Reston, VA — The Graphic Arts Edu­ca­tion and Research Foun­da­tion (GAERF) announces the launch of its sec­ond annual stu­dent design com­pe­ti­tion, which this year chal­lenges stu­dents to develop a mar­ket­ing prod­uct to pro­mote GRAPH EXPO 2011 – the largest and most com­pre­hen­sive trade show and con­fer­ence for the graphic com­mu­ni­ca­tions indus­try in the Amer­i­cas. Con­tinue reading…

Hello Every­one!

I am still in Cal­gary and com­pe­ti­tion hasn’t started yet. Today we went to visit two ele­men­tary schools to intro­duce our­selves and what we do. At one of the schools we were each assigned four lit­tle kids to be our “tour guides.” We went to dif­fer­ent class­rooms and each stu­dent took turns to intro­duce me. It was very nice. I had explained to them what print­ing was and when the other stu­dents had ques­tions about what print­ing is my tour guides would proudly explain.

We have the open­ing cer­e­mony tonight. Tomor­row is my first day of com­pe­ti­tion and I am going to be doing an exer­cise on the SHOTS sim­u­la­tor. I am also doing some cut­ting! The SHOTS sim­u­la­tor exer­cise is only worth 2 points and they are judg­ing us on just our abil­ity to solve the prob­lem. The cut­ting is only worth half of a point because it isn’t an every day task that a press oper­a­tor has to do cut­ting. For cut­ting, all I have to do is tell them what first cut I would make.

The fol­low­ing day I have some ink mix­ing to do, a dig­i­tal print job, and a SHOTS sim­u­la­tor exer­cise. The ink mix­ing will be done in Grams, not Pounds. The dig­i­tal job is worth only half a point and all we have to do is make sure we get there on time to get the half of a point.

On the third day, I have to do my final SHOTS exer­cise in the morn­ing and then in the after­noon I will have my press run. I named the press “Jerry” after my trainer at Gilson Graph­ics. The SHOTS exer­cise is going to be hard, accord­ing to the judges. I hope I can fig­ure out the prob­lems quickly. I hope the printer gods are with me dur­ing my press run. There are a lot of tal­ented press oper­a­tors at the com­pe­ti­tion. Some have had years of expe­ri­ence run­ning a Hei­del­berg SM-52. I hope the press runs like it has been run­ning at Gilson.

The fourth and final day is the day that I mea­sure my spot color with a spec­tropho­tome­ter. After the com­pe­ti­tion we have our clos­ing cer­e­mony and that is when they announce the win­ners. I hope I can go on stage and rep­re­sent all of the print­ers at Fer­ris State University!

–Amela Muj­kic

P.S. Pic­tured above is Royce Richards from New Zealand. You can see me in the pic­ture there behind him. Royce is one of the few com­peti­tors in Off­set Print­ing that will talk to me. The rest pre­tend they don’t speak english.

Hello every­one!

Update: I MADE IT TO CALGARY! I have only been in Cal­gary for about 3 hours now and I have already met some peo­ple from other coun­tries. It has been hard hunt­ing down the print­ers from other coun­tries… Hope­fully I will meet them at din­ner tonight.

When I got off of the bus in front of the com­peti­tors vil­lage, I saw a crowd of peo­ple sit­ting out­side smok­ing cig­a­rettes. I decided to go and say hi. It turns out that they are from the Nether­lands (or Hol­land, whichever one you want to call it). When I told them I was com­pet­ing in “Off­set Print­ing” they imme­di­ately told me that I prob­a­bly won’t win because their com­peti­tor is a 2 time Nether­lands cham­pion in print­ing and is also #1 in Europe. They also pro­ceeded to tell me that he has been train­ing for 3 months with Heidelberg.

I am NOT dis­cour­aged. I think I have a good chance of win­ning, just like the guy from the Nether­lands does. I give him a lot of respect for get­ting to World­Skills and I’m sure the com­pe­ti­tion won’t be easy. My secret weapon is time. We are allot­ted 4 hours to do the com­pe­ti­tion and I can do it in 2 and a half if I am focused. You get bonus points for fin­ish­ing early. I also don’t know if he has had any train­ing on the SHOTS sim­u­la­tor. Did any­one notice the com­puter from the press­room missing?

I am going to go to din­ner soon. All of the com­peti­tors eat din­ner in the same place so I am hop­ing to meet all of the print­ers. I want to make lots of friends while I am here. Maybe exchange ideas on how print­ing is done in Europe. Should I try and talk to them about going to Fer­ris State University?

As for tomor­row, we are going to Banff! It is this super awe­some place in the Cana­dian Rock­ies. It is a national park. They have hot springs and spas that I want to dip into. Lots of beau­ti­ful scenery. I for­got to bring my cam­era so you all will have to wait for pic­tures until James gets here. He is going to be here tomorrow!

I hope every­ones first week of classes goes well. Keep me posted on GAA activ­i­ties and such.

I am sit­ting at the air­port in Grand Rapids get­ting ready to take off to Wash­ing­ton DC for a team build­ing exer­cise. We are going to tour DC as a team and meet Sen­a­tor Mike Enzi. On Sat­ur­day we will be leav­ing DC to head to Cal­gary, Alberta. That is where the com­pe­ti­tion is being held this year. I will be going up against 14 other com­peti­tors from dif­fer­ent coun­tries. These guys are the best of the best and the com­pe­ti­tion is NOT going to be easy. Just last night I had a dream that when I got to the com­pe­ti­tion, the press was a man­roland, the other com­peti­tors all beat me at the print sim­u­la­tor, and I came in last. Oh well… At the end of the day, my friends are still my friends and they will accept me if I win or lose.

I am a lit­tle ner­vous about run­ning 100# text through the feeder since that is the ONLY kind of paper I haven’t run on the Hei­del­berg SM-52. I guess I’ll just put all of the set­tings in the mid­dle and see what hap­pens. I really wish I could have brought my own ink. Grand Rapids Print­ing Inks was going to send me off with 5 lbs cans of CMYK inks but we weren’t sure how we were going to get it across the bor­der and through air­port secu­rity. We also weren’t sure if I was allowed to bring my own ink; it might give me a com­pet­i­tive advan­tage. I think it would be cool if the stu­dents in the paper and ink class come down to GRPI’s facil­ity to mix some ink. Or maybe do a GAA tour/ink mix­ing ses­sion? What are your thoughts on this idea?

I think I blabbed enough about the com­pe­ti­tion for today. Off to Wash­ing­ton DC!

I am super excited that this air­port has FREE WiFi

Keep check­ing the web­site for updates on my trip to World­Skills 2009!

–Amela Muj­kic