Z-INK's WINNERS OF DESIGN-YOUR-OWN-PRINTER CONTEST

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http://deals.venturebeat.com/2009/07/15/zink-imaging-names-winners-in-its-design-your-own-printer-contest/
Zink Imaging names winners in its design-your-own-printer contest
Zink
Imaging named the winners of its printer-design contest, which drew
both professional and amateur designers to help create the next
generation of its inkless printers.The Zero Boundaries competition was
a good example of crowdsourcing, where you motivate a lot of people to
create something on your behalf. While such contests are common, Zink
managed to get a lot of high-quality work from a bunch of industrial
designers for a low price.It is giving out $25,000 in awards, with the
winners including design firms and students from the U.S., China,
Romania, Brazil and the Netherlands. But the payoff for Zink comes with
sparking designers’ imaginations for how to incorporate Zink’s inkless
imaging (which embeds dry ink in paper and then melts it to produce
colors) into new kinds of gadgets such as a digital camera. Since
Zink’s products don’t need inkjet cartridges, they can be designed into
a wide array of devices. The designs reflected the need to enhance
freedom and mobility, a couple of the pervasive themes in all of
consumer electronics.

mini-smallThe first-place winner in the
youth category was Zink Mix (top), an iPhone docking station with an
embedded Zink printer that together with a Zink iPhone app lets youths
print their web or phone-based content. Patrick Schuur of the design
firm Maketropolis in the Netherlands created the design.The first-place
winner in the category of breaking traditional bonds between printer
and paper was Mini Giant (left), which is a robotic printer that
self-propels itself over a sheet of Zink paper of any size to create a
print. It can even do a large format poster. The designer was Paula
Adina Sumalan, a recently graduated design student from Romania.And the
People’s Choice winner was smartBC (bel0w), a business card printer
designed by Brazilian designer Arthur Ditle

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July 17, 2009 at 2:36 PM