West Chester, Ohio, USA; (October 12, 2008) -MetalFX Technology-a Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corporation subsidiary-has announced the winner of its 2008 Student Design Competition.  The contest winner, selected by a panel of judges at PIA/GATF, is Brad Mackie, a Des Moines, Iowa, native and second-year graphic technologies student at the Des Moines Area Community College (DMACC), who seeks a career in digital prepress and design.  Mackie's entry was selected from the many submitted by graphic design students across North America.  As the contest winner, Mackie was awarded an all-expense paid trip to Graph Expo 2008 in Chicago by MetalFX, where his winning design will be exhibited in the PIA/GATF booth.
 
The winning entry was prepared in a summer PhotoShop class taught by Carin Murphy, Chair of the DMACC Graphic Technologies Program, as part of a final class project.  Ms. Murphy, commenting on the winning entry, said: "Because all DMACC graphic technology students take two offset printing classes, they have a very good understanding of color separation.  Our students quickly grasped the MetalFX concept and were able to develop designs that take advantage of the process."
 
Commenting on the contest, MetalFX Vice-President Americas Mark Geeves observed: "The MetalFX student design competition prepared students to enter the workplace fully able to use the most powerful metallic printing software available.  To enable students to participate, MetalFX donated its software to as many as 100 schools throughout North America.  The value of the donated software exceeded $500,000."
 
MetalFX, a recent Ciba Specialty Chemicals Corporation acquisition, is a universal process and spot metallic color system that allows millions of metallic colors to be printed, all by adding only the one base silver ink to the usual CMYK mix. Ciba Specialty brings more than 40 years of experience in color matching to the worldwide graphic arts, paints, plastics, fibers and ceramic industries.