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- CCC receives $1.2 million software donation
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CCC receives $1.2 million software donation
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Students in Clinton Community College’s Graphic Arts program received a big welcome back present when they returned to classes this fall. The present came in the form of a $1.2 million software and training donation from EskoArtwork.
Clinton Community College (CCC) is one of the Eastern Iowa Community Colleges. The donation includes 30 new software suites which, along with training, are priced at $40,000 per suite.
The software allows the college to expand its Graphic Arts program to include packaging design as an important part of the curriculum. The Esko software provides students the ability to create virtual mockups of their packaging designs.
“We are very excited to receive this donation from EskoArtwork,” said CCC President Karen Vickers. “This is an incredible gift and we are so honored to be the recipient of the software. It will allow our students to gain additional skills that will serve them well in the workplace.
“Our faculty has done an amazing job of expanding the curriculum and working with a software package that is used in so many packaging industries. It is a credit to them that this gift came to CCC.“
Esko is the worldwide market leader with software for artwork creation, structural design, pre-production, workflow automation, quality assurance and online collaboration. Ninety percent of all packaging done in the world uses their software somewhere in the workflow from design to production.
“The internet has had a big impact on commercial printing and forced the consolidation of many sectors of the industry except packaging’” CCC Graphic Arts Instructor Pat Cheak said. “All of the products that needed to be packaged in 1980 still need to be packaged today.
“The Esko Studio suite is a unique set of tools for 3D packaging design made specifically for packaging artwork professionals. Studio will help you produce better artwork. Whether you are a designer trying out different ideas, or a prepress operator checking a back-match, with Studio you are virtually holding the pack in your hands.”
Cheak said the software also allows the user to create 3D visuals to show to a client, ranging from PDF files with 3D content to movies or a virtual packshot.
CCC is one of the few colleges Esko is supporting. The donation came about after Cheak and Christopher Legel, another instructor in the program attended the International Graphic Arts Educators Association Convention at Illinois State University in 2010. They learned about Esko at that time and began integrating packing design into the program and pursuing the donation.
The donation also included four days of training in Esko’s American headquarters in Miamisburg, Ohio during May 2012.
“Part of the reason it took so long to finalize the donation is Esko has become much more careful about the schools they work with,” Legel said. “While we were in Miamisburg, Esko’s education liaison said they have had problems with the way their software was being taught by other schools in the past, and the fact that we were selected to be a training site for their software should say a lot to us about the quality and reputation of our program.”
Enfocus, with its suite of PDF tools for graphic designers and print production professionals, is part of Esko. Esko is headquartered in Gent, Belgium, and has R&D and manufacturing facilities in five European countries, the United States, China and India.
For more information on the CCC Graphic Arts Technology Program, contact the college at 563-244-7001 or toll free 1-888-336-3907.