Many of the graphic arts industry’s key digital technologies were advanced by Scitex and EFI prepress pioneer Efi Arazi, who has died aged 76.

Founder, president and chief executive for 20 years of Israeli-based Scitex Corporation – parts of which were sold to Kodak and HP – he went on to form his namesake RIP and prepress workflow company EFI in 1988.

EFI (Electronics for Imaging) launched the Fiery RIP/colour server in 1991 at the start of a period of massive growth in digital printing.

By 1994, EFI had been named Fortune magazine’s fastest-growing public company. With more than 20 million Fiery users today, it generates more than $650 million in annual revenues. Newsday says that while Arazi did not complete secondary education, MIT accepted him as an “extraordinary case”.

EFI chief executive Guy Geht says he was one of the industry’s most influential leaders: “Though no longer with us, Efi’s spirit of entrepreneurship, brilliant creativity and love of innovation will always remain at EFI,” he says.

The one-time flagship of Israeli industry, Scitex spawned a mass of technology, including imagers and plotters – the latter used in mapping and textile printing applications – a high-end flatbed scanner and prepress systems which were hugely powerful by the standards of the day.

Its core business (sold to Creo and in turn, to Kodak) was supplemented by US-based inkjet web printing pioneer Scitex Digital Printing (also sold to Kodak) and wideformat printer maker Scitex Vision (sold to HP) as well as other interests including Aprion and the Contex joint venture.

He is credited by the EFI announcement with developing – while working for NASA in the late 1960s, while studying at MIT – the camera used to broadcast the Apollo 11 moon landing in 1969, but the reality may be when he was at Harvard and relate to an earlier moon mapping project.

Staff from the company are also to be found in a variety of other influential companies in the graphic arts industry.

All of which is history… the name has all but gone, and if you Google Scitex today, the chances are you’ll be directed to a ‘male enhancement’ website.

Arazi died on Sunday, his 76th birthday. He is survived by his fifth wife and two children.

Steve Dunwell, managing director of manroland Australia, recalls meetings with Arazi when his company, Media Tech distributed Scitex systems from 1986 to its acquisition by Creo in 2000.

“They were a great team and always made us very welcome,” he says. “And I was always impressed by his passion and drive.”

For a first meeting, Dunwell went to the Scitex headquarters in Israel very smartly dressed in pinstripe suit, “looking like an English banker”. He was somewhat surprised to find Arazi in somewhat more casual attire, including sandals and open-necked short.

“He didn’t say anything, but when we toured the factory later, he suggested I might like to drop the jacket and tie,” Steve Dunwell recalls. “I never wore a suit there again.”

–Peter Coleman