Duggal Visual Solutions in New York is an excellent example of how a company that began as a big-city photo lab has evolved to offer whatever types of digital imaging, printing, and ancillary services their clients might need.
Over the past 50 years, Duggal has helped some of the world’s leading image-makers communicate visually with their customers and audiences. Duggal’s corporate clients include Polo Ralph Lauren, Disney, Victoria’s Secret, Verizon, Tiffany’s, Lancome, and more. They also work for many galleries, photographers, designers, and museums such as The Museum of Modern Art.
Duggal’s large-format images have been displayed worldwide from Tokyo to Vienna, from the Capitol Rotunda in Washington, D.C. to Grand Central Station in New York, and in almost every high-end retail store on 5th Avenue.
A History of Innovation
Duggal Visual Solutions has always been at the forefront of photo processing and enlargement. In the 1960s, founder Baldev Duggal revolutionized film processing by using his keen understanding of photography to design and build the first Dip and Dunk processing machine. In the 1980s, Duggal was the first company to introduce sophisticated RGB drum scanning and electronic retouching for photographers.
Today, Duggal uses advanced LightJet photo printing equipment to make continuous-tone photo prints up to 72 x 120 inches and HD C-Prints with an apparent resolution equal to 6100 dpi. Duggal also offers high-resolution, G7 color-managed photography services, photo retouching, and enhancement of computer-generated imagery.
As an early adopter of large-format digital printing technologies, Duggal helped clients explore how high-quality images could be printed on many types and sizes of materials for use in everything from outdoor billboards, banners, fleet graphics, and retail window displays to custom wallcoverings, immersive event graphics, and spectacular art installations.
In 1993, Duggal was the first company to fully wrap a building in a large-format photographic mural. Today, they use a fleet of UV flatbed presses and latex, dye sublimation, and archival pigment photo printers to print visually striking images on a huge range of flexible and rigid materials for indoor and outdoor displays.
In addition to printing images on vinyls, textiles, canvas, wallcoverings, and art papers, Duggal can print images directly on display boards, aluminum, and wood substrates up to two inches. With the white inks on their UV flatbed presses that can print special effects on colored or metallic substrates.
Duggal’s lenticular imaging department produces images with a range of visual effects, including 3D, flip, animation, morph, and zoom.
Extensive Range of Services
Because of the versatility of large-format digital printing, Duggal has developed a wide range of supporting services for clients from many different fields, including retailing, architecture, sports events, and fashion. For example, some of the ancillary services that Duggal now offers include:
- mounting, lamination and framing
- digital signage and multimedia for interactive merchandising
- custom fabrication of displays, fixtures, and lightboxes
- event graphics production and installation
- design services for graphics, fixtures, store layouts, and event staging
- packaging comps and short runs of packaging with custom varnishes and embossing effects
- 3D printing of models, part facsimiles, and prototypes for package design
- installation and project management for retail store rollouts and campaign management
Digital Offset Printing
Duggal Visual Solutions has also expanded its printing capabilities to include “digital offset printing” with HP Indigo digital presses. With the HP Indigo presses, Duggal can serve corporate clients who want marketing materials that have been personalized or customized with variable data printing.
Now, the same creative agencies, designers and brands who trust Duggal Visual Solutions for excellence in photographic capture and processing and large-format visuals can also order visually rich print products such as brochures, catalogs, invitations, sell sheets, point-of-sale signs, photo books, portfolios, calendars, and art prints.
Recently, Duggal installed an HP Indigo 12000 Digital Press. The press is the only B2-format HP Indigo digital press in Manhattan and the first commercially-released HP Indigo 12000 installed in the U.S.
In addition to production speeds of up to 4,600 20 x 29-inch sheets per hour, the HP Indigo 12000 offers high-definition printing and the ability to print with 7 colors, including HP Indigo ElectroInk White and Fluorescent Inks. The HP Indigo 12000 can print on a wide range of materials including synthetic papers, canvas, window clings, and metallized and colored substrates.
With the speed and versatility of the HP Indigo 12000 Digital Press, Duggal can meet customer expectations for high-quality and quick turnaround of short-to-medium print runs.
The HP Indigo 12000 will also expand Duggal’s production volume in applications such as point-of-sale graphics, brochures, books, catalogs, and displays.
“Our team of graphic professionals and print industry veterans is committed to providing the highest level of service and quality. With that as our mission, we’ve found in the HP Indigo 12000 a better alternative to traditional offset printing for short-to-medium-run commercial printing needs,” said Mike Duggal, CEO, Duggal Visual Solutions, Inc.
The HP Indigo 12000 Digital Press joins Duggal’s existing fleet of HP large-format digital printing technology, including four HP Latex printers, as well as an HP Indigo 5900 Digital Press.
“Duggal is a pioneering force in the industry, consistently adopting cutting-edge technologies that have attracted a who’s who of the world’s leading brands and enabled them to push the boundaries of quality and creativity,” said Haim Levit, vice president and general manager, Indigo North America, Graphics Solutions Business, HP Inc. “With the new HP Indigo 12000 Digital Press, Duggal continues its tradition of being an industry leader. We look forward to collaborating with the Duggal team to bring the press’s breakthrough quality, productivity and efficiency to the creative and forward-thinking brands in New York.”