Schawk claims first cloud-based print quality management platform
Schawk has claimed to have launched the industry’s first cloud-based print quality management platform, called ColorDrive
The brand management and pre-press specialist that ColorDrive is the first product of its kind to align measured and calibrated visual scores throughout the packaging development supply chain process to achieve the highest levels of consistency currently possible in the reproduction of a brand’s colours worldwide.
Schawk said that this allows marketers to objectively measure the success of meeting a brand’s color standards accurately and consistently on packaging by formalising, simplifying and integrating quantitative and qualitative colour measures.
It said that this is in contrast to today’s methods “which are either too subjective or too complex to deliver accurate measurements of colour consistently, leaving brands open to dilution of one of their key visual equities—colour”.
The firm said that ColorDrive creates the conditions required to deliver brand accurate colour consistently by creating a universal print-quality management platform that allows brand owners, premedia partners and printers to communicate about colour using the same technical language to convert visual assessments into numbers.
‘Consumer goods firms’
Schawk print services director Robb Frimming said: “ColorDrive has been road tested by three of the world’s largest consumer goods companies and has undergone significant development and refinement over the past ten years.
“We are excited to be able to release it to the market and are confident that it will deliver exceptional value to consumer products companies and printers operating multiple plants. ColorDrive is the only commercially available print quality management platform that is brand-centric and synchronizes color communication between marketer, premedia group and printer.”
Stephen Kaufman, chief technology officer at Schawk, added: “ColorDrive also differentiates itself in the marketplace because it’s been developed by a company—Schawk—that actually creates packaging deliverables.
“While the ColorDrive platform combines software and services, and does not require that Schawk be the premedia partner, we applied more than 50 years of technical knowledge about color management and packaging to the process of developing the product.”
Schawk said that its product is in use at 15 packaging printers in 30 locations to manage the print quality of the packaging for more than 35 brands in North America, Europe and Asia Pacific.
