Written by Pedro Chaves
Creative Director & Marketing Specialist, Esko
Every campus has a building that becomes more than brick and timber. At Clemson, that building is Godfrey Hall. It’s where generations of students first walked in lost, intimidated, or simply curious… and walked out as part of the print industry’s next chapter.
Episode 5 of We Are Flexo takes us to Clemson University, to the rooms where so many careers began with a plate, a press, and a professor who refused to let students settle for “good enough.”
Inside Godfrey Hall, with its creaking floors and ghost stories, students discover their first real taste of production. The transition is immediate. They open Adobe for the first time and begin learning prepress theory. They design something simple, send it to the lab, and see their work come to life in ink. The moment a design hits the press sheet cleanly, precisely, unexpectedly perfect… that’s the hook.
Clemson’s flexo program grew because the industry trusted it. Paige Crouch, the program’s founder, started with little more than a small room upstairs, a used offset press, and enough ambition to fill the entire building. Industry partnerships did the rest. Support from companies like Esko didn’t just provide tools, it created a learning environment where students could fail safely, iterate, and push further each time.
Because in flexo, failure is not a setback. It’s part of the curriculum.
Students learn by running the press, setting plates, and troubleshooting registration. They learn the ins and outs of gear banding and understand what theory feels like when it hits substrate. They’re taught that printing is not just a process. It’s a way of thinking: observe, diagnose, adjust, improve.
By the time they reach their internships, two required for every student, they already know what production feels like. And companies know exactly what Clemson graduates bring to the table. Nearly a third of students land full-time roles through their internship connections. Many of those roles are in flexo. Many are with partners who have been supporting the program for decades.
There’s pride in that. Not the loud kind. The kind you hear in the voice of a professor who sees a former student solve a production problem on the job and send back a message saying: “I knew what to do. Clemson taught me how to think.”
The future of flexography isn’t defined by equipment or software alone. It’s defined by the people who walk through buildings like Godfrey Hall, overwhelmed on day one, confident by graduation, ready to lead.
Flexo thrives because the next generation cares. They see the craft, the impact, and the endless possibilities. And at Esko, we’re there to help and support. Programs like the one at Clemson give students the space to learn, to fail, and to discover the kind of career where every day ends with something real in their hands.
Episode 5 is a tribute to that journey:
From the nervous first walk into Godfrey Hall…
to the ink under the fingernails…
to the first use of the XPS Spark…
to the internship that turns into a career…
The future of flexo is already here.
It’s learning, experimenting, running, failing, and trying again.
It’s every student not only at Clemson, but all over the world, and every graduate who walks back years later to say, “I’m making a difference.”
And as I write these final words, I can only think of this:
Education should make the world better. Flexo just happens to do it with ink.
