Prepress
PACKZ keeps swedish students at the forefront
Monday 30. January 2017 - Packaging design students at the Brobygrafiska Higher Vocational Education College in Sunne, near the centre of Sweden, will soon be able to ensure they are skilled in the groundbreaking software PACKZ, following an offer by HYBRID Software to donate 20 licences. Lecturer Tommy Bonte, who is head of pre-press and automation, has been instrumental in overseeing its implementation.
“It is vital for organisations such as ours to receive support from the industry and we are helped by several leading-edge hardware and software suppliers,” he says. “When HYBRID Software stepped forward with an offer of free licences for its PACKZ PDF editing software for packaging we were immediately keen.
“Our students need to leave Brobygrafiska with the highest possible range of skills and not to be able to confidently use PACKZ could put them at a disadvantage when they come to seek work in the packaging and labels sectors. I saw PACKZ in operation at Drupa 2016 and was very impressed by the way it creates a different method of working.
“There were many features that stood out. For example, the software is amazingly fast at processing elements such as step and repeat templates. PACKZ keeps everything simple, so items like colour spaces, output separations, barcodes and images are handled very logically, and as theyre found within an asset panel they are easy to retrieve and edit, while providing a good overview of the data included in the document. In addition, the native PDF format allows Illustrator, TIFF and other commonly used files to be opened and worked on highly effectively.”
HYBRID Software has trained Tommy Bronte to use PACKZ and from the beginning of 2017 he will start to teach this skill to students. There are a total of 130 students taking a range of technology courses relating to flexo, leading to qualifications in packaging design, graphic design/technician, visual graphic communications and pre-press/printing technician. The college works closely with printers and manufacturers. Much of the equipment at the site has been donated, including an eight-unit Bobst flexo press.
“Brian Davidson, who represents HYBRID Software in Sweden, has been a wonderful help and has really gone the extra mile in helping me to quickly understand PACKZ,” says Mr Bonte. “Approximately thirteen students are expected to be trained on PACKZ by the summer and its use will help to meet the increasing demand for IT specialists who understand graphic arts and the many complex issues involved.”
HYBRID Software, which is both an IT company that understands packaging and a packaging company that understands IT, launched PACKZ in 2013 and the software rapidly gained a reputation as a leading professional PDF editor for packaging and label workflows. The native PDF software, which runs on Mac OS X and Windows platforms and provides 64-bit multi-processing and multi-threading facilities, eliminates the need for file conversions or proprietary file formats.