One may think that our digital lifestyles have done away with the need for printing.
But digitalization has only made printing more a part of our physical lives.
When you walk into any shopping mall, retail shop or restaurant, you will often find yourself surrounded by vibrant wall decals, posters, menus and other decorations. Shop windows are often dressed with intense bursts of colour and beautiful fonts. Products on shelves are accompanied by eye-catching point-of-sale materials.
Many of these were printed with Canon's commercial printers, and their dazzling visual quality was made possible by the latest in printing technologies.
Consultancy firm Smithers Pira estimates that by 2024, digital printing will make up 21 per cent of all commercial print jobs, representing a doubling of its market share since 2014.
Reflecting this trend, 'web-to-print' is a digital service that simplifies the printing process through online platforms. Users can upload their designs to these platforms, customise them, and then place an order for printing. This is particularly beneficial for small businesses and individuals, offering them access to on-demand, professional-quality printing.
Canon's advanced inkjet and toner printing technology has enabled businesses to effectively meet these demands.
Said Katsuya (Kurt) Tode, Director, Regional Commercial and Industrial Printing, Canon Singapore, "Canon has been at the forefront of printing for decades, bringing its expertise in imaging and printing to large format prints for every imaginable scenario. Companies of all sizes can now unleash their creativity and attract customers with new printing possibilities."
Digital printing is revolutionizing the interior design industry. By 2027, Smithers Pira forecasts that the market for wide format graphics printing in interior design will generate over one billion square meters of printed material.
To realise these modern wallpaper designs, many interior design firms rely on wide format printers such as the Canon Colorado M-series.
In Malaysia, one of the largest distributors of wallpapers found it difficult to meet customer demand as it took a long time to import wallpapers from overseas suppliers.
The company installed a Canon Colorado wide format graphics system so it could print out wallpapers on demand. There was no longer any need to hold excess stock and they could deliver the wallpapers to the customers in a short time.
Said the company's spokesperson, "With the Canon Colorado, we can produce 300 sq ft of wallpaper rolls within a single hour and ship the orders on the same day."
The Canon Colorado M-series is part of Canon's wide range of digital production printing solutions, which include large format printers, continuous feed presses, and cutsheet printers.
If your office has a tight space, this is where large format printers in the Canon imagePROGRAF series come in.
The Canon imagePROGRAF TC-20M is a 24-inch large format desktop printer with a built-in A4 scanner. You can draw out your restaurant poster by hand, then get it scanned and enlarged into a A1-sized poster.
To impress your customers further, the Canon imagePROGRAF GP-5300 is the world's first large format printer with Aqueous Pigment Fluorescent Ink. The new Radiant Infusion technology allows the fluorescent ink to be precisely layered on the paper surface, which helps to make the print bright and vivid by taking advantage of the light emission from the fluorescent ink.
In the realm of commercial printing, companies have traditionally relied on offset printing for high-volume production. Today, while the demand for large-volume prints has diminished, the need for high-quality prints persists, prompting printing companies to undergo digital transformation and seize modern commercial printing opportunities.
However, in today's digital world, where customers expect more personalized service. Think of personalized direct mailers that have your name printed on it.
Enter digital printing presses such as the Canon ProStream and ColorStream series that can print at high speed on a continuous roll of paper while varying the content on each page (variable data printing).
The ProStream 3000 series is tailored towards businesses that need very high-quality prints with a look and feel comparable to offset printing. These printers can print on a wide range of media including standard offset coated gloss, silk, matt, uncoated and inkjet optimised papers up to 300gsm.
The ColorStream series is geared towards businesses that focus on producing transactional and direct mail documents. It uses the Chromera ink set that brings great colour vibrancy and gamut, as well as higher optical densities to inkjet production printing.
In 2022, the Canon ColorStream 6000 series was used to help print 67 million official ballot papers for national and local elections in the Philippines. Due to the high accuracy of printing, there was only 0.18 per cent of wasted prints.
UV authentication marks using fluorescent ink was added in the printing process to increase the security of each vote. Each voter also received Voter Information Sheets with their unique combination of name, registered address and voting instructions.
Companies that require printing on pre-cut paper sizes will also benefit from the digital transformation in the realm of cutsheet printers.
For light- to mid-volume production printing environments, Canon's varioPRINT 140 QUARTZ series offer monochrome prints which increase productivity while being ecologically-friendly.
If you need colour output, the varioPRINT iX-series are high-speed sheetfed inkjet presses with offset-like quality for commercial printing. iQuariusiX technology handles a wide range of media and prints at incredibly high speeds while retaining razor-sharp details, accurate colour and a perfectly flat finish.
Another variant in the cutsheet printing family is the imagePRESS V-series of digital presses. The imagePRESS V1350 can print on media such as recycled paper, transparencies and translucent film, and can even take media as heavy as 500gsm.
Another model, the imagePRESS V1000 has helped a Thailand printing firm reduce the need for constant temperature adjustments and increased printing output. The owner of the printing company said that the V1000's built-in spectrometer also helped to reduce human error.
Canon is always seeking to help make business simple.
Where our documents have become digitized and virtual, our creative expressions can now take physical form in our real-world spaces like never before, thanks to modern commercial printing technologies that deliver on demand.
If you can imagine it, you can make it real. With Canon, business can be simple.
