NASHVILLE, TN—A T-shirt emblazoned with Yoda’s iconic “Do or do not. There is no try” line, copious references to The Big Bang Theory and likening some of the International Organization for Standardization’s work to a romance novel—this was the environment attendees to Forum 2015’s first session Monday found themselves. But with a cadre of translators, “De-Geek The Geeks” lived up to its name, enabling the audience to navigate the world of standards and come away with an understanding of what they do for the printing world. The session was chaired by Malcolm Keif, California Polytechnic State University, and Joe Tuccitto, FTA.
The session started with a simple question: Why are standards important? Keif brought two self professed geeks—Dr. Danny Rich, from Sun Chemical Corp., and Steve Smiley, from SmileyColor & Associates—to offer an explanation laden with acronyms, technical jargon and numerals. Admitting he didn’t understand a word they had said, Keif then invited a host of “interpreters” to help answer that same question. They included:
- Steve Balschi, Printpack, Inc.
- Richard Black, All Printing Resources, Inc.
- Robb Frimming, Schawk!
- Mark Mazur, FTA Hall of Fame member
- Lon Robinson III, Tension Corp.
Seeking to relate with the audience, Robinson posed what might be the defining question of 2015: What color is the dress? Taking a poll of the audience, he said that one key reason for standards is to leave the argument up to people, and take the screen you’re viewing the dress on out of the equation.
“Standards are important, so I can trust my device,” he said.
Citing one of the most ubiquitous standards, Keif pointed to the unit of measurement known as the inch. He recalled the time when the inch was said to be three pieces of barleycorn, before it was defined as being equal to 25.4-mm. in 1959, as a real world example.
Smiley returned to give an overview of ISO 12647-6, “process control for the control of half tone color separations, proofs and production prints in flexographic printing.”
“The rest of the world accepts PDFs, but the U.S. struggles with that—I don’t know why,” he wondered aloud. Smiley ran through details of the standard, including its goals, various requirements and file format. Mazur followed with a discussion of characterization reference printing conditions, comparing seven conditions’ substrate, U.S. reference and European reference, and use cases.
With a stage full of contributors to Flexographic Image Reproduction Specifications & Tolerances (FIRST), the panel brought up the most recent 5.0 iteration. “If you pick up a copy of FIRST, that’s like layman’s terms for standards. It’s a whole lot easier to understand,” Balschi pointed out.
Frimming chimed in that FIRST can serve as a gateway to easing into standards. “You dig in, you look up the standard you’re looking for, and it references other standards,” he said. “You find that you’re getting deeper and deeper into the standards world.” Robinson agreed, stating that FIRST’s authors often use standards as a reference point.
Moving on from ISO 12647, the session then covered ISO 3664:2009. “If you think daylight is simple—think again!” said Rich, launching into an overview of the standard, which seeks to model how to differentiate between a good daylight simulator, a not so good daylight simulator and a really bad daylight simulator.
Running through the nomenclature that makes up 3664, he highlighted three key measurements:
- Intensity
- Irradiance
- Radiance
Aiming to further distill 3664 to its most basic and adhere to the session’s mantra, Rich offered a shortcut. He said terms in the standard which contain the root word “lumin” are essential to understanding it.
Richard Black, who was the recipient of the 2015 FTA President’s Award Sunday night, tackled a topic relevant to the standard: Metamerism. Black explained the idea, when two objects look the same under one light source, but different under another light source. With different lighting situations in different stores, there is a need to evaluate product packaging in more than one environment.
Keif posed a final question to the panel: Can you partially follow standards? Taking a moment to ponder that, answers from two schools of thought emerged.
“It’s a process,” Robinson admitted. “I can’t go from not doing standards, to being fully compliant with the standards. It’s not gonna happen. But I can work my way there. Your goal should be to get to that full standard, but if you’re following the standard to the best of your ability, you’re getting there.”
Rich offered another take: “Partially following a standard is like partially tying your shoe—eventually, you’re going to get tripped up.”
Mazur gave an appropriate anecdote to close the session: In speaking with a CPC, he learned that the company found flexo enticing, but ultimately stayed away from the format. The reason? The CPC wound up with a different final product from each flexo printer it sampled.