Creative & Design
Artist chooses printer for his unique wallpaper designs Designer break rules in new poster exhibition
A new digital printing system from Durst is the impetus behind
a £1million investment by an entrepreneur who’s relocating
his unique wall covering design and printing business from
Hong Kong to Nottingham in the UK, to grow markets across
Europe and the US. David Qian’s exclusive wallpaper designs
retail on average for about £150 per sq. m. and are customized
for major brands that include numerous five-star hotels worldwide.
His £3 million/year business includes made-to-order
hand-paintings and embroidered wall coverings that combine
ancient eastern artistic traditions with western and contemporary
aesthetics. D’Arts, Qian’s digital printing brand, is unique
because traditional hand painting adds artistic touches to the
high print quality he achieves
from his Durst Rho P10 160
industrial flatbed printer.
“We’re the only company in
the world that can combine
hand-painting and digital
printing to create bespoke
customer designs for major
brands in the interior design David Qian with one of his exclusive
and furnishing sectors.”
wallpaper designs
Dispa Recyclable Paperboard comes to Canada
3A Composites’ Dispa Graphic Display Board is a uniquely
laminated paper that’s 100% recyclable and is now available
in the Americas. It consists of an embossed-formed paper
core that’s laminated on both sides with a bright white smooth
surface. “This unique composition makes this paperboard
lightweight yet extremely rigid, strong and dimensionally
stable,” said the manufacturer. Signs created with Dispa stay
flat and are easy to handle and hang. Dispa is manufactured
with 100% FSC-certified paper that’s fully recyclable. Its flat,
smooth surface offers excellent printability in both digital and
screen-printing applications, and is available in 48” and 60”
widths for large-format
printing. It’s easy to
fabricate, even with
hand tools, can be die-
cut and CNC-routed, and
is ideal for pre-printed,
double-sided offset-
litho sheet lamination.
The new substrate is
aimed at shor t-term
promotional campaigns,
POS and POP displays,
hanging signs, window
displays, tradeshow
displays and exhibits,
3D displays, and high-
end packaging.
Singapore-based designer Darius Ou (whose design project
Autotypography sprang to life after he found himself bored
at school) began illustrating a poster a day to create a visual
autobiography of his daily life. The project went viral when
he posted the images to his website. Ou’s work breaks the
rules of so-called good design by stretching, deconstructing
and experimenting with typography. “Along the way I began
to experiment with aesthetics,” he said, “and the project
became an inquiry into the current state of visual culture.
Through this exercise, I learned a lot about myself and eventually
formed my practice.” His collection of 365 posters, created
using a variety of Adobe software solutions, were printed and
showcased as part of the Dissolving Margins exhibition at the
Institute of Contemporary Arts in Singapore. Ou needed a
durable paper material that would print high quality with bright
colour saturation, yet adhere well to the walls of the gallery
and still allow for
possible reposi-
tioning during
installation. The
p os ter s were
printed on an HP
Latex 360 using
H P PVC- free,
pre-pasted
wallpaper.
From Darius Ou’s Autotypography (Exhibition 4)
Markzware releases reseller resource
for Adobe InDesign users
Markzware (Santa Ana, CA), a leader in desktop publishing
and data-conversion tools, has published a 39-page resource
for resellers of desktop publishing software. Its 2019
Markzware Dealer Sales Guide is a free publication to assist
dealers, resellers and consultants to help their customers with
workflow issues. “With this sales guide, we help resellers not
only with how to purchase a Q2ID (Quark to InDesign plugin)
or FlightCheck (standalone pre-flight and packaging), but also
how to educate and market to the dealer’s customer base of
potential Markzware users,” said David Dilling, Channel Manager
at Markzware Europe. One popular plugin featured in the
guide is PDF2DTP that can convert multiple PDF files to Adobe
InDesign for easy text editing. A single menu selection within
InDesign enables the PDF data conversion. Dilling added that
many resellers were not aware of how easy it is to market and
ultimately sell PDF2DTP. To request the Markzware Dealer
Sales Guide e-mail [email protected].
Dispa Graphic Display Board sample
14 | May 2019 | GRAPHIC ARTS MAGAZINE
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