As Fespa releases details of its upcoming 2020 Madrid expo, new awards have been announced across wrapping and printed interiors, along with the return of its successful Print Make Wear and Colour L*A*B* offerings.
Including the ‘Wrapping’ and ‘Printeriors’ categories, there will be 18 awards in total. Confirmed judges for the Awards include Josep Tobella (Serigraphy Professor and Consultant), Jacek Stencel (Owner & Founder of PASJA, screen and digital printing company), Debbie McKeegan (CEO of TexIntel) and FESPA’s Head of Technical Support, Graeme Richardson-Locke.
Neil Felton, CEO, Fespa, says, “Fespa was founded with the principal aim of sharing knowledge within a global community of speciality printers. These businesses are operating against an ever-changing landscape of developing technologies and evolving customer needs. With that in mind, we’re committed to delivering a wide variety of insightful content that gives visitors an overview of the current opportunities and helps them to explore potential paths to business growth. That’s why we invest in refreshing and energising our features year on year, to ensure that our visitors get the complete experience they come to expect from Fespa events.”
Colour L*A*B* will examine the individual elements of professional colour management, including measurement and calibration tools, lightboxes, software solutions and print output devices. This year’s edition of will focus on device profiling, process control, as well as proofing and standardised viewing conditions – which will be tackled by a number of subject matter experts, including Paul Sherfield, who led the 2019 programme.
Directly adjacent to Colour L*A*B* is the FESPA 2020 Trend Theatre, where a wide range of seminars and panel discussions will give visitors a great opportunity to increase their industry knowledge and find inspiration for new business prospects.
The Trend Theatre programme features over 40 sessions, compiled with the needs and interests of the FESPA global speciality print community at heart. The speakers include members of the Fogra Research Institute, global data leaders, Keypoint Intelligence and Spanish language sessions from Fespa Espana. These will range from workflow automation and colour management to DTG printing and sustainable practices, while also providing an overview of the current market trends in all areas of specialist print.
Fespa’s fast fashion factory feature, Print Make Wear, is back for 2020, with a focus on sportswear manufacturing, noted as a key growth area in the Australian marketplace due to the uptick of sales in the activewear/athleisure markets. Repeat business like local sports teams can quickly supplement PSPs revenue streams.
Linking to the co-located Sportswear Pro event, Print Make Wear will recreate the live end-to-end production process for sports and athleisure garments, starting with planning, design and prepress, progressing to printing, drying, cutting, sewing, welding and embellishment and finishing with packing and retail display.
This year’s edition includes two workflows. The first one features two ordering kiosks, where the visitor will be able to customise a men’s running shirt or a women’s racer back vest. The second workflow will run from design software to nesting and production layout, through roll-fed dye sublimation printing onto polyester, before moving into calendaring, laser cutting and sewing. This workflow will produce samples to be displayed on a rail or worn by models on the Print Make Wear cat walk.
Neil Felton concludes: “Our insights from previous events reinforce the notion that print industry professionals are continually looking at new openings and ways to grow their businesses. We’re confident that the wealth of content that is being generated for our 2020 feature programme will give visitors plenty to explore to increase their knowledge and seize new opportunities.”
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