The introduction of MegaEdit to Infigo Software’s Catfish web to print platform has removed all restrictions when designing online, making every vertical market sector an opportunity for its users.
Imagine a world where you could market a breakfast cereal, via its packaging, differently in every town – or even in three different types of packaging in that town – to see which sold best to customers.
Or visualise a photographic firm branding the same picture in countless ways for different audiences, within the touch of a few buttons.
Infigo Software has imagined exactly that. The web to print software company also considered countless other scenarios when it created MegaEdit for its Catfish platform.
‘It’s all about the ability to personalise,’ said Infigo’s managing director Douglas Gibson, from the company’s offices in Crawley, Sussex. ‘We’ve created an online design tool which, when combined with Catfish, provides the first complete solution in the web to print industry.
‘These are exciting times in our world, because in the past web to print systems have been very restrictive within their editing capabilities. MegaEdit gets over these hurdles. It has been designed to remove all boundaries and restrictions when designing online, providing a fast, flexible and intuitive interface that customers can use with ease.’
Recent deals struck to use the product point to its adaptability. Its uses in industries as varied as photography and packaging suggest the boundaries can span any industry where there is a need for quick, variable data. For example, Infigo devised MegaEdit, to go with its Catfish platform, aimed at creating a photobook system for the professional photography industry. ASK Print, the photography franchise, was the first to adopt the technology for that industry and more than 50 photographers have now signed up.
Gary Keens, ASK Print’s managing director, was delighted with the software, an online product where a customer could build a photobook within a few minutes, while on a 3G connection, incorporating all the features of a professional design package.
‘We have all that and more,’ he said, after demonstrating MegaEdit at the Society of Wedding and Portrait Photographers Convention in January. ‘The Catfish MegaEdit platform is in my opinion currently the very best system of its kind in the world. Everything I demonstrated looked fantastic and started to blow the photography world away.’
Features that photographers loved, he added, included masks, layering, the ease of saving work and the auto colour swatch, which retained a colour added to the text for future use.
Born out of Infigo’s vision of giving the end user the ability to personalise, MegaEdit has now been launched as a product in its own right. It has already proved a hit with one firm in the packaging industry, proving it could be used in any scenario where there is variable data.
Douglas Gibson said: ‘Packaging is one industry we could truly revolutionise – and it’s so ripe for it. As an industry, it hasn’t changed in many years. It hasn’t moved with the times. We’re in an age where everyone can print off a personal message in a birthday card via a few clicks of a button, but when you sit down to breakfast you are eating big name products from the same packaging, whether you are in Newcastle or Bournemouth.
‘With the right software, you can put in hundreds of variables before the packaging is even printed. So if it’s going to be 30 degrees next week instead of an average 20 for the past month, you could put ‘beat the heat’ on your ice cream cone packages with a graphic of the sun and a 30C on it, then either keep it or withdraw it for the next print run, depending on whether it sells better. With a limitless ability to make use of variable data, the potential is absolutely sky high.’
Douglas Gibson
And not, it seems, even within just the packaging industry. Mr Gibson added: ‘Some other great uses of MedaEdit would be for estate agents, who need lots of different templates. You only sell a house once, don’t you? And every house is different. So you’ll want to market that house for its own unique characteristics, but using your company branding.
‘With MegaEdit you can have one template that allows multiple layouts and you can draw in photographs from anywhere, including social media.’
The way in to the packaging industry came through Advanced, one of the largest and longest established suppliers and integrators of digital print hardware, software, solutions and service in the UK. The Catfish MegaEdit programme will be used to produce variable data on up to 610 microns of folding box board, using a Xerox iGen digital press, a Tresu coater and a Kama die cutter, all in one, automated solution.
Adele Cable, digital printing consultant of Advanced, said: ‘At present, brand owners are limited to lengthy runs containing thousands of one item, all with the same packaging. Using Catfish software and the Xerox iGen digital press, packages can be digitally printed to accommodate several variations, allowing a brand owner to track those variations and discover what works best with the consumer. It is a fantastic way for brand owners to communicate with their customers directly and make it a two way communication with the use of QR codes.’
Infigo and Advanced shared a stand at the Packaging Innovations Exhibition at the NEC in Birmingham at the end of February.
As well as design, printing and photography, Mr Gibson believes MegaEdit could be used for the corporate sector, who could manage their brand quickly and effectively online in every aspect, from sales literature to brochures and presentations.
The company has also already launched its Catfish Hybrid Mail system as an independent product, having successfully delivered it for a major household name firm which wanted to streamline its email and mail marketing to customers, centralising a range of different practices which were in force across the company.
These are just some of the web to print uses Infigo Software has been demonstrating in a frenetic round of shows and exhibitions in the UK and internationally in March, as it builds on interest from North America, as well as deals secured in not just the UK but as far away as Australia.
The Packaging Innovations show in Birmingham and, on the same days, the Technology for Marketing and Advertising show at Olympia in London, were just the start. International travel was required at the start of March for the Dscoop conference in Washington. This was the 10th annual convention for the digital solutions cooperative of HP graphic arts users. Then there was a trip to Manchester for Duplo’s first exhibition outside London, called Northern Lights. To complete a hectic couple of months, Infigo will partner Alto Digital, the office technology company, at the Sign & Digital UK Show, again at Birmingham’s NEC, at the end of March.
The breadth of these shows demonstrates the huge variety of industries with which Infigo is engaging.
‘Variable data and the ability to be flexible, via web to print, is the basis of what we do,’ said Mr Gibson, ‘so it makes sense that our software could be used in many, many industries. Each presents a slightly new challenge, but in the fast-moving world of the web, you live or die by being able to adapt, using a product which pushes flexibility – the ability to ‘personalise’ – to the limits.
‘Signs and displays, as well as print, are obvious platforms for us,’ he said, referring to the Sign & Digital UK exhibition, which attracted 6100 visitors last year.
Alto is another key partner for Infigo. It has access to the whole suite of Catfish products, including MegaEdit, and uses them as a white label product to sell on for customers to personalise everything from business stationery to documents for meetings and lectures, spanning corporate and education sectors. The different industries into which Infigo can push seem to be, in a word, infinite.
