It is with this in mind that a new spin on the tradition is introduced. To show the true potential of flexography, FLEXO. has teamed with the winners of the 2004 Flexographic Technical Association (FTA) and Flexo Market News Technical Innovation Award. The winning technology was HyperFlex resolution-enhancing software from Creo Inc. FTA member Inovar Packaging Group Inc. in Arlington, TX, stepped forward to print the cover.

  A two-man team had already come and gone to Inovar's Arlington plant to watch an actual printrun featuring the award-winning technology. The product, it was decided, should be featured on the cover in order to demonstrate how HyperFlex advances flexography in everyday printing. The event was documented photographically, and the images sent back to FLEXO. headquarters to be incorporated into an in-house cover design. AgroLabs, the consumer products company whose label is featured on the cover, was kind enough to send a labeled bottle for photographing.

  Four cover concepts were then put together by graphic design intern Benjamin Nunez. The original goal was to create a cover that showed the label-creation process, from prepress to shelf-ready product. "The gist of design No. 1 was to show the steps involved in creating the label," said Nunez. "That's why it had the color separation image in the background. The other images are just leading up to the print, and then the finished product in the front."

  Nunez admits the first design was a draft. Designs No. 2 and No. 3 were more subdued. "No. 2 was a simplified version of the first. So I chose one image that seemed popular and made that a more prominent part of the concept." For the last cover, Nunez simplified further and added a crystallized effect to the gradient. "I was trying to emulate the pomegranate label, which had a textured background similar to this," he said. The only difference between the third and fourth images, he said, was an extra image added for filler.

  The crystallized effect was added to the first three covers, and the four designs were routed through Inovar and Creo. The decision was made to go with No. 4.

  Quick Fixes

  An Adobe Photoshop file was sent to Inovar to be prepared. "We opened it and color-corrected it," began Mitch Long, one of Inovar's Prepress Department co-managers. "We had to go into the label and look and see if there were bad areas that were going to be noticeable."

  Nothing stood out, according to Long. "I had to go through and clean things up on some of the white areas. After that, we went through three different proofs trying to get the color that we thought looked the best." Inovar uses color-correction software called ColorBlind, by Imaging Technologies Corp., Long pointed out. "We have all our presses fingerprinted for every stock that we use. So we were able to go into ColorBlind and correct it for the press we were using."

  From the proofing stage, the only change was a slight brightening of the crystallized pattern on the top. Other adjustments were on the image of the bottle. In addition to some flash marks, the camera didn't pick up the strength of the gold color. Created using silver inks from Eckart America, then printed four-color process using a custom-made ink set from ANI Printing Inks, the gold effect was a major focal point of the original Pomegranate Juice label. "If we printed that and put the silver behind it, the silver would have shown through," said Long. "The label went from gold on the outside to silver. So we had to fill it in with magenta and yellow to make it a solid gold panel."

  Putting Technology to Work

  "HyperFlex is used throughout the whole cover," noted Russell Huff, plant manager at Inovar. As with the original Pomegranate Juice label, Huff fell back on his mighty black pen to point out all the areas where HyperFlex pushed the image to its limits: the transition from the blue press to the crystallized gradient; the reproductions of the red-to-yellow gradients on the Pomegranate Juice label; shadows underneath the label mid-production; and the interaction of the roller and the white label.

  "The cover is a terrific application of HyperFlex," said Steve Miller, Creo's product manager of packaging workflows. "The subtle vignettes created by the designer really make the label unique, and the transparency effects in the background image really highlight the advantages of our screening solutions."

  Once on press, a bit of tweaking was done to make sure the cover looked its best. "There's a slight difference in the gold that's on the cover just because of the picture itself," said Huff. "The only issue was how we would work it inside the text. Originally we had a trap with the shadow around the word FLEXO. without the silver behind it. After a trial run, we decided to bring the silver all the way to the edge. It was simply a matter of how much silver we put in it." Huff and his crew ended up putting 100-percent coverage of the silver ink behind the mast, the headline text and in the main picture of the labeled bottle.

  The cover itself wasn't the only thing tweaked in the process. Between the original label printrun and the production of the cover, Inovar boosted the potency of its HyperFlex screening software. "We had been working with Creo to get some of our Maxtone and HyperFlex screening perfected," said Wade McCray, Prepress Department co-manager with Long.

  "Wade and I talked to Creo about some of the problem areas we had been having," added Long. "Wade did some tests and we fingerprinted the press again. Creo came back to us with a patch. The cover project and the inserted label use that new patch." As a result, Inovar has jumped its line screens from 150 to 175. The inserted label and the cover were both produced at the new, higher resolution. "It looks a lot better!" Huff declared.

  Final thoughts on the cover were overwhelmingly positive. "I'm completely satisfied," said Huff. He noted the cover's strongest points to be the clean and vivid colors.

  "There are no harsh breaks, no dot squeezing and nothing that sticks out that you  could be displeased with," agreed McCray. Long followed up with, "Back when we didn't have all the technology we have now, there's no way we wouldn't have harsh breaks." He even went so far as to say, "The cover looks like an offset print."

  "Inovar's experience demonstrates that brand managers value the improvements and are essentially 'voting with their dollars,'" said Jonathan Agger, Creo segment marketing manager for packaging. "I hear similar stories from all of our HyperFlex customers. It's remarkable!"