How Al Kennickell Is Using His JETvarnish and Komori Offset Press to Make Digital Embellishment Look More Real

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QZWEiKvlbtg

When Al Kennickell took the virtual stage inside Taktisphere to talk about “avoiding the plastic look” in inkjet-based dimensional effects, he did more than share a technical trick. He opened a window into the kind of experimentation, cross-industry collaboration, and practical curiosity that is quietly pushing digital embellishment into a more mature phase.

The session, hosted as part of Taktisphere’s new member-generated live series, centered on a deceptively simple challenge: how do you preserve the tactile power of raised inkjet effects without making the finished piece look unnaturally glossy? In a market where embellishment is often associated with shine, foil, flash, and visual drama, Kennickell argued for a different kind of sophistication. Sometimes the goal is not more gloss. Sometimes the goal is realism.

That distinction matters.

Kennickell, whose operation has built a reputation for hands-on testing and pushing equipment beyond obvious applications, framed the problem in terms that any printer or converter exploring embellishment can understand. Glossy raised varnish can look stunning on the right job. It can amplify contrast, dramatize packaging, and give printed materials a sense of premium polish. But not every image or substrate benefits from that treatment. When printers try to simulate wood grain, leather, sand, stone, or other naturally matte surfaces, high gloss can work against the visual intent. The result can feel artificial, even cheap. What should look tactile and believable instead risks looking, as Kennickell put it, “plasticky.”

That challenge has technical roots. In conventional terms, a matte effect requires flattening agents, often clay-based particles, to cut shine. The problem is that those particles do not play nicely with inkjet heads. In practice, truly jettable matte dimensional varnish is not a realistic option with today’s systems. That leaves printers with a familiar question: if you cannot create the matte effect directly through the embellishment fluid itself, can you build it through process?

Kennickell’s answer is yes, and his session walked through how.

The path to that answer, however, was not neat or linear. That was one of the most refreshing aspects of the conversation. Rather than present a polished “here is the solution” case study, Kennickell described the messy, iterative reality of shop-floor R&D. He traced his journey back to the acquisition of a smaller MGI unit alongside a Konica Minolta KM-1, an investment that initially demanded more attention because of its scale and business importance. Only later, after upgrading to a larger format MGI with foil capability and adding more complementary technologies into the mix, did the team begin to treat embellishment as a true strategic weapon.

That word, weapon, came up with purpose.

Kennickell clearly sees embellishment not merely as an aesthetic add-on, but as a commercial differentiator. His philosophy is straightforward: if you can offer something competitors cannot, even before you have fully mapped every possible use case, you already hold an advantage. That mindset helps explain the intensity of the testing he described. Over a period of months, he spent roughly 100 hours in R&D, working through possibilities, failures, and unexpected wins. In his telling, experimentation is not a side hobby. It is an operating discipline.

The specific breakthrough discussed in the session involved using an offline coating process to “knock down” the gloss after the texture has already been created. By running embellished sheets through a coater with a dull aqueous coating, Kennickell’s team was able to preserve the raised texture while stripping away the shine. The result, at least from the samples shown during the livestream, was striking. Wood grain retained its tactile dimension but lost the artificial gloss that would have betrayed the illusion. Sand effects appeared textured and natural rather than wet-looking or laminated.

This may sound like a small adjustment, but it has broader implications. Much of the industry’s embellishment storytelling has focused on loud visual impact. Foils, metallics, high gloss spot effects, and tactile drama have dominated demo kits and sample books for obvious reasons: they photograph well, they sell “wow,” and they make strong first impressions. Kennickell’s work suggests the next chapter may be less about spectacle and more about control. Not just whether a printer can add texture, but whether they can tune the visual character of that texture to match the subject matter.

That is a more advanced creative proposition.

It also reflects a more mature commercial understanding of where embellishment can win. Kennickell repeatedly emphasized that his team is not interested in producing effects that only look impressive inside a lookbook. He drew a sharp distinction between embellishment samples that are flashy for the sake of being flashy and applications that fit the kinds of images customers actually buy. His team prints aircraft, beach scenes, golf courses, architecture, institutional materials, and high-end brand communications. The goal, he said, is to integrate embellishment into imagery people already use, not just showcase exotic textures on novelty subjects that rarely appear in production work.

That is one of the strongest takeaways from the session. Kennickell is not approaching embellishment as theater. He is approaching it as a sellable production advantage.

In that sense, the most valuable part of the livestream may not have been the matte coating trick itself, but the way Kennickell thinks about experimentation. He is testing with the market in mind. He is not trying to prove that a machine can do something cool. He is trying to determine whether that “cool” translates into business that customers will pay for.

The conversation also widened into another major industry challenge: uncoated stocks. For many high-end customers, especially those in luxury, education, or design-sensitive sectors, uncoated paper remains essential to the brand experience. Yet embellishment systems traditionally prefer coated surfaces, creating a tension between tactile innovation and substrate preference. Kennickell described multiple attempts to solve that problem, from double hits of aqueous coating to white ink foundations and different coating combinations. Some approaches worked functionally but introduced side effects like sheet curl. Others delivered acceptable results in some applications but broke down when finer detail or foil performance became critical.

Here again, the session’s value came from its honesty. There was no pretense that the puzzle had been fully solved. Instead, viewers got an unusually transparent look at ongoing process development. Kennickell shared not only what worked, but what still needed refinement. For shops navigating similar challenges, that kind of openness is rare and useful.

It also triggered one of the most telling moments of the livestream: the community jumped in. Comments from participants brought in knowledge from both Harris & Bruno and Neenah, including references to coatings designed to stabilize embellishment on uncoated sheets and the availability of specialty black embellishment-ready stocks. What could have been a one-way webinar turned into exactly the kind of peer-to-peer exchange Taktisphere has been trying to foster.

That dynamic may have been the real story of the event.

Taktisphere has positioned itself as more than a content platform. It is attempting to become a place where operators, designers, salespeople, suppliers, and equipment owners actively teach one another. Kennickell’s session offered a convincing proof point for that vision. He came in with a real production challenge, learned from others, experimented in his own environment, and then returned to share the results. In doing so, he embodied the cycle that many industry communities talk about but few manage to sustain.

There was also something refreshing about Kennickell’s lack of abstraction. He did not hide behind innovation jargon. He did not romanticize experimentation. He spoke like a printer. The purpose of all this testing, he said plainly, is to win new business. That candor gave the session its edge. His view is that 2026 could be a breakout year for shops willing to use embellishment strategically because the market is still early. Most printers are not doing this yet. Most buyers have still not seen its full potential. For those willing to push farther, faster, the field is still open.

That is a compelling thesis, and one that aligns with broader industry sentiment. The value era in print is increasingly defined by separation, not sameness. If standard ink on paper is becoming harder to defend on price alone, then the ability to make print feel more premium, more tactile, more memorable, and more differentiated becomes commercially important. Kennickell’s argument is that embellishment only reaches its full power when printers understand not just how to use it, but when not to use the obvious version of it.

That is where avoiding the plastic look becomes symbolic. It is not simply about dull coating. It is about nuance. It is about knowing that realism can be more persuasive than shine. It is about pushing embellishment beyond the expected. And it is about understanding that true innovation in print does not always come from a brand-new machine. Sometimes it comes from combining existing capabilities in smarter ways.

By the end of the livestream, Kennickell left viewers with an open invitation to reach out, compare notes, and share discoveries. That generosity felt consistent with the rest of the session. For all the technical specifics discussed, the larger message was collaborative: the industry is still figuring this out together, and the people who share what they learn will help shape where embellishment goes next.

For printers, converters, and designers paying attention, Kennickell’s session was a reminder that the future of embellishment may not belong only to those who can make print shinier, bolder, or more extravagant. It may belong to those who can make it more believable, more intentional, and more commercially useful.

In a field often driven by flash, that is a serious insight.

And if Kennickell is right, it could also be very good business.