Digital print

Pride in Print Awards 2020

A colourful Pride in Print awards night at the Cordis Hotel netted five golds and three highly commended awards for Soar and Rocket. Surrounded by popping champagne corks, we spent some quality time celebrating with our printing industry peers.

The Adrian Kenneth Burr book was a stand-out entry for Soar. Exquisitely designed by Mister Wolf Ltd, it achieved three gold medals including Booklets Under 16 Pages, Specialty Products – One Off Works and Print Finishing.

The stocks chosen for this booklet give it a sense of luxury. The text is Renoir natural white 130 gsm and printed on the Indigo 7800 with an unprinted curious translucent clear inside the cover. The cover is Curious Matter Sand 270gsm all from B&F Papers. The Print finishing included a KURZ Silver foil text on the cover, but the real star was the thread sewn spine.

It’s no surprise that the Being Together is the Only Reality catalogue from the University of Auckland earned a gold medal as the colour quality achieved on the Indigo 7800 is phenomenal. The book was printed offset on our HP Indigo 7800 and saddle stitched.

Also achieving a gold was the Black Robin Gin label. It was expertly executed by the team at Rocket Print, who were tasked with creating a temporary label that replicated the usual etched bottle design, which at the time wasn’t possible due to Covid-19 restrictions.

AUCKLAND; THE OCEAN CITY is an elegantly designed guide from Showroom 22 for fashion brand COS. It was printed on Mohawk superfine eggshell white as 4 booklets, which were stitched and bound using two different magazine sizes and a map insert. It earned a highly commended for booklets under 16 pages.

Once again, the Laminex Laminate catalogue by designers Davy & Chapman received recognition for Business Print - Commercial Promotional Catalogues & Directories - over 32pgs. Printed on the Heidelberg Speedmaster CX102, with matt laminate and Spot Gloss UV, it’s always a standout.

The St Johns Appeal Tool Kit Box by ASB Bank earned a highly commended for Paper & Board Packaging - Functional Packaging - Industry & Business. It was printed on our Heidelberg Speedmaster CX102, then mounted on E flute with matt laminate and digitally die cut.

In addition to receiving gold awards for printing, we are pleased to have Travis Jordan named Apprentice of the Year and Alex Huynh named Trainer of the Year.

For us, the 2020 print awards were all about the ongoing investment we make in keeping our people sharp. ‘Craft & Pride’ is one of our core values, so this is an important validation.

If you’d like to pick our brains about training, feel free to drop us a line on 09 309 9100.

Need something printed? Visit our website, then talk to us about award-winning print.

A look at the Océ VarioPrint i300 print-on-demand press

It’s been just over 3 years since we installed the state-of-the-art digital print technology - Océ VarioPrint i300, so we thought we’d take a look at how our customers have responded to the revolutionary sheet-fed press.

Sheets go in one end, and a fully-finished brochure or book pops out the other end as the i300 mixes your media, perforates and personalises all in one. It also folds and staples the book in a way that creates a square spine up to 10mm wide – up to 180 pages plus a cover, meaning you get a perfect bound book, but without the high price that usually comes with perfect binding.

So, what’s the verdict?

“The quality we’re getting is even better than what we saw in Holland – our i300 is over-delivering!” – Fred Soar – managing director at Soar Print.

THE COLOUR QUALITY IS INCREDIBLE

For Graeme Foote, General Manager at Fusion Print (a subsidiary of Soar Print) colour consistency is the machine’s best attribute. “Customers have responded really favourably to the i300, they really like the natural appearance of the i300 ink compared to the oversaturated toner”.

The i300 features ink technology that precisely delivers up to 80 million drops per second. Each ink droplet can be one of four sizes, resulting in smoother colour gradations usually achieved only on higher-resolution presses.

PRINT JOBS HAPPEN FASTER

“Customers can’t believe the quality we are achieving on an ink jet press; they can’t believe the turn around and they can’t believe that you get a finished product out the end. It’s been really well accepted by them” – Fred Soar.

One operator loads the stock and presses the start button. Job done. And because it’s easy and fast for us to set up a print run, you can print only what you need then order more as supplies run low, making the Océ VarioPrint i300 a perfect solution for print-on-demand books of everything from poetry and art books to travel guides and text books.

LOW COST

The i300 book services we now offer New Zealand Trade Publishers is a cost-effective solution for new books and backlist reprint paperbacks. An i300 text block and cover is the most competitive way to print your book for short and medium runs.

Watch the video to see the press in action

Email Stuart Shepherd about printing for books, booklets and catalogues stuarts@soarprint.co.nz

Mercury Plaza 1994 - 2019 by Tim D, printed using our most cost-effective print process

Mercury Plaza, Auckland’s iconic and celebrated food court, was recently knocked down to make way for the new Karangahape train station. Many will have fond memories of both the food and the people who made the place so great. Tim D photographed many of the stall holders, inhabitants, and visitors to the space in its last days, and put together a book of his photos that Soar had the pleasure of printing.

Mercury Plaza book was produced using two of Soar’s presses, combining a specialist Colorplan cover and a digitally printed uncoated text book block.

The cover is printed using a 4 colour process on Colorplan 270 gsm Citrine Yellow a 100 % recycled stock on Heidelberg A3 Anicolor press. Here is our talented printer Graeme looking very happy with the magneta-rich printed result.

The text is printed on the Oce Vario i300 digital inkjet press using Advance Laser 120 gsm.

The binding was completed inside the i300 press using the inline saddle stitch unit which three-knife trim finishes the book and binds the cover to the digital text block. This process uniquely creates a printed square back spine similar to a PUR binding.

One of the benefits to this is the inline saddle stitch, which has the advantage of allowing content to be displayed flat with the wide-view format, particularly effective in photography books that use a number of double page spreads.

Soar Print offers a wide range of extensible publication packages that utilize the range of digital and offset presses and print finishing services to achieve a cost effective publication service. Mercury Plaza met the market on both price and quality with a second edition printing due off press later in August.

Mercury Plaza will be featured in the 2020 edition of Off the Press our online art book store.

For more information go to www.offthepress.co.nz

Find out more about the OCE Vario i300 Print on demand press.

You can purchase the book via The Plaza Store

Category win and more at the Pride in Print Awards 2020

Soar has been in the print business for nearly 100 years, so we know a bit about business survival. Through depressions, boom times and financial crises, one strategy that has held us together is our commitment to print quality. Entering the Pride in Print Awards every year is how we make sure that commitment stays strong.

We’re particularly happy to have received a print finishing category win and a gold for the Laminex Timber Veneer brochure, which was beautifully designed by Davy & Chapman. It has a beautiful cover adorned with an embossed pattern that mimics a timber grain and finished with outstanding gold foiling created on our KAMA Letterpress. The judges’ comments says it all “Produced with lots of processes and no mistakes or blemishes – an exceptional finishing job”.

It’s clear that embellishments make printed pieces stand out from the rest, whether it be a matt velvet-touch laminate with a spot UV gloss like what was used on the King’s College Collegian magazine giving a tactile finish or an eye-catching metallic foil as seen on the Inferno GUI book. When used effectively, print embellishments can convince prospects of the quality of the piece, as well as the care and attention-to-detail of those who designed and printed it. Davy & Chapman have utilised this to their best advantage with a second design winning gold for its finishing embellishments, the Laminex Laminate brochure has a spot UV gloss on the cover and throughout to give readers an indication of the look and feel of the Laminex Laminate range.

Another highlight is gaining two awards for our work on The Blue Privilege – Te Kuia Moko case bound edition reprint which was co-published with Depot Artspace and Harry Sangl. We credit taking out the gold for publications over 32 pages to printing the book on our new CX102 press, which produces the highest offset print quality achievable in New Zealand. The cover was printed direct to Wibalin on our HP R2000 press, the same flat-bed press we used for the exhibition canvases. We partnered with the Book Binding Press, who bound the hardcover book using PUR (polyurethane reactive), the most durable book binding glue available, giving us a highly commended for machine binding.

Category Win

Laminex Timber Veneer brochure - Print Finishing

Gold Awards
Laminex Timber Veneer brochure - Print Finishing / Embellishments
Laminex Laminate brochure - Print Finishing / Embellishments
The King's Collegian 2019 magazine - Magazines over 64 pages
Inferno GUI book - Publications under 32 pages
The Blue Privilege, Te Kuia Moko - Publications over 32 pages

Highly Commended
Laminex Timber Veneer brochure - Business Print / Commercial Catalogues over 32 pages
Savour - Dairy Free Cashew Cheese packaging - Paper & Board Packaging / Food & Beverage
The Blue Privilege - Te Kuia Moko - Print Finishing / Machine Binding
Best Awards coaster for Soar Print - Print Industry Promotion / Self Promotion

Te Kuia Moko can be purchased via our online bookstore Off The Press

Learn more about our catalogue and book printing service

Learn more about our print finishing services

Soar wins at World Label Awards 2019

The fabulous labels printed by Soar for Vine Street fruit wines are a sparkling success. Not only are they helping the wines to leap off the shelf and into supermarket trolleys, they’re picking up awards!

It was exciting for Soar to score a win for ‘Digital Labels – Wines & Spirits’ at the World Label Awards 2019. The Vine Street labels qualified for the global awards after winning gold at our local Pride in Print Awards last year. We’ve been building our label-printing prowess for nearly a decade now, so these wins confirm that our label printing team really know what they’re doing.

The labels for Vine Street were printed using a ColorLogic metallic ink effect. For shelf impact, metallic colours really jump out. Humans are like magpies – shiny, glittery objects are attractive to us.

ColorLogic is a system that enables digital printers to print onto metallic substrates, producing striking images and colours. We won’t bore you with exactly how it’s done, but it involves masking with white ink. If you want all the technical details, go to www.color-logic.com.

The Vine Street fruit wine labels were printed on our HP Indigo WS6800 Label press using Manta OPP silver metalised SYN52gsm and sealed with matt laminate before die cutting.

A full offset and digital label printing service

Metallic labels are just one of Soar’s packaging print specialties.
Our capabilities include:

Combining multiple SKUs on a single run
Consecutive numbering and variable data – including barcodes, text and images
Affordable short runs for artisan products such as self-standing pouches and sealable bags
Labels – offset or digital
Shrink sleeve labels
Special effects, such as ColorLogic, Collage and Mosaic Software creating a unique label experience.

If you’re interested in Soar’s label printing capabilities, talk to Brian Landry about your project.

Email brianl@soarprint.co.nz or call (09) 302 9500.

Special thanks to New Zealand Printer for the feature

Read another story about label printing

Multi-faceted print solution achieved great results for this unique project

Soar Print utilised the HP R2000 flatbed printer to print onto varied rigid substrates.

Our team created a unique print solution for this stunning Ngati Ranginui board game - comprising of laser cut printed plywood boards, games cards, instruction booklets, double-sided laser-cut clear acrylic game characters all encased in a jute drawstring printed bag.

The intention of this game is to promote the iwi (tribe) of Ngati Ranginui and let the world know who they are. Therefore the game is based around their waka (canoe) that their eponymous ancestor Tamatearikinui came over on and the issue that he begat, one such as Ranginui, of which the tribe is named after. That shows not only the connections to other iwi (tribes) across the country, but also the skills and feats that those ancestors were well known for and that the people of Ngati Ranginui can be proud of.

The game is pitched at ages 7+ years, and can be played two fold. One way of playing the game is simply using the game board, dice and figurines to make your way across the board, following the cues on the board. While the more challenging way to play is to make your way across the board while answering the questions on the cards as you land on different stations on the game board. The game can be played individually or in teams.

The limited-edition Board Game components consisted of:

4mm Poplar Plywood Printed was printed using a 4 colour process plus White, on the HP R2000 large format flatbed printer which was then laser cut to size.

Also utilising the R2000 large format printer was the 3mm clear cast acrylic game characters which were printed in 3 layers, CMYK colour then a white layer followed by another CMYK layer in order to make the characters double sided. They were then laser cut to size and mounted onto router cut clear cast acrylic bases.

56 kinds of game cards, were printed on the HP Indigo 7800 press along with an A4 instruction booklet.

All of the components were consolidated into jute drawstring printed heat-sealed tote bag with die cut hand grips with screen-printed branding.

Find out more about Soar’s large format printing capabilities or ask a question about your multi-faceted print job send Stuart Shepherd an email.

Vibrant pavement artwork printed by Soar Print

If you’re strolling around Auckland’s CBD this holiday season, direct your eyes to the pavement to see the colourful artwork of Sara Hughes.

The artwork, consists of hundreds of individual elements, inspired by the different shapes and angles found within the urban landscape. Commissioned by Heart of Auckland City, four different designs adorn the pavements along Queen Street and surrounding Fanshawe Street, Britomart and Federal Street. The pavement work is accompanied by complimentary flags, bringing vibrant colour to Auckland’s City Centre for the holiday season.

Hughes combined water colour paintings with hand cut collages, which were then scanned and digitally enhanced. We’ve then printed these designs onto a highly specialist adhesive media to produce pavement artwork made up by hundreds of individual elements.

The work needed to be bold to have a strong presence in the busy city scape, so Soar was tasked with ensuring the vibrancy of Hughes work was echoed in the decals we produced.

The graphics were printed using a 4 colour process of UV-resistant latex inks on specialist anti-slip self-adhesive 150GSM floor media, on the HP Latex R2000 digital press and digitally cut into shape.

Soar managed the print media and worked in partnership with Shout Media for the installation.

To find out more about reproducing artwork onto self-adhesive or other materials, email Brian Landry at brianl@soarprint.co.nz

Turn your images into LED display boxes to really make a statement!

Innovative and environmentally friendly LED Lightboxes are the ideal display solution for retail outlets, showrooms, exhibitions, restaurants, in fact anywhere that eye-catching advertising is required.

Deliver a point of difference in style

Custom designed and manufactured to the dimensions of the artwork and the style preferred, they’re favoured by premium New Zealand artists for their exceptional quality and the value they add to each piece of art.

Our LED illuminated lightboxes are specially designed to enhance the impact of photographic images

Using LED technology, these lightboxes provide a clean, consistent light source. Fine borders keep the focus on the work being displayed, and the colour of both the frame and the face panel borders can be powder-coated to match any colour scheme.

Available in both backlit and edge lit LED technology
Frame depth of either 50mm or 75mm
Options for easy image change-out
Simple to wall mount
Low power consumption
No heat generated
No maintenance required

Want to showcase your work in the best possible light? Get in touch for a full supply and installation solution. Call Brain Landry on (09) 302 9500 or email brianl@soarprint.co.nz

Most glamorous job of the year? Print partner for NZ Fashion Week!

It was epic to be appointed official print partner for New Zealand Fashion Week. Working closely with the NZFW/19 team, we produced an exciting range of printed materials that helped make New Zealand’s premier fashion event a huge success.

Print for NZFW/19 included 12 tasks, ranging from car decals and textile signs to the NZFS/19 Daily Newspaper, special event invitations and Kate Sylvester’s Love Letters. To impress a discerning audience, every print had to look its absolute best,

Dame Pieter Stewart, founder of New Zealand Fashion Week, remarked on the service Soar provided:

“When you’re doing something for the first time, there are always a lot of unknowns – things we take for granted that were new to Soar. However Stuart and his team did a great job and were very obliging. They worked through all the different variations of what we needed, printing everything from tickets to daily newsletters, as well as all the print needed around the venue.”

One of the detailed tasks was variable data ticket printing, which involved getting the right combinations of show names and seating numbers on every ticket. And the most innovative requirement was turning the 24-page The Guide booklet into an interactive web app using our Partica technology. This meant that every attendee had the full NZFW guide at their fingertips in their phone.

By all accounts, NZ Fashion Week 2019 was an outstanding success.

“It was nice to be back in the central city at our original venue – the Auckland Town Hall and Aotea Square. Returning to this venue after 16 years really shows how far Fashion Week has grown and evolved. We had a really packed schedule and a big variety of designers,” says Pieter.

Sustainability was a key focus for this year’s NZFW, and that’s one of the reasons why Soar was selected as the event’s print provider. Stuart Shepherd, Soar’s account director for NZFW/19 printing, comments:

“Soar has more sustainability credentials and awards than any other print company in New Zealand, so we’re an ideal print partner for any business or event that wants to reduce its carbon footprint. It was a pleasure to help NZ Fashion Week tread more lightly on the Earth through environmentally-responsible printing.”

See the NZFW/19 Guide online.

Greeting cards designed and in NZ and printed sustainably by Soar

Image Gallery is a New Zealand success story; a local company using Kiwi imagery for greeting cards that stand out for their superior design, great ideas and sustainability.

The greeting card industry in New Zealand is strong with a good outlook. Millennials are communicating more than any generation before them. While they use digital devices for day-to-day communication, special occasions are more likely to be marked with a carefully chosen card and a handwritten message.

New Zealand greeting card companies are competing with the world

In the NZ greeting card market, Image Gallery’s main competitors are small importers of niche cards sourced from the UK, Europe and the US, as well as large firmsthat print and manufacture their own. Image Gallery is one of a handful of companies that design, print and distribute greeting cards locally.

“Publishing local content is an important part of our product mix. There are so many talented Kiwi artists and designers creating not only great art, but great commercially viable art that our customers are looking for. To then have that art printed in NZ on sustainable card stock finishes the story,” says Edward Robinson, general manager of Image Gallery.

Cost-effective short runs of greeting card printing

To ensure their greeting card products are profitable, Image Gallery has to make every print run as economical as possible. Quality and a quick turnaround are two other must-haves.

“The trusted relationship we have with Soar has helped us to learn and understand the whole print process, from quoting to setting up files, including how we can best configure the layups to make the most out of a print run, “says Kember Snaith, graphic designer at Image Gallery.

Soar has also streamlined the print ordering service to create a simplified process for managing Image Gallery’s complicated requirements. The icing on the cake is continual sourcing of attractive card stocks that are derived from responsibly managed forests. Soar is accredited with both the Forest Stewardship Council® (FSC) and Programme for the Endorsement of Forest Certification (PEFC).

Environmentally-responsible stocks and vegetable inks

FSC is a non-governmental organisation that promotes the responsible management of the world's forests. We were the first printer in NZ to be certified by the Forest Stewardship Council. PEFC is an international non-profit, organisation dedicated to sustainable forest management. We are certified by PEFC, the world's largest forest certification system.

At Soar Print we also use vegetable based inks, rather than traditional petroleum inks. Derived from corn, walnut, coconut, linseed, canola and soya beans, vegetable inks release significantly fewer VOCs into the atmosphere during the drying process. We’re also able to use water-based products to clean the press after production, rather than solvents. What’s more, stripping ink from paper during the paper recycling process is much easier with vege inks and produces less hazardous waste.

Take a look at Image Gallery greeting cards

Read more about Soar’s sustainability credentials

Printing Jan Hellriegel's Sportsman of the Year CD cover and book

Jan Hellriegel and Soar Print go way back. Nothing makes us happier than helping one of New Zealand’s leading musicians bring her print creations to life. Jan’s latest print production, Sportsman of the Year – A Suburban Philosophy, involved printing a CD cover and a book.

Jan is a New Zealand legend; a songwriter/performer/businesswoman that we’re proud to call our own. Sportsman of the Year is her 4^th studio album, but it’s the first to include a book of true-life short stories. With 12 chapters that spin the tales behind the album’s songs, Jan describes it as a ‘musical in a book’.

The book sprang from the album project when Jan realised the new songs were driven by real-life stories. She decided to write the stories that inspired the album, so that the stories would enhance the music and vice versa. The overall theme is about following your dreams and never giving up.

Jan’s songs and stories are a memoir that touches many aspects of her rollercoaster life – growing up in West Auckland, student days, relationships, playing with her band Cassandra’s Ears and her solo career. The book has an easy-reading, conversational tone, while the songs are more refined and poetic.

The name of the project refers to how Jan won the Sportsman of the Year cup at Rangeview Intermediate when she was 12. Back then, she felt she didn't deserve the award and says the album is "calling that 12-year-old back to claim her prizes with pride and without reservation".

Launched on Mother’s Day 12 May, Sportsman of the Year – A Suburban Philosophy is available from Jan’s online store. You can buy the book, the CD or a package that includes both.

Find out more about Soar’s book printing capabilities.

Project facts

Produced on Océ VarioPrint i300 print-on-demand digital press
Foiled matt laminate covers
PUR bound (a form of perfect binding)
First 500 limited edition copies were sequentially numbered

Printing for events that want a smaller carbon footprint

As with many festivals and conferences these days, Techweek19 wanted a small-as-possible carbon footprint. Soar helped them to achieve this with carboNZero printing as a service.

As organisers of New Zealand’s premier festival of innovation, the Techweek team leads by example. They recognise that they can influence others to make responsible decisions about things like print services. That’s why the chose to work with Soar Print. We are the only printing company in New Zealand certified to offer carbon zero services and products under Enviro-Mark Solution’s carboNZero scheme, which exceeds international standards and best practice for a carbon programme.

How carbon neutral printing as a service is done

To provide carbon neutral printing as a service, our in-house expert calculates the carbon inputs associated with paper, waste, finishing, transport and the electricity used by the printing technology. Once the carbon footprint of the print job is known, offsets can be purchased. Soar chooses to buy carbon offsets from New Zealand providers, such as forest regeneration schemes and windfarms. They cost more than some overseas schemes, but the benefits to New Zealand are greater.

By working with us, clients like TechWeek can use the carboNZero brand on their collateral to demonstrate their commitment to environmentally responsible practices. It reflects well on their brand, plus it exposes the concept of carbon neutral printing to other businesses.

For TechWeek19, Soar produced a wide range of printed collateral, including posters, banners, signage, display cubes, name tags and lanyards. Every element in the print mix qualified as a carbon neutral print service.

There’s still time to get to a TechWeek19 event near you

Now in its third year, Techweek aims to inspire and build capability for all New Zealanders by providing a week-long, nationwide opportunity for connection, cross-pollination and learning about all things techy. There are workshops, labs, demonstrations, panel discussions and much more. You don’t need to be a tech person to attend; you just have to be interested in the future of New Zealand and finding local answers to global challenges.

Techweek’s vision is for New Zealand to be globally recognised as a beautiful country where world-leading solutions are born. It’s not just about showcasing leading edge technology, but amplifying brilliant ideas that are solving the biggest global challenges – innovation that’s good for the world.

Visit the Techweek website to find events happening in your city.

Find out more about sustainable printing with Soar.

Capturing kids’ lyrical brilliance with the Play It Strange book

Recently Soar Arts printed an amazing book for one of our favourite not-for-profit clients. It’s the 2018 lyric book for Play it Strange, which captures the 16 original songs written by young New Zealanders during last year’s Lion Foundation Songwriting Competition.

It was a pleasure to help Mike Chunn and his team put this book together. The Soar Arts team was even involved with doing the artwork, following a template created by the Play It Strange graphic designer.

Every double page spread of the book shows an introduction written by the songwriter, then the lyrics of their song. Professional recordings of the songs can be heard at www.playitstrange.bandcamp.com

“Songs written by young NZers forge a communal strand, a national voice, a summation of who they are and with that, it’s clear that they are telling us who we are. Listening to the hundreds of songs that we receive at Play It Strange is like opening a window into the hearts and minds of our youth. And there is much to learn.” Mike Chunn, CEO, Play it Strange.

We produced the book on our new Océ VarioPrint i300, which is based at Fusion Print in Hamilton (a member of the Soar Printing Group). With this amazing piece of printing technology, you can literally touch one button and have a fully-formed book come out the other end of the press. It can fold and stitch (staple) a book in a way that creates a square spine up to 10mm wide – up to 180 pages plus a cover. Your get a perfect bound book, but without the high price that usually comes with perfect binding. For small runs (1 to 2000) it’s a cost-effective way to get a high quality result.

The book was also produced as a Partica digital flipbook. The ability to produce electronic versions of printed books is an important part of Soar Arts capability.

View a Partica flipbook of the lyric book.

Find out more about Play It Strange

Learn about the Océ VarioPrint i300 for book printing.

Here’s an excerpt from the song ‘Dinner Plate’ written by Tara Canton of Chilton St James School, Wellington.

Honestly, isn’t it so strange how her

battery has become so low so suddenly

and how she hates the sight of cutlery, lately.

Red-rimmed eyes become more waterfilled

the more time flies, I notice her jeans have

gone down in size and how she never comes to meal times.

Pins and needles in her arms and legs

cotton wool stuffed in her head

flippin’ through these old magazines

she sees beauty but all I see…….

Are these pretty girls with parasols

picture perfect Barbie dolls,

skeletons at the table tasting lettuce leaves

although they’re craving

sea salt, crinkle cut, whiskey in a sippy cup

Beautiful ground-level Britomart artwork printed by Soar

If you’re strolling around Auckland’s CBD this January, direct your feet to the Britomart precinct to see the artwork of Charlotte Graham. Installed on the ground, it was printed by Soar.

The artwork, known as Te Waiora, consists of 24 hand-painted water droplets, many of them inscribed with Maori motifs. The droplets have been materialised as 1200 self-adhesive decals, which you can see applied to walkways throughout Britomart. Te Waiora will remain in place until the end of January 2019.

Charlotte created the artwork to emphasise Christmas as a time of connectedness between whanau and friends; people and the land; past, the present and future. She chose water as a motif because of the way it refers to the maritime histories of Maori, Pakeha and Pacific peoples, as well as Aotearoa’s more recent immigrants. In the Maori language, wai means ‘water’ and ora means ‘life’.

The droplets were printed with UV-resistant latex inks on two specialist anti-slip self-adhesive products, to allow for different surfaces, using our new HP Latex R2000 digital press. This same press is often used to print vinyl car wraps, bespoke adhesive wall murals, point of sale materials and signage. It can print both on roll and rigid substrates up to 50mm thick and boasts the smoothest white ink laydown available in New Zealand today.

To find out more about reproducing artwork onto self-adhesive or other materials, email Brian Landry at brianl@soarprint.co.nz

Three containers, eight engineers, one almighty printer!

Things have been fizzing at Fusion Print, Soar’s sister company in Hamilton. Earlier this year, Fusion took delivery of three containers full of state-of-the-art digital print technology – the Océ VarioPrint i300…unassembled. Then it was simply a matter of putting it together.

Shortly after the containers arrived, eight engineers from Holland, Australia and New Zealand arrived at Fusion to begin the assembly and deployment process. The crates had to be carefully unpacked and every component checked before installation could begin. From end-to-end, the process took five weeks. Graeme Foote, general manager at Fusion, says it was fascinating to watch.

“We created a time-lapse video of the install and it’s compulsive viewing. Watching this monster digital press come to life was extraordinary over five weeks, but it’s even more amazing when you watch the whole process in four minutes!”

The end result is a printer that’s 16 metres long and 2.6 metres tall – longer than the average city bus and nearly as high. Already it’s pulling its weight at Fusion. The press was available for duty from March 22^nd and has completed several multi-page print jobs.

“Fred Soar and I first saw the i300 on a business trip to Holland last year. We were impressed by its ability to produce exceptionally high-quality digital print outputs – sheets go in one end, and a fully-finished brochure or book pops out the other end.

“At the time we agreed that if Océ could ensure our machine would produce that quality, we’d be happy. As it turns out, the quality we’re getting is even better than what we saw in Holland – our i300 is over-delivering!”

So what’s so special about this multi-million-dollar machine? Quite a lot! The Océ VarioPrint i300 is a next-generation sheet-fed digital press that revolutionises the printing of multi-page outputs.

You can literally press one button and have a fully-formed book come out the other end of the press.
Every output can be different, because the press accepts variable data. For example, you can print a personalised brochure or catalogue for a high-value customer, changing out text and images wherever you like.
For small runs (1 to 2000) it’s a cost-effective way to get a high quality result.
The i300 can fold and stitch (staple) a book in a way that creates a square spine up to 10mm wide – up to 180 pages plus a cover. Your get a perfect bound book, but without the high price that usually comes with perfect binding.

Talk to Graeme Foote about printing with the Océ VarioPrint i300 – call 027 2959224 or email graeme@fusionprint.co.nz

Watch the time lapse video of installation.

Free Techweek workshop about turning print into web apps

We’re running a Techweek workshop to show you how Realview's Partica seamlessly turns print PDFs into web content. You’ll also find out about the new syndication marketplace it makes possible.

The workshop will be introduced and moderated by Russell Brown, esteemed digital journalism innovator and founding board member of the Digital Media Trust. He’ll be supported by Realview CEO Richard Lindley and Soar’s own print-to-digital specialist, Stuart Shepherd. There are only 60 places available, so be quick!

Workshop: Partica: seamless print-to-web publishing and syndication

Where: The GridAKL, 12 Madden Street

When: Wednesday 23 May

Time: 2pm to 3pm

Register online now

More about Techweek

Introduction to the Partica workshop

Publishers are sitting on huge quantities of evergreen content – locked up in PDFs that have never been seen online. What if there was a simple, cost-effective way to find, extract, organise and monetise that content? There is. Welcome to Partica by Realview Technologies.

Partica's direct-to-mobile digital publishing platform instantly closes the gap between print and digital, transforming your PDFs into articles and delivering them to mobile, tablet, and desktop. Its unique AI-driven search and discovery engine finds, sorts and reports existing digital content from PDFs (or from a website, CMS or RSS feed).

Those capabilities underpin a new business platform: Partica Content Marketplace. Think of it as like a stock image library, only for articles. Partica Content Marketplace is a working syndication platform that brings together publishers, writers and customers in a world that's crying out for content.

TARGET AUDIENCE

People and businesses with new and legacy content to sell, plus businesses that need easy, effective and transparent access to high-quality content for digital publication.