Prepress
X-Rite Brings New Emphasis on Color Management to SkillsUSA Graphic Communications Competition
Wednesday 16. June 2010 - New Color Management and Measurement Skills will Help American Students Better Compete on Global Level
X-Rite, Incorporated (NASDAQ: XRIT), the world leader in color management, measurement and communication technologies, today announced that it has been chosen by SkillsUSA Competition to help introduce new color management and measurement skills to the Graphic Communications Competition on both regional and national levels.
This years national SkillsUSA Competition will return to Kansas City June 21-25, 2010 for its 46th annual National Leadership and Skills Conference, a showcase for technical education students from across the United States. More than 14,000 students, teachers, educational leaders, and representatives from more than 1,100 national corporations, trade associations, businesses and labor unions will attend the event.
The Graphic Communications Competition will be one of 96 hands-on skill and leadership competitions, and will include an end-to end real-life production contest during which students will be asked to preflight a job and create production-ready files that match a provided sample. They will then have to demonstrate their pressroom operation skills including offset lithographic press preparation, plate installation and make-ready. Ultimately they will have to produce a four-color job on a two-color press.
Patrick Klarecki, Interim Director at the School of Design and Manufacturing Professor of Printing Management at Ferris State University explains: “This year, we are placing a whole new emphasis on color management. Historically, students had to prepare a 4-color job to be printed on a 2-color press, and that was it. When I came back from the international competition last year, there was a great deal of emphasis being placed on color management and color measurement during prepress and make-ready. It quickly became obvious that the European and the Asian education systems were somewhat further along in the teaching of color measurement by the numbers, even at the high school level. With X-Rites assistance, we are now able to introduce these concepts into the offset press operation for the first time here in the national American competition. Now, not only will the student have to run a press, but we are going to ask them to take density readings, L*a*b* color space readings and plot variances every 100 sheets, while the press is running.”
Other elements of the Graphic Communications Competition include production planning, finishing, an oral professional assessment and a technical knowledge test.
“We are honored to participate in this amazing demonstration of our youths skills and talent and are thrilled to be able to support SkillsUSAs efforts to ensure the future of the graphic arts industrys highly skilled work force,” comments Jennifer Elliott, X-Rites Strategic Director of Marketing for Graphic Arts Solutions.
As a major sponsor of Graphic Communications Competition, X-Rite has donated seven 528 spectrodensitometers for use during the competition. In addition, X-Rite will present a seminar for the educators to help them develop curricula featuring fundamentals of color management and the use of color measurement tools. X-Rite will also award prizes to secondary and post secondary medal winners including: an i1XTreme package for gold medal winners, ColorMunki Design packages for silver medalists and ColorMunki Create packages for bronze medalists. All participants will also receive X-Rite ColorChecker Passports to help them continue to hone their color measurement skills long after the competition is over.