Westland Printers--Improved Savings With Digital Proofing

And the digital proofs contribute to clearer communication, particularly between agencies and their clients.

"Before computers replaced drawing tables, a designer envisioned what he or she wanted to create and made a rough comp. Then the designer went to the client, made a sales pitch, and returned to create finished work from the rough comp," Snyder explains.

Now designers do all their work on the computer. The comp is printed to a desktop color printer.

"Everyone is misled," he says, "because they take a color comp to an end user, who thinks it's beautiful and OKs it. Then it gets output on the Kodak Approval [which has been press calibrated] in CMYK on our end, and now the colors don't match. All of a sudden, there's a big problem."

Westland Printers encourages its clients to utilize the Kodak Approval for comp and design decisions, following a lead set by marketing communications firm Garruba, Dennis, Konetzka. "Their people come here first. They do color tests with the digital proofer, then sell their client on the exact colors we will be producing for them," Snyder says.