The Phoenix Challenge Foundation is an organization of industry professionals who are dedicated to encouraging today’s youth in exploring exciting career opportunities available in the Flexographic printing industry. Each year the Foundation holds an annual competition focused on flexographic product design and printing for Universities that provide this education.  For the past several years Salem One along with select vendor partners have had the honor of working with groups of students from Appalachian State University’s GAIT (Graphic Arts and Imaging Technology) program as they prepare for this exciting competition.

This year, we were very pleased to work with an exceptional team of ASU students under the leadership of Dr. Mandy Wu and Mr. Tom Reeves. The team included Andrew Kirk, Emily Miller, Grant Murray, Logan Shoaf, Sunny Turner, Parker Arnold, and Aaron Mckenzie. The ASU team reviewed multiple project options for the Phoenix Challenge, but based on their campus research, they chose to design a label and package for a local business in Boone, NC called the “Local Lion”. The students felt there was a need to include a label that would reflect the company’s brand identity on their coffee bags. They also had the idea to develop a package that would allow customers to carry out their coffee and a donut at the same time. The label design was branded with PMS 295, Matte OPV, and a Gloss OPV. For the carrier they used PMS 1205, PMS 1615, and Gloss OPV.  After months of hard work, several team members were able to take over the flexographic operations at Salem One and watch their design concepts evolve into tangible branded products. We could not be more proud of their results!

The final presentations and 2016 Phoenix Challenge competition took place in Fort Worth, Texas where approximately 30 colleges and universities competed.  From all of us at Salem One, we want to wish the AppState team the very best and would like to say “Thank You” for allowing us to assist with this year’s project. It was an honor to be part of such a quality program. Our state and our region are fortunate to have Appalachian State’s GAIT program producing such high quality students. The future of our industry couldn’t be brighter!

 

 

 

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