Quark Inc.

As CANAMPAC sets its sights on attracting more national brands, it's clear that change is a fundamental certainty in its progression and its appeal to packaging end-users.

Continuous improvement initiatives and advancements in technology are constantly in motion at DWS Printing Associates in Deer Park, N.Y. Arthur Staib Jr. and his brother Allen Staib are now looking beyond the arrival of their new Heidelberg offset press due in late 2012 and already have their next major capital investment in the planning stages for 2013.

LEATHERHEAD, UK—The global market for digitally printed packaging and labels is projected to reach US $2.4 billion in 2009. Expanding by nearly three times, this market is forecast to grow by an overall 182 percent and a healthy CAGR of 23 percent to reach close to US $6.8 billion by 2014, according to a new study by Pira International.

GHENT, Belgium—The Ghent PDF Workgroup (GWG), an international association that helps produce and exchange digital documents for the publishing workflow, announced the availability of new GWG Packaging Specifications, offering best practices for PDF file exchange in packaging applications. The specifications developed by the GWG’s packaging experts were tested in North America by Kraft Foods Inc., and in Europe by France’s Square. The new specifications are downloadable for free at www.gwg.org. GWG Packaging Specifications Reduce Time-to-Market According to GWG Packaging Subcommittee co-chairs, Steve Carter, director of technology, St. Louis Division of Southern Graphics Systems, and Christian Blaise, international sales account manager for Enfocus,

For the first time XPLOR is organizing the international conference PDF FORUM for Print Production, February 1 - 4, 2006 in the Miami Beach Convention Center, Florida, USA. PDF has become the preferred format for the exchange of prepress data for print production. PDF is also the internal format of most of the production workflows for commercial and digital printing. Standards like PDF/X and JDF help streamlining these workflows. The chairman of the PDF-FORUM, well known PDF expert Stephan Jaeggi from Switzerland, has invited industry experts, advanced users and leading developers from the US and Europe to share their knowledge and experience about state

MIAMI BEACH, Fla.—Graphics of the Americas and Xplor International today reported that the "who's who" of the document communications and graphic arts industry have already contracted exhibit space for the co-located event with Graphics of the Americas held February 3-5, 2006 in Miami Beach, Florida. Projected to be one of the most successful to date, the combined exhibit is expected to host over 500 exhibiting companies, cover 500,000 square feet of exhibit space and draw over 22,000-plus print providers, technical and creative professionals from around the world. With the addition of Xplor's well-known educational curricula, attendees can also choose from over 200 conference sessions,

RESTON, Va.—Major industry players in the digital sector have shown their support for the upcoming GUTENBERG & DIGITAL OUTLOOK, April 28 - 30, 2005 at the Los Angeles Convention Center by offering digitally-oriented educational sessions as part of a special program originated by Graphic Arts Show Company (GASC). Large, digital products firms like Hewlett Packard, Adobe, Quark, Xinet and others have thrown their support behind this newly refocused event, lending visibility and credibility along with the expertise they bring with their participation in the educational portions and exhibit floor for the West Coast event. Hewlett Packard has shown their strong support for the West

In the world of packaging and package printing, digital asset management is also dynamic asset management. IT HAS BEEN suggested that packaging and advertising will mount the last defense of ink-on-paper against the onslaught of digital and virtual technologies. Try packaging a box of Wheaties on CD-ROM or wrapping a birthday gift in a graphical user interface. Now that the drama has subsided, the rhetoric has also cooled, leaving the industry to deal with new and evolving realities, among them, the proliferation of digital workflows and data requiring identification, categorization, and storage. What? Why? How? Any digital media file with value to an

What tricks can help printers handle trapping's complexities? By Terri McConnell An in-house prepress and plating operation can provide more precise control over image reproduction and can significantly reduce turnaround times, while offering tremendous flexibility for coping with last-minute remakes and inevitable scheduling changes. Some printers are electing to bring only the final "output" phase of the process in-house. They still rely on trade shops or color separators to perform all the magic required to transform a desktop packaging design into a plate-ready electronic job file that can be fed into a computer-controlled imaging device. And it is magic; design files supplied by the

Package printers are just now beginning to see the light at the end of a long tunnel of confusing, and often ill-fitting file formats. by Terri McConnell Even dynamite could not have changed the face manufacturing infrastructure of the printing industry more than the advent of desktop publishing and the subsequent adoption of PostScript. Up to that point, prepress automation was directed by a handful of highly-specialized equipment suppliers who built color electronic prepress systems (CEPS) around laser-powered film output devices. CEPS were, for the most part, closed, proprietary environments—not a big problem as long as the origin and form of printing content were