Oki colour lasers: A natural choice for the creative world

Oki colour lasers are gaining popularity in the advertising and creative markets, offering cost reductions, increased performance and better colour matching than colour inkjet printers generally favoured by this industry.

So says Neil Rom, managing director of Printacom, who adds that the Chromability programme recently launched by Oki is allowing for an increasing variety of custom and short-run print jobs to be printed in-house as opposed to the traditional outsourcing route. "Creative agencies are finding numerous benefits inherent in colour laser technology and more specifically, Oki`s technology is a natural fit for their day-to-day printing," Rom says.

Yianni Constantinides, national promotions and training manager at Campbell and Thiselton Cosmetics, says: "The Oki C7000 we`ve used to replace our previous Tektronix wax-thermal printer has brought cost-reductions, increased performance and versatility we never thought possible."

Campbell and Thiselton Cosmetics markets and distributes fine fragrances and cosmetics such us Calvin Klein, Diesel, FCUK and La Prairie in SA.

Constantinides says the wax-thermal technology his company was using before switching to colour laser prevented printing double-sided print jobs and then laminating them, since in both cases the wax would melt. "Besides that, hand-written corrections weren`t possible since the wax coating on the pages couldn`t be written on.

"We`ve been using our C7000 since February this year and have noticed a massive increase in the speed of print jobs and the quality of images. The colour matching is also far better, allowing us to accurately proof documents."

Constantinides says that in addition to the every-day printing, the company is using the Oki printer for generating training manuals, invitations and flyers. On the internal document printing front, he says the printer`s ability to lock users into printing monochrome documents has effected huge cost savings.

"Our consumables costs have also been substantially reduced," Constantinides concludes.

Experiencing much of the same benefits, Steven Reiser, creative director of Baker Street Advertising, says his company had been considering a move to laser technology for some time. Upon installing an Oki C9000, immediate cost savings, performance gains and quality improvements were noticed over the Epson inkjet printer the agency was previously using.

Reiser says the company has seen a 60% reduction in print costs and a threefold increase in productivity.

A year after Baker Street`s acquisition of its C9000, Reiser says the company uses the printer`s A3 and duplex functionality extensively. "What has been extremely important to us is the 90% true colour accuracy of the C9000, more than sufficient for producing proofs of adverts before ultimately sending them off to repro."

"The C9000 is also 100% compatible with our Apple Mac environment, featuring 100% support of Adobe Postscript. Oki has also provided us with excellent support, dispatching an engineer whenever new computers and users need access to the printer.

"The C9000 copes easily with our varying print loads per month, and has enabled us to insource more of our printing. We no longer outsource our client`s print jobs like business cards, flyers and other short-run jobs, which has gained us additional revenue streams and saved on internal costs," Reiser concludes.

Another satisfied Oki customer in the creative space, Antonio Pereira, managing director of New World Communications, says that after evaluating numerous different options, his company settled on an Oki C9500 printer.

"This unit was far superior to the other units we evaluated, meeting core requirements like accurate colour reproduction, compatibility with Apple Macs, low-processing times and high print speeds. The fact that this unit allowed us to halve our consumable costs was, however, the biggest benefit.

"Our C9500 has given us the ability to produce both A4 and A3 documents in duplex mode, has reduced processing times and increased print performance."

While being satisfied with the printer was one thing, Pereira says New World found it important to partner with a company that would provide a full-service offering.

Peter Vieira, business development manager for Printacom`s Corporate Solutions division, offered New World a complete solution for its environment. As part of its service offering, Corporate Solutions set the printer up for use by all users and computers on the network, while ensuring that the right colour management profiles were used to deliver 100% accurate CMYK documents. The printer was also supplied with a three-year on-site warranty, which provides New World with a low-risk printing experience.

"Overall, the entire design office has become substantially more productive since we`ve started using the new printer. Our creative staff can now spend time designing and no longer have to waste time sorting out printer issues," Pereira says.