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FullSWITCH success story:
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Hallmark Cards, founded in 1910, is a leading supplier of greeting cards.
With more then 3,000 new cards brought to market every year, Hallmark Cards Continental Europe
had an impressive archive of traditional films. The switch to digital started in 1999
when the company started using QuarkXPress and Adobe Photoshop
for some of its projects. A Digital Asset Management system was implemented in 2004
to archive the enormous number of digital files. The company switched to Adobe InDesign
on Apple OS X in 2006, paving the way for a purely digital, PDF-based workflow.
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Sourcing a high-speed, error-free workflow
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Hallmark Cards put together a team to identify a fast, automated, and error-free workflow.
Dejan Mladenovic, IT Manager, and Miranda Vink, Technical Support and Development Manager,
evaluated several prepress-workflow solutions from different suppliers, but none met
Hallmark Cards' criteria. According to Mladenovic, many of these workflow solutions had
too many options, which made them expensive and too time-consuming to work with on a daily basis.
When Vink discovered Enfocus FullSWITCH at a trade show, it proved to be the solution that
fit the company's needs perfectly. Plus, Wifac PDF Diensten en Systemen, Hallmark's house supplier
of software solutions, supports FullSWITCH, which was an extra advantage. "We were happy to have
been able to test a free trial version so we could see what FullSWITCH could do," explains Vink.
"We worked out a prototype of our preferred workflow, which was then set up in detail
by PDF Diensten en Systemen and Enfocus. They offered us a customized solution for a standard price."
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Extensive control guarantees top quality
The FullSWITCH-based digital workflow allows Hallmark Cards to work faster and more efficiently.
The FullSWITCH software also enables the company to support one of the critical parts of its production.
Although all prepress and print preparation work is done in-house, printing is outsourced,
as the European subsidiary does not have its own printing department. This means perfectly
controlled PDF files and a highly accurate color-management system are essential. Errors can
prove very expensive, plus they can damage Hallmark's reputation for producing high-quality cards.
Hallmark Cards considers every card to be a separate project that must be carefully checked and
proofed before it's sent to the printer. To meet this challenge, Hallmark uses FullSWITCH in
combination with PitStop Server to automate the flow of all incoming and outgoing files and
check them for color, overlays, fonts etc. This extensive control saves valuable time and
ensures the print-ready PDF files are 100% accurate. The files are then sent for proofing,
via FullSWITCH, to two Epson printers.
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Working smarter and cutting costs
"Our investment in FullSWITCH has already made our operation more efficient and
helped us trim costs," says Mladenovic. "After implementing the software,
we saw a significant drop in the number of errors. Plus it has enabled us to produce cards
faster and reduce the hours needed for manual control and fixing mistakes."
Setting up a proofing workflow with the ISO-certified Epson printers has been another huge advantage.
Handling proofing in-house save costs and time. And the time savings achieved using
FullSWITCH have afforded Hallmark Cards the opportunity to broaden its range of
cards and develop more designs. The specialists that were previously occupied checking
the hundreds of files and proofs are now concentrating on color management and in-house photography.
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Next steps
One task that still requires manual work in the original InDesign file is the encoding
of each card, which is different for each country and language.
"We're now implementing an
automated system to imposition all the cards," says Vink. "And for this we prefer
a customized workflow that includes encoding our cards directly in the PDF.
Establishing this process makes our PDF workflow complete."
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Hallmark Cards, founded in 1910, is a leading supplier of greeting cards.
Hallmark Cards Web site:
www.Hallmark.com
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