Her fa­mous last name is syn­ony­mous with busi­ness of all spheres in Trinidad and To­ba­go, the re­gion and across the globe, from re­tail to man­u­fac­tur­ing. But for Car­ol Sab­ga, her de­ci­sion to start her own busi­ness in dig­i­tal print­ing was not a mere means of join­ing an es­teemed lin­eage of as­tute busi­ness peo­ple, but a way of shar­ing her pas­sion for graph­ic de­sign and all its ap­pendages with oth­ers. Vi­su­al Tech­nolo­gies which is lo­cat­ed in Mar­aval, is a dream ma­te­ri­alised for forty-five year old Sab­ga. Af­ter spend­ing the past 26 years liv­ing in the U.S. do­ing graph­ic de­sign she de­cid­ed to re­turn home to spend more time with her fam­i­ly, af­ter the pass­ing of her fa­ther six years ago. While liv­ing abroad, Sab­ga was able to gain the ex­pe­ri­ence and tech­ni­cal know-how, en­abling her to es­tab­lish Vi­su­al Tech­nolo­gies that boasts of cut­ting edge tech­nol­o­gy in de­liv­er­ing high de­mand goods and ser­vices to cus­tomers.

Ac­cord­ing to Car­ol how­ev­er, graph­ic de­sign as a col­lege stu­dent was not her first choice. "I went to study In­te­ri­or De­sign at In­ter­na­tion­al Fine Arts Col­lege in Mi­a­mi and when I fin­ished, I then pur­sued graph­ic de­sign", she ad­mits. Sub­se­quent to an in­tern­ship with in­te­ri­or de­sign­er Karen Aboud, Sab­ga re­al­ized that her pas­sion lied in graph­ic arts. "I did an in­tern­ship with Halsey Pub­lish­ing which pro­duced Sky Mag­a­zine for Delta Air­lines" said Sab­ga, who de­scribed the op­por­tu­ni­ty as in­ter­est­ing hands on ex­pe­ri­ence. She al­so worked with Bo­ca Rton News which was the lo­cal town's news­pa­per in Palm Beach Coun­ty. Af­ter var­i­ous stints with dif­fer­ent com­pa­nies, Car­ol en­gaged in free­lanc­ing her ser­vices, spe­cial­is­ing in qual­i­ty graph­ic art for restau­rants, Cham­pi­on Mo­tor Sport, tee- shirt de­sign among a pletho­ra of things.

On re­turn­ing to her home­land, Car­ol de­cid­ed to cap­i­talise on her ex­per­tise and train­ing, cre­at­ing a new idea for mun­dane print­ing ser­vices in Trinidad and To­ba­go. "I had a vi­sion or a new con­cept of a print shop and art stu­dio with state of the art equip­ment" she re­vealed. Al­though Sab­ga con­curred that oth­er shops may al­so use mod­ern print­ing tech­nolo­gies, Vi­su­al Tech­nolo­gies still re­mains com­pet­i­tive on the mar­ket. "I de­signed it where the open­ness of the lay­out cre­ates a free and friend­ly vibe where we take our work se­ri­ous­ly" she said. The busi­ness al­so of­fers a wide range of ser­vices in­clud­ing the pro­duc­tion of cat­a­logs, book­lets, pho­to books, ban­ners, lo­go de­signs, web­site buildin­gand even free ad­vice to busi­ness­es in util­is­ing print me­dia for their growth and de­vel­op­ment.

The use of dig­i­tal print­ing, ac­cord­ing to Sab­ga is quiteeco­nom­i­cal­ly vi­able and promis­es greater ver­sa­til­i­ty. "It's the new age of print­ing tech­nol­o­gy. Peo­ple can or­der less­er quan­ti­ties more fre­quent­ly un­like an off­set print­er where print­ing has to be made in larg­er quan­ti­ties. We al­so have a plot­ting ma­chine that us­es a plot­ting knife to cut out im­ages (lo­gos etc.) in­to the ex­act shape that you want it to, rather than stan­dard shapes on­ly" she says. Al­though Vi­su­al Tech­nolo­gies just opened its doors, Sab­ga has been able to at­tract a wide net­work of clients through­out the years and isn't wor­ried about her cus­tomer base. How­ev­er, she has faced a ma­jor chal­lenge in ad­just­ing to con­duct­ing busi­ness in Trinidad af­ter liv­ing abroad for more than two decades. "On ma­jor chal­lenge was­con­vert­ing my US way of think­ing to a Trinida­di­an men­tal­i­ty which us­es a British sys­tem of op­er­a­tions" she ad­mit­ted. Notwith­stand­ing the hur­dles faced, Vi­su­al Tech­nolo­gies promis­es to be a unique, mod­ern print­ing busi­ness that fo­cus­es on metic­u­lous de­tail and punc­tu­al de­liv­ery of ser­vices. Car­ol thanks her friends and fam­i­ly for their sup­port, es­pe­cial­ly her moth­er Rober­ta Sab­ga for her strength and courage af­ter the pass­ing of her hus­band (the late Car­los Sab­ga – avid boat rac­ing en­thu­si­ast and Check­mate team mem­ber).