Issue #0807/1 - Oki is taking the principle of self-creation graphic arts to new levels, in a bid to encourage businesses and organisations to make more of their in-house printing capabilities, with the launch of v-studio – an online library of resources and royalty-free images that builds on its existing Template Manager software.
Self-creation of graphic art and page layout materials gripped the personal computing community in the second half of the 1980s, following the introduction of personal computers, the Apple Macintosh and desktop printers, at the point when DeskTop Publishing software was promoted as the latest ‘big new thing’. This sparked a massive revolution in self-creation of newsletter, publicity and marketing materials as well as signage and personal materials and notifications – not always to the highest of standards!
With a keen interest in most things creative for most of my life, self-creation of personal materials (and even business materials) was nothing new to me, even at that time. But, this revolution two decades ago played a huge part in making the process much faster, more versatile, more feasible and much more effective.
However, there have always been stumbling blocks and barriers to the easy and quick generation of high quality printed materials. The primary barrier being highlighted by Oki is what the company describes as “a chronic shortage of readily available high quality images”.
Solutions for the amateur creative enthusiast in a small organisation (in particular) have been three-fold:
- Take the photographs or create the images yourself
- Commission the imagery from a professional
- Purchase expensive imagery from agencies
- Draw on the wealth of material available on the internet
Unfortunately, the drawbacks to these solutions are numerous, beginning with the obvious fact that not everyone has the creative skills required to create high quality imagery themselves. To commission imagery is expensive but does give the customer control over the final result; purchasing imagery from an agency is also very expensive, but deprives the customer of control, with the flexibility only to select the best available image; while drawing on internet resources can easily result in the use of poor quality imagery out of necessity or risking breaching copyright, with all of its legal implications.
As part of its solution, Oki has created a library of images appropriate to a variety of vertical markets with new images planned to come on-stream regularly. Older or overused images may be withdrawn as part of the overall management operation.
One of the big problems of the internet and the 21st Century is that everyone believes they have a right to all information absolutely free of charge. The old adage, ‘Information is Power’ hardly seems relevant any more as we can all find almost any information we want in a few minutes of intelligent surfing.
Information providers have to think very carefully about what information is made available freely to the world and some information, very importantly, should not be made freely available. But it is becoming more difficult to charge for information, even valuable information of a clear intellectual property nature.
Oki’s v-studio is offered free of charge and although the images are royalty-free, they are not copyright-free (in order to minimise inappropriate use). Whether there may be any specific usage restrictions is a question that Oki is still working on.
Right at the moment, the website - http://www.askoki.co.uk/v-studio - holds only 120 images in 14 categories, so it does not even begin to compare with professional image banks like Ghetty Images or iStockphoto.
V-studio is not just a source of royalty-free images though. Far wider in its scope, v-studio is a community that allows members to learn, explore and experiment with design and print using Template Manager; to visualise how their design job will print (through what Oki describes as a ‘virtual show-and-tell’ illustration) – v-print; and to obtain up to 10 free sample prints from Oki. Other Oki offers and promotions will also be available to v-studio members.
Oki v-print offers an online virtual ‘show-and-tell’ demonstration of a piece of self-creation artwork being printed on an Oki LED page printer. A jpeg file is uploaded to the website, where v-print cleverly merges it with a piece of video featuring high-ranking Oki staff.
Particularly useful to organisations that might be thinking of changing or buying new printers, the offer of 10 free prints allows them to obtain printed copies of their own materials from Oki, which can then be compared to prints from their own existing printers. This allows a direct printer-to-printer quality comparison.
To Oki, this move is all about availability, ease of use and intuitiveness. There is no doubt that there is a great deal of valuable information and guidance on the v-studio web site and some of the tools will be very useful to the amateur graphic artist.
For instance, one of the most useful tools is a colour wheel that allows users to define which colours to use in a variety of different configurations from a simple complimentary scheme to more complex analogous or tedradic schemes. The colour wheel can be rotated in real time to allow the user to locate an appealing colour scheme. And, the tool tells the user exactly what the colours are in both RGB and CMYK modes.
This example is created using the TCPglobal brand colour as the base for the colour scheme. The wheel really is incredibly easy to use and very effective.
In addition, there is a typography selector that allows users to select appropriate type faces for the work they are undertaking, also offering advice regarding combinations of typefaces and general typographic principles.
There is also a considerable library of interesting and useful additional information, from ‘Printer Technology for Dummies’, through ‘A History of Print’, to a glossary of printing terms.
Needless to say however, the introduction of v-studio is not entirely altruistic in nature! Oki hopes that v-studio will encourage members to buy Oki hardware as a result of their experiences with v-studio, v-print and Template Manager.
There is nothing like being able to try a new tool for encouraging people to buy and this is sure to be no exception, even to the point that use of Oki’s v-studio is likely to improve the chances of a potential customer eventually buying Oki hardware. The downside for Oki is that amateur creators may need to be persuaded that a web site presented by Oki is valuable to them when their hardware is from another manufacturer. A URL other than ‘askoki’ might have been wise.
An even bigger downside though is the fact that Template Manager will only print to Oki printers (and not every Oki printer at that). So, non-Oki users are currently unable to experiment with the full features and power of the system, meaning that new sales to Oki will be somewhat restricted as non-Oki owners continue to look elsewhere.
As the brainchild of Oki UK, v-studio is currently on a .co.uk URL but is sure to expand its influence around the world as it matures and becomes a larger and more comprehensive repository of graphic materials and images (but dependent on its success in winning new hardware sales).
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