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Proofing System Helps Produce 191m Catalogues

Edited by the Printingtalk editorial team Nov 12, 2007

One of the world's largest print production jobs with a total of 191 million copies was significantly helped by the use of GMG's Colorserver proofing system.

Colorserver enabled a claimed 50 per cent reduction in pre-press corrections at IKEA, whilst the homogeneity of the data separated for printing was greatly improved, said GMG.

The quality of Colorsever's performance was also instrumental GMG winning IKEA's Tulip Award, which is presented annually by Inter IKEA Systems.

Every year, Inter IKEA Systems issues an invitation to representatives of all the companies from the pre-press and printing sector that were involved in producing the IKEA catalogue for the following year.

IKEA takes the meeting as an opportunity to address problems occurring during production of the catalogue and to give an outlook on catalogue production in the coming year.

In previous years, IKEA had criticised quality fluctuations during production of the catalogues at up to 25 different printing locations around the world.

This year, IKEA's quality demands could be fulfilled when producing the 2008 catalogue.

Compared to previous years, one of the key changes in this year's catalogue production operation was the switching of colour management to an RGB-based workflow - known as IKEA Color Family at IKEA - with GMG Colorserver at its heart.

Every year, the repro departments at IKEA optimise several thousand images to a point where they can be approved by the creative director on the master proof.

The colour space simulated on the master proof was tailor-made for IKEA by GMG and covers offset and gravure printing.

GMG's Colorserver is used not only for converting the RGB data in to the master proof, but also for matching the colours to the definitive output standard.

Robert Weihing, the managing director of GMG, said: "We are proud that our commitment to the IKEA project has been honoured in such a way and we are delighted about the highly positive climate that has developed between IKEA and GMG and that will no doubt be maintained in the future.".