Prepress
Greeting Card Pioneer Taps Apago for High-Volume Automation Tools
Tuesday 10. March 2009 - Apago Inc., a software technology company that provides innovative solutions to transform digital documents, today announces that Hallmark Cards Inc. selected Apago to provide technology and consulting services to facilitate the companys migration to a PDF workflow.
Each year, Hallmark produces and distributes 19,000 new and redesigned greeting cards and related products. The company turned to Apago to switch from legacy standards to PDF and to automate several steps in its high-volume production workflow, which processes as many as 2,500 files daily.
Apago helped Hallmark design and implement the new PDF workflow using a combination of Apagos retail products, including PDF Enhancer, PDFspy, and PDF Constructor, and custom applications from Apagos extensive technical library. The workflows are executed on two Apple Xserves, which run Apagos queuing software, Cluster Workflow. Hallmark uses the technologies for several critical production tasks, such as variable-data text substitutions, color corrections using 5+ channel device-link profiles, and XMP metadata tagging.
“Apagos solutions help companies like Hallmark to benefit and profit from new techniques and standards,” comments Dwight Kelly, president of Apago. “We listen to our customers needs and design customized solutions that solve their immediate and future needs. Hallmarks workflow, for example, can be easily expanded with new tasks or scaled to include additional servers should the volume increase significantly.”