Prepress

GMG & Studio404 in colour collaboration at Packaging Innovations

Tuesday 13. August 2013 - GMG Color & Studio404 team up to highlight 'brand critical' colour management for packaging design & print at Packaging Innovations

At Packaging Innovations, GMG Color, colour management software experts, teams up with Studio404, a specialist packaging design graphics studio (Stand GB3) to show the synergy between innovative design and ‘brand critical’ colour. Achieving Industry-standard colour drives both companies and visitors to the show will see how this is implemented in Studio404’s design, prepress and 3D mock-up services – all enabled by GMG innovative technology.
Studio404 was the UK launch customer for the GMG OpenColor software package. At Packaging Innovations Studio404 will be showing its unique streamlined workflow process which takes creative packaging design concepts and turns them into engineered solutions that are ready to be printed.
This process includes combined artwork and reproduction, colour management and mock-up production, together with end-to-end consultancy which enables Studio404 to create a finished product that is as authentic to the original creative design as possible but which is cost effective to manufacture and which also fulfills the practical specification in terms of packaging performance.
“GMG OpenColor software has been a vital technological breakthrough for us and we are delighted to share a stand with them at such an important industry event,” says Studio404 Technical Director Allan Bendall. “Traditional colour management techniques have very successfully controlled the four-colour process but the print world increasingly wants to be able to control more than four colours to build flexibility into the supply chain.”
“GMG OpenColor enables us to measure the colours spectrally, rather than taking traditional colour measurements. This is a huge step forward, as it takes into consideration the level of transparency or opacity associated with any given ink. We assessed a couple of other solutions for multicolour profiling on the market, and came to the conclusion that they are simply not effective to the level that the market demands,” he says.
Alongside, GMG shows the importance and benefits of managing colour from packaging and label concept all the way through to the finished product – every time, anywhere, on any material, and by any printing process.
Continuing its ongoing partnership with Epson, GMG will be demonstrating its industry leading proofing solution GMG ColorProof on an Epson Stylus Pro WT7900. The 24-inch printer uses white ink to add clarity and colour to package proofs and is ideally suited to the GMG ColorProof software which offers precise and predictable spot colour simulation. Brand owners have very high colour accuracy expectations, no matter where something is printed, and GMG OpenColor is designed to address this complex and error prone problem in package production. It creates high-quality multicolour profiles simulating the printing behaviour of diverse printing technologies and media types – if necessary, without use of ‘proprietary chart-based’ press fingerprinting. Its unique, spectral-based colour model results in better colour simulations than any other proofing solution available.
Brands and colour are inextricably linked. However, managing consistent and repeatable colour across different print technologies, different ink types and substrates presents many challenges for brand owners seeking to control and protect their brand identity. GMG OpenColor was developed specifically for multi-colour printing environments and it will be demonstrated at the show. GMG OpenColor gives prepress specialists, print firms, agencies, and brand owners the ability to accurately predict how spot and process colours overprint, so that results on multiple different presses are perfect. This key capability ultimately enables brands to reduce time to market significantly and with the added benefit of reducing costs during the production process.
GMG also shows GMG CoZone, its online solution which makes GMG colour management more accessible, more affordable and available to creative professionals who need to protect brand identities and colour attributes globally. GMG CoZone Collaborate, which provides cloud-based design and content approval, is demonstrated at Packaging Innovations. This will be followed shortly by the Manage and Deliver modules which will mean that GMG colour conversion can be carried out in the cloud without investment in hardware whilst allowing a seamless connection to GMG-calibrated proofing inkjet printers, delivering an end-to-end, colour-accurate workflow.