Grow Color Gamut to Make Signage Pop

At its core, signage has two jobs: Get your audience’s attention and convey your message so it sticks. It sounds simple, but audiences — and messages — can be fickle; being off by just a shade, quite literally, can cost you one or both of these objectives. Grabbing audiences’ attention has become an art in and of itself, one largely reliant on contrast, bright colors and memorable visuals. To that end, many printers have been working to expand their color gamut, putting more tools in the design toolbox. But increased color gamut is much more than new inks and the presses to use them: It’s about color management, too. Being able to produce increasingly refined colors on the page becomes less valuable when the print doesn’t match what the design team sees onscreen. In this informative presentation today from 1 - 2:15 pm in Room 335, we’ll talk about getting the page and screen in lock-step, without costly reprints.

The session will be led by Toby Saalfeld, U.S. Director, Color Management for Ricoh Americas Corporation (Booth 1351). In this role, he designs color management innovations that focus on the real-world needs of commercial print, in-plant, publishing and design environments, with a vision to raise the bar industry-wide with services and products that make color management a worthwhile investment for anyone — from the design stage to final production.

Working in the production printing industry since 1996, Saalfeld has become a leading authority and expert on real world color management solutions. In 2012, he developed, and is now leading, Ricoh’s Color Elite Team — a group of highly specialized Color Management Experts located throughout the United States. Prior to joining Ricoh in 2009, Saalfeld held positions in engineering, sales and marketing, and worked at some of the top enterprise companies in the industry, including: Xerox, Konica Minolta and Hitachi Printing Solutions (both in Europe and the United States). Originally from Düsseldorf, Germany, Saalfeld is now based out of Los Angeles, CA. He is an IDEAlliance-certified G7 Expert and Color Management Professional Master.