Fremont, Calif. – Electronics For Imaging, Inc. has announced that EFI™ Fiery® FreeForm™ Create has received the 2019 Red Hot Technology Vanguard Breakthrough Award from the Association for Print Technologies.

The Red Hot Technology recognition program is a discovery and approbation platform for the newest products exhibited at the Oct. 3-5 PRINT 2019 tradeshow in Chicago. The Vanguard Breakthrough Award signifies a product that helps advance an existing technology or process and opens new business opportunities for end users.

EFI Fiery FreeForm Create is a brand new, free, stand-alone variable data printing (VDP) application. It is based on Fiery FreeForm VDP technology, a standard feature on all Fiery servers for more than 20 years that became popular among print service providers (PSPs) needing a simple and convenient way to offer VDP services. Now, FreeForm Create delivers a fully visual interface with greatly enhanced capabilities. In addition to the ability to merge master and variable content in an easy, drag-and-drop interface, FreeForm Create allows users to add variable content to existing files – something not previously possible with FreeForm. Users can drag variable fields, which can be text, images, or even barcodes, onto the desired placement on their master document. Users also get a visual preview of the entire finished document, including variable content.

As the Red Hot Technology Vanguard Breakthrough Award signifies, FreeForm Create is changing how users create personalized files. It greatly simplifies the process for PSPs and in-plant print centers, allowing them to produce VDP at no extra cost, without advanced VDP knowledge and without a significant financial investment. For PSPs and in-plants that use Fiery Driven™ printers, FreeForm Create seamlessly integrates with their Fiery Command WorkStation® management interface and Fiery make-ready applications such as Fiery Impose, Fiery Compose or Fiery JobMaster™.

FreeForm Create also offers features previously only found in paid VDP authoring software, including variable image and barcode creation. Plus, the application empowers graphic designers, marketers and creatives to create their own files in a simple, visual interface designed to be easily navigable by anyone familiar with Microsoft® Word® or Adobe® InDesign®.

"Many companies that need a variable data composition tool shy away from some of the complex tools designed for multichannel communication as they look for something easy to use that gives them the right degree of sophistication for jobs with easy-to-medium complexity,” according to industry analyst Pat McGrew, senior director, Production Software and Services, at Keypoint Intelligence. “FreeForm Create is worthy of consideration for any EFI Fiery user or designer who serves printing companies employing Fiery Driven printers. The intuitive interface combined with the seamless integration into Fiery print environments and a development roadmap to extend features and functions is a good addition to the EFI software tool sets.”

Access to a Fiery server is not required to use the FreeForm Create application. Graphic designers, creative professionals, and even in-plant customers can download the free application to create their personalized files. They save their files in the FreeForm Create file format, which packages all the static and variable content together, and then they can provide this file to their PSP or in-plant print center. In turn, the PSP or in-plant opens the file in their FreeForm Create client, and then submits it to their Fiery Driven printer for production.

“We’re very excited to receive the Red Hot Technology Vanguard Breakthrough Award for FreeForm Create,” said Toby Weiss, senior vice president and general manager, EFI Fiery. “We’ve received very positive feedback from our customers about how FreeForm Create is delivering significant time savings for creating personalized files, and thus enabling them to offer more services to their customers, so we’re especially proud to receive this recognition from our industry peers.”

Fiery FreeForm Create will be featured at EFI’s upcoming exhibit at the Printing United tradeshow in Dallas, Oct. 22-25, in booth 8233. To learn more about Fiery FreeForm Create, please visit www.efi.com/freeformcreate. For more information about EFI Fiery Driven digital production printing, visit www.efi.com/fierydfe. 

Personalized postcard sample created on EFI Fiery FreeForm Create.