Quality House of Graphics -- A Color Connoisseur

BY MARK SMITH

Upon returning from serving in the army during World War II, brothers Ozzie and Vary Aslanian founded a photoengraving shop in New York City. The name "Quality" was adopted sometime later, but management has always taken pride in the high level of craftsmanship offered by the company.

At the same time, Quality House of Graphics has been a leader in adopting new technologies. The philosophy guiding its investments is that craftsmanship is enhanced, not replaced, by technology.

Benchmarks in the company's history include being the first in its market to install a Quantel Graphic Paintbox, for high-end retouching work; and a waterless press, to push the limits of dry offset printing. Quality House of Graphics has since progressed to desktop solutions and gone back to traditional offset printing. Even so, it has continued to beta test new technologies and has been an early adopter of products, such as the Fujifilm FinalProof digital halftone color proofer.

As the company's Website notes, "Quality understands that technological obsolescence, although inevitable, is manageable and can also be exciting."

The family owned firm does business through several divisions—including Rapoport Printing and Gotham Graphics—but operates as one, integrated company under a single roof. A new digital fine-art printing division was slated to begin operating the first of the new year.

Quality's client base is concentrated in the high-end cosmetic, fashion, ad agency and music markets, primarily in the New York City area. "The prep/retouching market has shrunk, with clients doing more of the work in-house. That's left us with the real high-end, critical-color work," notes COO John Aslanian, the son and nephew of the two founders.

"We try to stay focused, for lack of a better word, on the high-end or quality-oriented market" adds Aslanian. "We don't want to compete with the 3,000 other companies that list themselves as printers in the state of New York. There's always somebody who can do it cheaper."

Analyzing Aliases
Part of the reason for operating under several names is because the company typically has different buyers for its prep/retouching work and for its commercial printing services, the company exec explains. Even in the cases where the work comes from the same advertising agency, the publication ad pages that Quality House of Graphics sends out as files or film come from one part of an agency, while the collateral pieces it may print are handled by another department.

The decision to expand into printing via acquisition in 1992 was based on the recognition by management that the pool of color separation work was shrinking. "We were also excited about the potential of waterless printing," Aslanian recalls. "We don't do waterless any more because we didn't have enough demand for the process. Waterless printing is something you either run every day, with your processes calibrated for it, or you don't run it at all."

The company does continue to use a specialty printing process called Stonetone printing, which was developed and patented by the founder of Rapoport. For black-on-black jobs, the process uses a separate black detail plate as an alternative to printing a four-color black.

One factor in its decision to stop using the waterless printing process was the difficulty in giving clients a clear understanding of what results to expect, particularly when Quality House of Graphics didn't handle the entire job. Its presses produced a much sharper dot, Aslanian says, so the printed sheets didn't match work run conventionally by other printers. Also, there was a related problem in trying to match proofs that were intended to represent a higher dot gain on-press.

"If you are not expected to match your product with anyone else, waterless printing is very helpful in achieving consistent color," he says. "We are not in that world, though. Our business is too interdependent with work from other sources."

According to Aslanian, the company's sales topped $30 million in 2000, with printing accounting for only about $12 million of that total. That means most of its work is being handed off to other printers (generally publication printers) for final production. Therefore, proofing is a critical component in making sure that its work meets customer expectations.

Quality House of Graphics ships about 40 percent of its prep work to publications as digital files, but within the year that ratio should jump to 60 percent, reports Peter Henn, plant manager. The firm worked in partnership with the Associated Press to develop the AdSend digital delivery system for newspaper ads, and also has been active in the effort to develop file format standards, such as TIFF/IT P1 and PDF-X.

As a consequence, Quality House of Graphics was an early adopter of digital proofing, starting with the installation of one of the first Kodak Approval systems. When it came time to upgrade its capabilities, Aslanian says the buying decision was put on hold when management learned that Fujifilm was about to introduce a new digital halftone proofer—the Luxel FinalProof 5600.

The company already was using the Fujifilm Color-Art analog proofing system and had two of the manufacturer's PictroProof thermal transfer, continuous-tone digital proofers, which are used for internal color checks and approval of major color moves or retouching. "I already had a degree of confidence in the company because the majority of the materials we've used for the past three or four years were Fuji brands," Aslanian says. "We haven't had a bad product—plates, film or proofs—in years."

As for this specific device, the company exec says the FinalProof's use of color pigments, instead of dyes, was a key selling point. "Pigments are much more consistent in terms of color, and they're what is used in analog proofing systems. In fact, the FinalProof media uses the exact same pigments as the Fuji Color-Art. We feel comfortable in saying that it is an exact match."

Quality House of Graphics' client base generally demands it go the extra mile to maximize the match between product and printed piece. This is particularly true of cosmetic accounts. Aslanian says that it's not uncommon for his shop to be given hundreds of lipstick, eye shadow and mascara products—along with the corresponding hard copy or files—and be asked to match its output to the actual physical product.

"We're asked to match how it looks on the art director's skin, and not the way it looks on the product cap or the applicator," he adds.

Film or Digital File?
Typically, the question of doing a digital or analog proof simply is a matter of whether the final output is a digital file or film separations, rather than customer confidence in the digital technology, Aslanian says. However, the company does have clients that insist on an actual press proof, which is another part of the reason Quality House of Graphics got into printing. If the same ad is being sent to a number of magazines, sometimes it's just a case of press sheets being more practical than duplicate proofs, he explains.

Given the subject matter it deals with most, Quality House of Graphics had to come down on the side of halftone dots in the great "dots/no dots" digital proofing debate, the company COO says. "We are supposed to be the experts, so we put ourselves at risk when we don't have a dot in the final proof. If a client ends up with a moiré pattern, as the prepress provider we are responsible.

"Some jobs don't require a proof with halftone dots, but most of the consumer magazines want a dot-based proof. You are not going to send a no-dot proof to Elle or Vogue magazines," Aslanian explains. "Our customer service people are very astute. They know what an application requires. We will override what the client says and make a better proof to avoid the 'cost' if something goes wrong. Even if we are not technically liable for the cost of a make-good, we risk losing business."

While digital files are becoming the majority of Quality House of Graphics' output, it has yet to make the move to computer-to-plate production in its own printing operation. A big part of the reason the shop hasn't jumped to CTP is because it only has four presses, Aslanian says. But ensuring that it meets customer expectations is an issue here, too.

"We have an implied understanding with clients that the film or file that makes the proof is the same one that goes out the door. When we do press proofs, we need to be able to use the same file to make the plate as we send to a magazine. Until the dust settles in terms of standard file formats (driving platesetters), I'm not comfortable with using CTP internally," he reveals.