SGIAA president Nigel Davies says the association is pushing ahead with plans to hold more Colour Management Boot Camps this year after the successful launch of the inaugural event at Starleaton in Melbourne this month.
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| The SGIAA Colour Management course in Melbourne |
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| Nigel Davies, presient SGIAA |
“There’s no question there will be more colour management courses across Australia this year,” Davies told Wide Format Online.
“We had an excellent turnout for the first one in Melbourne, which was sold out. It attracted a diverse cross-section of the industry, from commercial printers, large format printers and industrial printers, and we had people fly in from Brisbane and Sydney. The feedback from the course has been excellent.
“We’ll probably do another two courses this year, most likely the first in July and another one a couple of months later. We want to hold the next one in Sydney or Melbourne, but that hasn’t been decided yet.”
The Specialty Graphic Imaging Association of Australia (SGIAA) wants to deliver colour management courses wherever there is demand from its members.
“We’ve invested in hardware, and David Crowther [aka The Colour Doctor, of Colour Graphic Services - who has been contracted by SGIAA to deliver future training courses] has as well, which means we’re not as dependent on any particular supplier to deliver these courses. So that does give us more flexibility. We’re putting ourselves in a position where we can deliver colour courses where they need to be delivered.”
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| SGIAA Colour Camp in Melbourne |
The association is in a unique position to ‘raise the profile’ of colour in Australia, Davies says.
"We’re an industry association, and our charter is to focus on training and knowledge. We started by declaring 2019 to be the Year of Colour and as an association colour is something that we would like to own. We’re fully aware that there are lots of commercial enterprises that do this kind of training but we’re in a unique position because we’re not pushing any particular brands or technologies. I think that gives us a more of an independent view which is important when our students come to the course having used a range of different brands in their own workplaces.”
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| Ray Weiss, SGIA Director of Digital Print Programs in Melbourne |
The SGIAA’s colour boot camp initiative came about after Davies travelled to the US last year to meet Ford Bowers, president and CEO of US industry group the SGIA.
“We’ve been searching the world for courses like this for some time,” Davies says. “Colour is a very relevant topic for many people at the moment and we’d seen what was happening with the SGIA courses. FESPA has also been developing a great colour course but their timeline did not work for us” [The SGIAA represents both SGIA and FESPA in Australia].
“I went over to the States to talk to Ford Bowers last October and communicated that we wanted to develop new income streams that were consistent with our charter as an association. Ford was very pleased to help and made the pathway very easy for us.
“Then SGIA’s Ray Weiss came out from the States, which is no small thing, and he delivered the first course here. With his expertise in presenting these courses, the students in Melbourne received a brilliant introduction to the course matter. So we got off to a flying start.”
While the first colour camp was hosted by supplier Starleaton in Melbourne, the SGIAA has now received expressions of interest from other suppliers eager to host future events.
“The next one will probably be held again in conjunction with Starleaton, either in Melbourne or Sydney, that’s under discussion. We had a de-brief with them and they were happy with the way the course went from their perspective. They’re well-positioned with us because of the products that they sell to the industry, and they worked hard to make it a success. But we’ve also had expressions of interest from other suppliers. The fact that we have partnered with Starleaton for this one, and we’ll probably do another one with them, in no way reflects our position as favouring one brand over another or one company’s services over another. The course was designed to be hardware-independent and software-independent, or agnostic as they call it, because the principles of colour management can be applied regardless of what software and hardware you choose to use.”
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| Starleaton's Peter Way with SGIAA Colour Management students |
Suppliers are the experts
Davies says SGIAA's partnerships with industry suppliers are crucial to the success of future training courses. “Our partnership with suppliers is a critical thing for us because each supplier has their own clientele throughout the industry and students work with them and learn from their practical hand-on-expertise as well as from the course itself.
“In an industry as small as Australia, the suppliers really are the experts in their field. They’ve developed solutions and applications and technologies to solve any problems that printers and signmakers may have. Our ground rules are that we’re not there to promote any specific supplier’s applications but they can communicate their expertise through the events that we hold.
“For instance, we held an event with Kornit Digital recently looking at global textile trends and it was well attended and there was a lot of discussion about it. That’s the sort of model I’d like to see working in the future, where we take a particular industry sector, whether it might be sustainability or some other area, and bring in the experts from different suppliers.”
The SGIA is expected to announce the date and venue of its next Colour Management Boot Camp shortly.
