Color Consistency: Achieving the Target
Tuesday, April 21, 10:30 a.m. – 12:30 p.m.
Session Chairs: Amy Jungerberg & Rick Guebert, GMG Color
Color consistency, from the time color has been matched to maintaining it throughout the run, is the focal point of this discussion. Presentations offer instruction on utilizing tools to measure and analyze color to meet and exceed expectations. The agenda will tackle:
- Setting expectations
- Artwork submission and separations
- Systems to capture color data—on press and off
- Systems to analyze the data—prepress inputs and proofs, real-time and post-run
- Building account-specific color libraries and/or using Pantone formulations
- Meeting expectations
Speakers are experts in their areas of flexography in various products and services with almost 70 years of combined experience in the industry. Our audience will be educated about the best and most practical options to improve consistency. Presenters and the topics each will address list out like this:
- Scott Thompson, VP/technical sales and innovation, sgsco, “Artwork Separations and Submission”
- Daniel Bohn, product manager, BST International, “Offline and Inline Measurement Tools and Systems”
- Dan Uress, CEO, Colorware USA Inc, “Color and Data Measurement Analysis”
- Steve Cooney, premedia lead, StarPak, “How Process and Technologies Help Meet Expectations”
This session will be a continuation from press optimization that comes prior to color consistency. Joint contributions of each presenter aim at setting the expectations, yet understanding the capacities of current technology, methods and theories of color to produce a quality and efficient product.
The process—from setting expectations, to artwork, measuring and analyzing color, all to meet the final agreed upon expectations—will be followed. We want printers for all types of packaging to better understand the technology, how it is accessible, and how it can help to keep pressruns consistent.
Our primary goal is to provide practical tools and processes, designed to better manage color consistency throughout a pressrun for both wide and narrow web applications. Examples of current hardware technology and software tools that can make the data useful, but also understand what the data is telling you, will be outlined.
Attendees will also hear about real success and real challenges with managing color consistency. We intend to demonstrate exactly how the process and the tools combine to manage and troubleshoot color consistency throughout a pressrun.
Inside the Minds of Brand Owners: Why We Care
Wednesday, April 22, 8:30 a.m. – 10 a.m.
Session Chairs: Karen Daniels, Basic American Foods & Michael John, 3M
As brand owners, we understand firsthand how critical color is. Consumers behavior trends, as identified by our marketing teams and presented in this session, will spark lots of conversation.
Questions we will cover:
- Spectral color vs visual color: Which to choose? What are the exceptions to the rules?
- Why do brand owners choose global standards over their own “secret sauce”?
- How can I better understand brand owners’ color quality expectations?
- Why do brands care about printers’ internal processes?
- How does the psychology of color, from a marketing and branding perspective, influence all our actions—including the consumer’s?
- Why does the impact of color choice in different cultures and geographies vary greatly?
- How can brand owners’ expectations and Print Quality Management systems (PQM) affect the production environment? How it is managed by the printer?
Delivering answers, from specific viewpoints, are these panelists, all of whom have extensive expertise in their fields and can offer great insight from their areas:
- Dan Blackburn, Kimberly Clark, brand owner
- Brigitte N. Bisson, Just Born, brand owner
- Steve Smiley, SmileyColor & Associates LLC, color specialist
- Bart Wright, Interflex Group, printer
During the panel discussion, we will use the FORUM 2020 event app’s polling feature with the audience. We will present each question to the audience, then discuss feedback with the panel.
Understanding the expectation of the brand owner is critical.In doing so, we must establish a process to achieve success (i.e., spectral color vs visual color matches) and why understanding acceptable variation on certain colors is critical to on-shelf color consistency throughout the life of a brand.
Attendees will see how important color is to a brand. Research has shown that consumers look at color consistency from package to package, across different sizes and specifically a brand image, then decide whether or not to make a purchase. Establishing and executing a repeatable process that falls within their expectations will aide in customer brand association and ultimately product purchasing.
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