Itasca, Ill., May 16, 2003 - Xeikon America and Xeikon International today announced the results of the Seventh Xeikon Diamond Awards contest. The results again show a range of highly successful digital color printing business cases and demonstrate how production digital color printing on Xeikon presses is further spreading into the graphic arts industry today. On April 25, almost 100 digital print applications produced with Xeikon print engines were judged by a five-man strong international jury at the Xeikon International headquarter offices in Lier, Belgium. The entries for this contest came from Xeikon printers worldwide, including OEM branded customers such as MAN Roland and IBM customers. They were invited to send in their best digital print applications for five different categories: Printing On Demand, One to One Marketing, Unique Xeikon Features, Labels & Packaging and Self-Promotion. The Jury awarded a first, second and third winner for each category, elected one Overall Best Winner, and finally granted a Special Mention Award. Successful business cases The jury paid special attention to the business aspects of each of the applications to reward those that represent the best business case for the printer and generate the highest added value to the print buyer. "Digital printing has left the playground and today has become an important part of the communication business worldwide," says member of the jury Peter Ollén, Chief Editor of AGI Magazines in Scandinavia. "I was impressed by the number of really strong cases entered by Xeikon printers for this contest. As these cases demonstrate, digital printing enables more effective and more cost-efficient communication. This makes these applications repetitive, good business for the printer." "It is really incredible to see how printers are triggered by the unique features of the Xeikon presses to develop innovative concepts and new applications, or new ways of producing, distributing and using printed matter," says Aurelio Mendiguchia, Technical Direcor of the Instituto de Artes Graficas Tajamar in Spain. "It is important that Xeikon shows this to the entire industry, including designers and print buyers to give positive impulses and new chances to the graphic arts industry" Results The digital print entries were divided over five different categories In each category the jury could award a first, second and third winner.  One application was elected to be the Overall Best Winner for this years contest. Overall Best The Overall Best Xeikon Digital Print Application for the Xeikon Diamond Awards 2003 contest is assigned to M&M Digital Printing from The Netherlands with a web-to-print application for the real-estate market. Real-estate agents can surf to www.salesprint.nl to order printed sales tools. On the site, they can select the printed product(s) they need (such as brochures, posters and advertising) from a database, choose one of the design templates, personalize and customize these with pictures and detailed texts and order the exact quantity they need. Once ordered, the job is transferred to the printer. He produces the requested printed matter on a Chromapress 50i and delivers within 48 hours after receiving the order. This application alone generates a total print volume of over 50,000 A4 pages per month. Printing On Demand In the category Printing on Demand, the first prize goes to the Finnish company I-Print OY (Seinäjoki - Finland).  For their customer Atria, a major meat products company, they print customized and localized posters for the Atria retail stores throughout Finland. Posters (20"x30" or 20"x40"), printed on a Xeikon DCP/50D are localized per retail shop and customized for different product promotions. The posters are ordered and distributed by Atria or ordered directly by the retail shop via internet. Atria is very pleased with the concept and considers to produce more similar jobs. The second and third prize in the category Printing On Demand both go to Ocean Digital Print (West-Midlands - UK). A fine arts catalogue for sculpture and drawing artist Jill Journeaux has been awarded with the second prize. The publication comprises 300 copies of an A3 high-quality full-color fine arts catalogue, using translucent special format substrate for the cover. The project included the realization of total concept, including scanning, lay-out, page make-up and finishing. The third prize also goes to Ocean Digital Print for theatre programs for the Chichester summer festivities. The project includes last-minute printing of varying quantities (150 to 750 copies) of a range of high quality summer festival theatre programs, printed the same day of the performance. One to One Marketing In the category One to One Marketing, the first prize is awarded to Moore Response Marketing from The Netherlands (Eindhoven) for the individualized & personalized Car Buying Advice brochures Moore prints for ANWB, the Dutch association for travel & cars. ANWB was looking for a solution to respond to the many requests of members to receive objective car information (specific brands, car options, etc). Moore developed a tailor-made application: 100% individualized & personalized "Car Buying Advice" brochures helping customers in their buying process. Content, articles, illustrations and advertisement are based on customer profile and preferences. Daily, about 4,000 booklets are compiled from an extensive database and produced on Moore's Xeikon DCP presses.  48 hours after the request comes in, the 32-page spiral bound booklet is shipped to the car prospect. The second prize in this category goes to AAA AG für Digital Printing (Zürich, Switzerland) for a highly personalized mailing to announce the results of the Swiss DM-Association contest and to invite the addressee for the prize-giving event. The mailing consists of five separate pieces, with personalized text and images. 330 pieces in total of 15 different versions of this mailing were produced. The third winner in this category is Digitaldruck Aalen from Aalen in Germany for highly personalized newsletters for the German GEK Health Organization. Annually, they produce about 120,000 pieces of a personalized gatefold newsletter. The database allows for in-depth personalization of content, illustrations and coupons. Unique Xeikon Features For the category Unique Xeikon features, applications that exploit the unique production features offered by the Xeikon presses are awarded. The first prize in this category goes to Gagne Wallcovering Inc. (Clearwater - USA) for wallpaper printed on vinyl coated pre-pasted paper. The customer for this application, Seabrook Wallcoverings, owns a collection of artwork images that they offer as wallpaper on standard or customer sizes. To print these images, they need high quality digital printing on long formats of vinyl coated, pre-pasted 18" (47 cm) wide paper. With the Xeikon DCP 500 D this is possible. Besides these large size posters, the printer also produces wallpaper borders. In the same category, the second prize goes to Kallenbach GmbH & Co. KG (Detmold - Germany) for a large format point-of-sale display produced for SMV Schieder furniture company. This is an eye catching  three-dimensional display, produced  in 2 x 300 pieces. The third prize is for Compos Center, Lomazzo - Italy, for a 12 feet long brochure for the Napapijri clothing company. The long banner-brochure (12"x16.5" folded) is made up in three versions for the Napapijri sales force. Each sheet has a different background color to show the season color selection and the effect of the logos on the colors. Labels & Packaging In the category Labels & Packaging, the winner of this years' Xeikon Diamond Awards is C&B Creation (Zwolle - The Netherlands) with labels for cheese wheels for the dairy products company Campina, printed on a MAN Roland DICO press 500. This printer developed an application to print labels on a special very light silk paper (18 to 22 gsm) which are glued on the cheese wheels. With Xeikon, the printer can accommodate short runs and fast delivery requirements that cannot be met with the flexo printing run lengths and turnaround times. Xeikon digital printing offers a low cost solution for these special round and long-size format labels. On top of that the customer was surprised with the high print quality and the short delivery period. C&B offers this solution uniquely to the dairy industry. The second prize was awarded to Germark S.A. from Lornella in Spain for the production of transparent sun oil label for Deliplus. Short runs for 50 different layouts for the new collection of sun oil from Deliplus, using the fifth color station for white toner. Self Promotion For the category Self Promotion, Xeikon printers are awarded for material they produce to promote their Xeikon digital printing business. In this category, the first prize is awarded to the company Six Headed Monster from Dallas, USA. They produced a unique self-promotional, fold-out box mailing with their Xeikon DCP 500 SP packaging press. With this mailing they extensively demonstrate the features of Xeikon digital printing paperboard packaging, including personalization, full color, complex design, a very strong and attractive lay-out, a gloss finish and die-cutting. In this category, the second prize is granted to Ocean Digital Print, West Midlands - UK for a long-size unfold brochure for the promotion of Xeikon digital printing. 600 copies of an A-5, 16-page brochure of 10"x50" long when unfolded, with an attractive lay-out and strong communication on the unique features of Xeikon digital printing. The third  prize is for Scanagraphics Ltd. (Cardiff - UK) for personalized, multi-message self-promotional mailing whereby  11 different A4-sheets (of which one unfolds to 105cm long), are personalized and mailed one per week to 150 prospects. Each sheet contains information on a specific or unique aspect of Xeikon digital. Special Mention for High Quality Besides the Overall Best Winner and the winners in the 5 different categories, the jury rewarded Compos Center of Lomazzo - Italy with a Special Mention Award for High Quality. Their advertising agency developed a unique concept to create a 24"x18" format calendar and to produce it with overlapping 12" wide banners printed on a Xeikon DCP 320 D. The design alternates and runs on from one banner to another. The jury explicitly honored the high quality in both design and printing. The Jury For the 2003 Diamond Awards, Xeikon put together a five man strong international jury of industry experts. The jury consists of the following members: · Dave Erlandson, Vice President and General Manager of Carlson & Co, the management company for PODi, the Print On Demand initiative, (USA); · Peter Ollén, Publisher and Editor in Chief of the AGI Magazines (Scandinavia); · Alain Vermeire, Chief Editor of Grafisch Nieuws/Nouvelles Graphiques, (Belgium); · Aurelio Mendiguchia, Technical Director of Instituto de Artes Graficas Tajamar, (Spain); · Jürgen Buchberger, Creative Director of ART Werbung (Germany).