Canon wins five 2022 PrintAction Canadian Printing Awards
Canon proudly accepted five 2022 PrintAction Canadian Printing Awards on Thursday, November 1oth, 2022. Now in its 16th year, and back for its first in-person show since 2019, PrintAction’s Canadian Printing Awards celebrates the creativity and innovation of Canada’s print industry in four distinct segments: Printing, Print Design, Technological Innovation and Environmental Innovation.
Canon Canada received the winning award in the following categories:
– Self-Promotion, printing industry supplier
– Most Progressive Printing Process, digital toner
– Most Progressive Printing Process, wide format inkjet (joint submission)
– Most Progressive Printing Process, software or IT
– Most Environmentally Progressive Technology Company
Canon Canada received an honourable mention in the following category:
– Most Progressive Printing Process, wide format inkjet
“Canon Canada is honoured to receive recognition for not only its innovative and industry-leading technologies but also its commitment to shaping a more sustainable world,” says Nobuhiko Kitajima, President and CEO of Canon Canada. “Our advanced wide format printers and production presses empower customers to expand their applications and push the possibilities of print. We look forward to continue introducing solutions that align with customer and industry needs.”
Canon Canada accepted the following accolades at the 2022 PrintAction Canadian Printing Awards Gala in Toronto.
Self-Promotion, printing industry supplier
Winner – The Arizona and Colorado Customer Experience Boxes
These boxes were produced by our partners at Canon Production Printing in Venlo, the Netherlands, as tools to promote and showcase the versatility of the Canon Colorado and Arizona applications, giving users inspiration on how each technology fits a particular market segment. The UVgel Advantage box included sample Colorado applications such as transfer prints on fabric, wall and floor graphics, a Tyvek map, soft signage mounted on a mini-canvas, and various loose prints showcasing different media and finishing options, including matte, gloss, or mixed matte and gloss with FLXfinish+. The Arizona Advantage box included a range of rigid media print examples: ceramic tile, elevated print on glass creating a stained-glass effect, wood, canvas, DIBOND with epoxy coating, and elevated printing of a leather texture. These pieces highlight the unique specialty applications that rely on physical touch for the full experience.
The UVgel Interior Decor box focused on a specific vertical market segment and featured 15 different wallpaper samples with various media types and designs, including FLXfinish+ samples. This box also included an interior decor guide that delves deeper into the industry’s market trends, market opportunities, technology, etc. The exterior of the boxes was printed on Canon’s Arizona series.
Most Progressive Printing Process, digital toner
Winner – imagePRESS V1000
The imagePRESS V1000 toner digital press prints up to 101 pages per minute (letter) and is the latest addition to Canon’s robust production printing portfolio. It has a strong emphasis on automation; tasks such as colour repeatability and registration alignment are simplified for print establishments looking to produce a wide range of applications, from direct mail and business cards to booklets, posters, and other creative marketing collateral.
The imagePRESS V1000’s innovative POD-SURF (Surface Rapid Fusing) allows the press to maintain its speed on coated and heavy stocks up to 400 GSM as well as sustain high productivity when printing complex and mixed media jobs.
A digital press’s ability to produce brilliant and repeatable colour is crucial as ever. With the Inline Spectrophotometers (ILS), press operators can easily perform advanced colour adjustments such as engine linearization, colour profile creation, G7® calibration and colour validation with minimal operator involvement in a short amount of time. The imagePRESS V1000 also has the ability to auto duplex stocks up to 400 GSM in weight and 51.2” in length. With the new Precision Registration Technology, duplexed sheets are mechanically adjusted four times to help alignment remain accurate and consistent during long production runs.
The imagePRESS V1000 digital press provides opportunities to help transform how printing businesses operate, with features designed to help save time and allow production environments to focus on other tasks. Canon has synergized form and function so that even inexperienced operators can impress with superb colour and exquisite output. With the proven quality, productivity and versatility features of imagePRESS devices combined with the outstanding vital technologies, the imagePRESS V1000 digital press is designed for customers to realize their vision more easily and efficiently.
Most Progressive Printing Process, wide format inkjet
Winner – Salvador Dali: Arius Elegraph and Canon Elevated Printing Collaboration
This technology is part of Canon and Arius’ collaboration to create a scan-to-print process, combining Arius’ ultra-high-resolution scanning system that accurately measures the surface geometry and colour of paintings, with Canon’s innovative elevated printing technology on a modified Arizona flatbed that could print these images at equivalent elevation resolution. The resulting scan-to-print process led to projects with the National Gallery of Canada and Tate, successfully replicating a number of historic works in both collections, printing brushwork elevations up to 5 mm high.
These projects laid the foundation for the companies to target the contemporary art market, which in turn led to the development of a solution that living artists can take advantage of. Arius began to develop alta™, a creative studio that would allow both physical and digital artists to print their works, harness the power of the Arizona printer, and create original edition textured prints of an artist’s creation, called ElegraphTM prints. In 2022, Canon installed the first customized Arizona printer in North America at Arius to support ElegraphTM printmaking. This technological advancement has led to the launch of limited edition ElegraphTM prints to the art market.
For the Canadian Printing Awards, Arius Technology also submitted a printed piece from ther project Stale Amsterdam and Elegraph, which earned them the winning award for Specialty Project in the printing category and a nomination in the Top 5 for the Best of Show Award!
Read more about our collaboration with Arius here.
Most Progressive Printing Process, wide format inkjet
Honourable Mention – Colorado FLXfinish+ Technology
Canon FLXfinish+ is an important new technology for Canon’s Colorado printers that simultaneously leverages the properties of UVgel ink, a new patent-pending printing technique, and asymmetrical curing to simultaneously produce digitally defined variable gloss within any print. FLXfinish+ produces dramatically different reflectivity within a print, independent of the media. Any image with a spot layer can be used to print matte and gloss simultaneously without using varnish. FLXfinish+ represents a significant innovation because it permits designers to integrate matte/gloss differential in print projects where it would be otherwise impractical. Differential gloss has long been used to focus attention on print; for example, highlighting lipstick in a cosmetic advertisement or the product image on a corrugated carton. Print providers can utilize this gloss/matte effect to command premium prices on applications such as wallcoverings, packaging, labels, vehicle graphics, and posters.
Most Progressive Printing Process, software or IT
Winner – PRISMA GO
The PRISMA Go Suite solution is targeted to help increase efficiency and flexibility for small print providers and in-house print operations. The PRISMA Go Suite solution includes PRISMAprepare Go, a cloud-based job submission and preparation solution designed to help print providers better serve their customers and streamline their internal production processes. This serves as the first PRISMA workflow solution to leverage the new PRISMA Home cloud portal, which provides print providers one interface for managing their compatible PRISMA cloud workflow applications and tools, as well as for storing jobs and data while using security features.
Through this solution, files and print orders can be directly uploaded into the PRISMAprepare Go for automatic preflighting, file preparation and printing by the print service provider. This approach can reduce many of the manual file/job management steps and use of different dedicated software, helping to streamline the production print process. As an added convenience, print providers can also present an online job status to print buyers, which can reduce traditional communications with their customers.
Most Environmentally Progressive Technology Company
Winner – Canon Canada Inc.
Canon Canada’s focus on the environment and sustainability is a reflection of Canon’s Kyosei philosophy: all people – regardless of race, religion or culture – harmoniously living and working together into the future. The company’s commitment to the environment is reflected throughout the organization, its business practices, and its employees.
Canon Canada is continuously seeking opportunities to improve its environmental performance and support Canon Americas Environmental Charter. Throughout 2021 and 2022, the company implemented numerous initiatives, including setting and developing action plans to improve the facilities’ waste management through PPE recovery and office supplies zero waste programs. Canon Canada also announced a new partnership with the National Wildlife Centre to support wildlife conservation. It enhanced existing programs – including Branch Out, employee recycling events, phasing out single-use plastic, and its ongoing partnership with Earth Rangers – to increase employees’ environmental awareness and support communities. Canon Canada was also recognized as one of Canada’s Greenest Employers for the fourth year in a row.
