Every brand owner communicates with their consumer through a package of their product. The ability to make its presence felt on the shelf largely depends on how this package visually connects with consumer. For a brand owner perhaps the most persuasive opportunity is to make an emotional connection with consumer. Image on this package should have the ability to incite a reaction from the consumer that the brand wishes to illicit.

Add Life to Colors

Creating flawless skin tones, mouthwatering image of strawberry, alluring smooth caramel, creamy chocolate on those famous packs can be done with artistically finessed and technically executed colors. Achieving perfect and precise color in the image, sharpness, texture further enhances the emotional connection with consumer. This is achieved at GulfScan by their expert creative retouching team. Also an element of visual completeness and a special effect in the image is sometime difficult to shoot, which can only be done by creative retouching.

Trustworthiness

When a brand owner gets his core of creative concept through a visually connected image of his product, the package does not only look memorable, with high recall value but it enhances the trust of consumer in that package and product both. This is where GulfScan plays a very defining role of getting the image right.

Dependability

GulfScan is recognized as expert for exceptional creative retouching and skilled technical execution.  For over two decades, our creative imaging team is known for helping art directors and brand managers fully realize a brand’s vision in packaging and advertising – at home, on the go, at the store and on the shelf.

Competitive Edge – X Factor

We at Gulf Scan give an artistic finish to the images by bringing out the precise colors, sharpness, texture and that extra ‘x’ factor of integrated value giving these images full allowance to resonate emotionally with consumers. This way package jumps off the shelf and the brand bursts through the clutter. It makes the product look good enough to eat, wear and use. This helps brand owners gain a competitive edge in the marketplace.

The improper placing of doctor blades can cause streaking, hazing, drag outs, ink bleeding, blade chatter and ink spitting which causes a great deal of impact on printing cylinders and thus affects the print quality. Though incorrect finish of cylinder surfaces can directly contribute in producing undesirable quality initially but inadequate housekeeping definitely shortens the life of gravure cylinders.

As a cylinder maker, we need to ensure the roughness of the polished chrome surface and its pattern. But after printing the first run successfully and before using the set of cylinders second time on the machine it is extremely important how they are stored. White is a very abrasive ink which leads very quickly to an excessive wear of blade and chrome surface. Right choice of white ink supplier & brand and type of doctor blade gives you longer runs.

Another significantly important area is the adequate cleaning of the cylinders. Ultrasonic cleaning and spray wash equipments for the cleaning of gravure cylinders are available now and both technologies can be used for removing residues of printing inks from the cells of gravure cylinders, ink trays, doctor blades and other printing press components.

Due to the micro crack structure of the hard chrome and the fact that the solvents used in cleaning cylinders after printing may attract moisture, oxidation of the copper takes place under the chrome layer. Sometime you will see this by looking at the color of the exposed copper.

A very thin wipe of light oil or jelly and then wrap the cylinder in a plastic film protects the surface and thus keeps it in a good condition till the time you open it again for rerun. Cylinders must be dry and clean all times during storage.

Some eighteen years back in the days of film, it may have been the primary responsibility of the prepress supplier or printer to make sure the final results were accurate and optimal, in the days of digital file exchange; it’s a whole new ballgame. It’s no longer only prepress and print suppliers who have to accept accountability. These days, more than ever, the print buyer and digital file creator assume just as much responsibility as their manufacturing partners for quality control of direct PDF printing and more.

In the past few years, printers have noted that their customers are certainly becoming more adept at preparing digital files, but still most of them including both native application and PDF files, are flawed in some way. Bad files are being passed around – poorly prepared documents that cost the print buyers both time and money to remedy. While PDF has been lauded as the print industry savior, remember this: If flaws are resident are in the native application, they will remain in the PDF, as well. Simply taking your native application to a PDF and direct PDF printing does not ensure that these problems will be remedied.

We as a printer, with fifty years of prepress knowledge and experience in our bag do not stop at printing direct PDF only, unless we indulge in manipulating  and sometimes alter the file in any number of ways. We will apply trapping, make textual changes to the document on the customer’s behalf or RIP the file to the type of file format we need to drive our own proofing and CtP or Printing tools. If the original native application file sent from the print buyer to us is flawless – if all the elements are in place, fonts are embedded, graphics are all CMYK and resolution is high – this workflow should be relatively seamless, and the file will move through each of the stages without setbacks. However this happens seldom.

Various software handles quality assurance when installed on finishing equipments and drives the cost of quality down when handling process control by ensuring register control, eliminating faults, and inspecting die cutting and matrix removal for narrow web label printing industry. On the other hand our offline automatic high speed inspection machine does check hundred percent the offset printed die cut blanks and gives an extra comfort level to the print buyer.   Similarly our hundred percent offline inspection of printed labels ensures the customer a flawless label finally getting pasted around the bottles they fill in at a very high speed machines. This helps brand owners in getting their packaging printed, checked and delivered to them without any flaw and help them in protecting their brand identity.

Today at Gulf Scan, when we are not only involved in prepress and tool making but printing as well, so our scope of applying quality measurements and assurance does not get limited to only preflight and post-flight but goes beyond, that ensures the print buyers and their manufacturing partners a clarity about where and when in the workflow quality control is taking place. It is the extension of a shared value we had been practicing for the past fifty years to the printing process as well.

Packaging development is a process. Every step involved in development of package is important to the final industrial production, so maintaining the consistent quality standards at every level as a shared value shall only help brand owners building their brand strongly.

Every brand has a unique promise to its consumer. To maintain the brand identity, it is important for brand owners to look at the aspect of consistency most seriously.

When you prepare to process & standardize printing tools in terms of Rotogravure Cylinders for Gravure printing, Flexography plates for Flexo printing & offset plates for sheet-fed offset printing for the same brand package but printed on different substrates, it becomes extremely important that all of them should look same on the shelf space. This is where Gulf Scan plays a key role in bringing consistency.

Accumulated knowledge of over fifty years in handling prepress across the different processes has made us the only company which can do standardization of all forms of Printing tools, and thereby help building a packaging development process into a meaningful exercise. The concept of Packaging Development with standardization of printing tools is already practiced by a few multinationals. Gulf Scan’s packaging development team work very closely with brand owners and help them in achieving their target of Package Design exactly the way it has been conceived in the design studio. This does not only reduces the threats of imitations but ensures better brand protection.