Sanpo-yoshi Communication

Printing Column] Common Sense in the Printing Industry That the General Public Doesn't Know

One day, Marushin's PR person told me, "A TV station will be coming to our company soon for an interview, and we are looking for a quiz on common knowledge about the printing industry that the general public does not know. Just a month earlier, I had led a factory tour for a new member of the PR team, so I asked him, "What information surprised you the most during that factory tour?" I asked him the reverse question.

This happened to me once. The sales person had been instructed to use a red color from a color sample called PANTONE that the customer had entrusted to us. The factory printed according to that color, but later the customer commented, "The red color is weak. Color varies depending on the brightness of the room and the light source. It often happens that even if the color is correct at the factory, it looks different to the customer.

So, I made the red a little stronger and resubmitted it. The response was, "The red is still quite weak. I thought I had made it darker, but it was better to make the red considerably stronger. The third time, I submitted it again with a red color that I honestly thought was a little too much, but the customer said, "The red is still too weak. The fourth time, the customer's quality manager came from Tokyo to attend the printing.

On the same day, I showed them the first to the third color chips and told them, "With our light source, the first chip looks the closest," but a surprising thing happened. He apologetically said, "The color of the first chip is really perfect, but I think the red of the PANTONE chip is weak," and the color chip he showed me was the same number, but it was an extremely red color. The color chips they gave me were the same number, but they were incredibly red. To tell the truth, the PANTONE chips that our sales staff had received had been at the client's Fukuoka office. The quality assurance department in Tokyo brought the chips to us, and each color was different from the other. Once we knew the correct color, it was ours. We were able to adjust the color immediately and the customer was happy to leave.

Many people think that color swatches are samples and that the same number means the same color. Although this should be the basic rule, since color swatches are printed materials, they can deteriorate, and colors can change from lot to lot. For this reason, it is necessary to check the lot number of the DIC color swatch (DIC has a lot number), and if it is a PANTONE swatch, it is necessary to borrow the customer's chip or explain that "we will match the color with the PANTONE swatch in Marushin, but any discrepancy in color from the swatch book is acceptable". We have a rule that we will always provide the customer with a chip. If our sales person asks for a tip, we ask for your cooperation.