In 2014, Johannesburg digital print specialist Shaun Kemp saw there was growing interest in dynamic digital signage among his clients, but rarely was there enough interest to overcome concerns about cost. The companies Kemp’s business serves, mostly retail shops, restaurants, and outdoor media companies in South Africa, wanted more than the static displays they were using, but found that upgrading to dynamic digital signage did not fit their budgets.
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Kemp wondered if there was indeed some middle ground that would allow him to offer some of the visual appeal of dynamic digital signage. The key aspect of what he wanted to offer was motion: an effect that could simulate movement in an otherwise static image.
As far as print technology goes, he did not have to go far for a solution. A few years prior, his company purchased an EFI™ VUTEk® GS5000r UV inkjet printer. The 5-metre, roll-to-roll printer produces premium margin jobs with point-of-purchase image quality, and commercial and long-term outdoor graphics with billboard productivity.
The printer uses eight process colours, plus optional white ink and double-sided printing features that proved to be vital to Kemp’s innovation. The VUTEk GS5000r model is a workhorse for signage professionals worldwide, providing, high-productivity, 600 dpi, Fast-4™ billboard printing at speeds up to 260sqm per hour. For premium-quality, 1000 dpi, close-viewing applications, it prints at speeds up to 88sqm per hour in eight colours. Users can run multiple jobs at once with multi-queue on-demand functionality, loading up to three 152-centimetre rolls of material at once with cradle-style winders for even faster job turns.
The printer also has the unique advantage of multi-layer printing with EFI’s industry-leading white ink for top-quality day-night backlit signage. Users can print three independent layers of data in perfect registration in a single pass. That gives users a wide range of image effect options, include overprinting, underprinting, spot imaging, underspot imaging, white flood/fill effects and overspot imaging.
For backlit signs, graphic arts professionals often use the printer’s white capabilities as a postcoating on clear material, where it acts as a diffuser. Spot white also gives users the power to fine-tune diffusion layers, giving them a level of control over the final look and feel of a design that is just not available with other printers. In day-night backlit applications, it provides a multi-dimensional, highly visual enhanced impact. Backlits also come to life with the creative use of spot white as a 'bump' under a portion of a colour image, selectively enhancing one or more layers of the sign.
Kemp combined aspects of all these techniques and, with some custom design and technical development, his team perfected and patented a remarkable concept: 'You can create movement by using little more than light,' he said.
Actually, the process involves light and some printing prepress wizardry, and the end result is amazing. By putting LED backlighting for graphics using multilayer white, Kemp created a unique illusion of motion to static printed images. He dubbed the process 'Color Alchemy' and started creating some of the most captivating signage applications his clients had ever seen.
'Color Alchemy is really a new evolution of day-night signage design,' Kemp said, and it has an uncanny ability to draw attention to a sign, or even to specific areas of a sign’s image.
'In dark environments, like in a nightclub, we might have a sign for a bottle of champagne where the logo on the bottle pulses to the beat of the music,' Kemp said. It is a popular usage of the technology where the LED lightbox behind the sign is connected to a sound-responsive controller. 'The sign actually looks like a dynamic digital sign in those cases,' he added, 'and you’ll see people come up and touch it to see if it is a digital screen or not.'
The same effect, he added, works well for out-of-home billboards and, even with the cost of installing a LED lightbox to the sign. 'It is still a fraction of the cost of installing a dynamic digital sign,' explained Kemp.
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'The method relies on multi-layer white imaging and EFI has the only machines that can do it in one pass,' he said. 'It is the most efficient production method for Color Alchemy applications. You can’t do this nearly as fast with any other machine.'
The application has many more potential applications beyond South Africa. EFI executives were among those who were most impressed with what Kemp has been able to create using their multi-layer white ink print technology. When Kemp decided to launch the Color Alchemy process worldwide, EFI invited him to show off the technology as part of EFI’s exhibit at two of the world’s top signage shows – the ISA International Sign Expo in the U.S. and Fespa 2015 in Europe.
EFI Inkjet Systems Marketing Vice President Ken Hanulec said, 'This is a truly remarkable application, and it illustrates how creative entrepreneurs can do more with our technology to establish promising new market applications.'
Now, Kemp is fielding international offers for brands and advertisers looking to truly maximise their campaigns and promotions in a way that has not been done before. He is licensing the process to other digital print signage companies looking to market one of most original inkjet graphics concepts to come about in the past few years.
While plenty of signage companies will see the value in the opportunity, there’s some exclusivity involved in a process that requires the groundbreaking white ink and multilayer print capabilities that EFI and EFI VUTEk inkjet printers offer.
