GMG, supplier of high-end colour management and proofing solutions, has announced that the company has won the prestigious "Prize of Honour" Tulip Award, conferred annually by Inter IKEA Systems B.V.
Every year, Inter IKEA Systems B.V. issues an invitation to representatives of all the companies from the prepress and printing sector that were involved in producing the IKEA Catalog for the following year. Among other things, IKEA takes the meeting as an opportunity to address problems occurring during production of the catalog and to give an outlook on catalog production in the coming year. The "Prize of Honour" Tulip Award is conferred on the occasion of this meeting.
In previous years, IKEA had occasionally expressed clear criticism of the quality fluctuations occurring during production of the catalogs at up to 25 different printing locations around the world. This year, IKEA's stringent quality demands could be fulfilled when producing the 2008 IKEA Catalog - one of the world's largest print production jobs with a total of 191 million copies. According to Inter IKEA Systems, it is the best IKEA Catalog with the most homogeneous quality ever produced.
Compared to previous years, one of the key changes in this year's catalog production operation was the switching of colour management to an RGB-based workflow - known as IKEA Color Family® at IKEA - with GMG ColorServer at the 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 both offset and gravure printing. GMG ColorServer is used not only for converting the RGB data into the master proof, but equally for matching the colours to the definitive output standard.
The switch to the IKEA Color Family project based on GMG ColorServer enabled a 50% reduction in the prepress correction effort at IKEA, while the homogeneity of the data separated for printing was greatly improved.
GMG received the 2007 "Prize of Honour" Tulip Award in recognition of the great dedication of GMG that made it possible to turn the idea of the IKEA Color Family into reality.
"We are proud that our commitment to the IKEA project has been honored 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," says Robert Weihing, Managing Director of GMG GmbH & Co. KG.
Kayell Australia Pty Ltd
www.kayellaustralia.com.au
