Currie Group wins WorldStar for Rhino cover

Currie Group has won a global WorldStar 2020 Award for its industry-first #rhinosdownunder printed execution that featured on the PKN Packaging News magazine cover in March last year.

It was the 2019 Australian PIDA award winner in the new category Labels & Decoration, and has now taken the global prize against jobs from around the world.

The Currie Group #rhinosdownunder project showcased how a magazine cover image could be digitally transformed – in this case into a decorative 3D rhino – using all of the latest advanced and interactive technologies for digital printing, and then digitally enhanced with Scodix cold foil and HP Mosaic of Australian landscapes. Every cover and rhino is one of a kind.

The cover showed that what could be achieved on the printed front cover could also be achieved on printed packaging.

Apart from demonstrating the extensive possibilities for variability and customisation with digital print, and the scope of in-line foil finishing for decoration, the advanced technology encapsulated in the execution enables full traceability, increased brand security, and enhanced consumer engagement.

A number of partners collaborated to deliver this groundbreaking project.

Melbourne design company Birdstone Collective was behind the graphic and structural design of the pop-out rhino and the cover artwork. The gold foil for the Scodix digital enhancement, enabling a different skin pattern for each rhino, was supplied by Kurz.

Augmented reality specialist Dreemar developed the AR component enabled via a customised app, to make the 3D rhino come to life, and provide the ability for users to donate to The Australian Rhino Project charity.

HP technology was employed for a number of functions: HP Mosaic for variable printing creating 4500 different PKN covers; HP Microtext in the rhino's eyebrow for anti-copy and authentication; and HP Link secure individual mark on the base of the rhino for anti-counterfeiting.

"This was a world-first collaborative decoration that has created new possibilities for digital printing, and fully demonstrated how to deliver high levels of consumer engagement, brand protection, and align with a worthwhile cause," says Currie Group director of Labels & Packaging, Mark Daws.

The cover featured on the March-April 2018 issue of PKN Packaging News. Read more here.