Heidelberg

Allied Printing has developed a reputation for treating customers like royalty through full-service capabilities and a deadline-conscious, dedicated staff. BY ERIK CAGLE Allied Printing is celebrating its 50th anniversary by following the credo instilled by its founder, John F. Sommers: Never say no to a customer. And while the landscape of the commercial printing industry has witnessed numerous changes in the way business is conducted, it seems that Mr. Sommers' motto has enjoyed a nice, long shelf life. Never saying no, naturally, means always saying yes—an expensive proposition—yet it is one that has worked for Allied Printing Services Inc. Located five miles east of

Expanded color gamuts, strategic digital halftone proofing launches, imposition proofers and multi-setting thermal devices highlighted the digital proofing component of GRAPH EXPO 99. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO What were the digital proofing flares shot out at GRAPH EXPO 99? One glaring signal: Digital halftone proofing is still riding a high. Equally hot for the contract proofmakers were new devices offering expanded color gamuts, two-sided imposition proofers, new multi-purpose thermal proofsetters and refined remote proofing promises—all of which captured the attention and scrutiny of show attendees, who are looking to purchase the next contract proofer and want to know . . . Who joined

The call for open, device-independent color management is driving more and more prepress workflows. Are closely woven color management tools on the way out? Is ICC compliance the best route for color control? BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO An overall ease of use and a simplification of the process; these may be the two strongest desires driving color management for any prepress professional advocating some sort of consistent, cross-platform, color management standard. Is International Color Consortium (ICC) compliance the answer? Are new, device-independent color management software solutions the key to unlocking color bottlenecks? Recently, Printing Impressions posed these and other questions to a sampling of

The seminar business is really a branch of show business. There are hits and there are flops. And sometimes it's completely mysterious why one show is a hit and another a flop. Working with Seybold Seminars for the last few years, I've observed the mysterious situation whereby some of the conferences are a much greater success than others. And the exact reason can be tough to pin down. (If it was easy, they'd always be hits!) This year's Seybold San Francisco program was an extraordinary success. Several people told me that it was the best conference they'd been to in the last few years. I'm not

TOKYO—Smaller than two years ago and with fewer visitors, IGAS 1999 nevertheless managed to attract genuine foreign printer-visitors this year. In previous years, foreign interest was shown primarily by dealers and distributors for Japanese equipment and materials, as well as area managers for overseas suppliers. Now, after many years of persistent efforts, the organizers of IGAS have at long last agreed to fit into the four-year cycle of the major international graphic arts shows: Drupa, Ipex and Print. Business in Japan is only beginning to come out of a severe recession. The buying and investment effects of a renewing confidence, though, will probably

The latest digital imposition tools are object-independent, page rotating, PDF imposing signature refiners—automating even further the territory once governed by the meticulous manual stripper. BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO Manual stripping. One day—perhaps today—the task of manual stripping will seem as foreign a concept to the seasoned graphic arts professional as does the nearly lost art of photo engraving. Current imposition tools perform a flexible and varied set of clever tasks: Digitally imposing signatures that can be output on a variety of PostScript-compatible devices, from the digital press to a platesetter to an imagesetter; Rotating and viewing any object on any signature; Creating complete, precise impositions in

Lake County Press, a $38 million sheetfed printer, pulled beta duty for Prinergy—a new Adobe PDF, PostScript Extreme digital workflow. The results? BY MARIE RANOIA ALONSO The mission statement of Lake County Press, a three-decade-old, $38 million high-end commercial printer based in Waukegan, IL, says it all: Lake County Press (LCP) is committed to the pursuit of excellence and fairness, and will fulfill its customers' graphic communication needs by being an innovative resource relying on the expertise of dedicated, highly skilled employees, utilizing the finest equipment and the latest technology. The latest technology. Most recently, LCP served as a beta site for Prinergy, the new workflow

There's A dirty little secret among some of the country's largest printers. It's not something they all want their competitors to know. And it has to do with the most overlooked part of the print stream. Their secret? The bindery can sell print jobs. Traditionally, the bindery was seen only as a necessary evil, the unpopular room tucked in a corner of the plant, where the product was finished once all the "real work" of designing and printing was done. Print buyers would look for companies with the most advanced prepress areas and pressrooms, and then expect that the product would be cut, folded

BY ERIK CAGLE It cannot be said that Terry A. Tevis ever sat around wondering when that one opportunity—which would give meaning to his professional career and validate his place in the commercial printing industry—would fall in his lap. Tevis, a 1999 Printing Impressions/RIT Printing Industry Hall of Fame inductee, decided that instead of waiting for opportunity to come knocking at his door, he'd kick a few down. He was satisfied with carving a niche for himself at one company, where he could settle in for the long haul in a comfortable position. Even as Tevis prepares to accept the Hall of Fame honor

You say your shop wants to improve reproduction quality to land more high-end work, but you're not sure you can afford it? Well, the people at Beechmont Press, a mid-sized, Louisville, KY-based printer, say you probably can't afford not to. After making a firm commitment to quality improvement, Beechmont put its production methods and materials under the microscope, and managed, quite profitably, to capture its own high-end slice of the market. Beginning with the obvious, Beechmont management focused on equipment. They installed a five-color, 40˝ Speedmaster, and they gave their conventional prepress an electronic makeover. But along with high-performance equipment purchases, they developed a simple theory: