback from this action is a clear image of the main actors and rules for market uptake in East Asia.

Shanghai is the head-city for furniture, doors and added value decorative products. Meanwhile Qingdao is the marketplace for the raw materials such as decorative paper and boards. The PRINTODECO team organized B2B meetings in both cities. The target were with big companies interested on new products. The industrial case was second transformation in China and further exportation to abroad.

The feedback of the travel was marked by the current situation. The domestic demand –a huge market in China- is slowing down. Moreover, the region expects a devaluation of 3% in 2017. That action will join to a previous devaluation adopted in 2016. This means extra difficulties for local producers to imports. In this context the introduction of new products is difficult as intermediates and final customers are not so open to adventures.

trends

The things to come

Milan is the head city for fashion and trends in Europe and probably in the entire world. Milan is also a hub for fashion industry, and that means furniture, clothing, graphics, etc. Design in present both in the culture and in the industry of the city. In fact design culture supports many famous meetings, all of them focused on creative industries. It is the case of the well-known “Milan fashion week”, “Milan design week” and “Salone del Mobile de Milano”.

In this collection of worldwide famous events related to design, there is also place for the industry of digital printing: InPrint. Around Milan and the lake of Como there is a solid industry of decorative printing. It is the place where new trends on décor papier are cooked, and it is also the region where the highest added value products are produced. Therefore, in this area it is possible to find innovations such as digital printing for melamine boards. The local industry supplies all the elements needed to start production: from inks and printers to paper and designs.

The InPrint meeting is hold between the 15th and 17th of November, but the days before the event are the best time to get fresh information on the things to come. For that reason and in the frame of PRINTODECO project, SEISTAG visited the city in October, between the 4th and the 5th. This visit was the result of previous contacts with local companies and give a very positive feedback to the project.

PRINTODECO

consortium meeting at LOGISIETE

The second meeting of the PRINTODECO consortium took place on Wednesday the 29th of September at LOGISIETE facilities. The four companies were represented at the meeting and shared their vision on the project.

During the session, LOSAN presented the first trials of melamine boards produced by means of digital printing. LOGISIETE give a positive feedback of the new material. The partners agree to focus on an industrial trial. That experience should be developed at real scale and operational environment within 2016. The four companies also agree to develop that trial using brand new digital images.

PRINTODECO

digitally printed wallpaper

Holland is a market were digital printing has led to innovative offers. For that reason, PRINTODECO staff visited Amsterdam and Brussels between 22 and 23 September. The objective was getting in contact with new products possible thanks to digital printing.

The targeted products were digitally printed wallpaper. The companies to be visited were DROOG and NXLX. Both are Dutch companies that are well known worldwide. By means of this visit, it was possible to have a deeper contact with the product. In addition to this, it was also possible to get a better image of successfully business model and also a clear image of the marketing and commercial strategies.

In both cases, the product offered is a premium quality product. Both of them are also available in the internet. None of the companies considered are producers, and both of them are open to changes and adjustments suggested by the final customer.

Although the two companies follow a similar strategy, there are differences. DROOG is focused on premium product design, has a physical shop and has developed it´s wallpaper because of a collaboration with the Rijksmuseum. Meanwhile NXLX is a company that only offers wallpaper and sales via internet or by means of resellers.