Editor’s note: ISO 12647-3, the international newspaper printing standard, was released in 1998. The revised version of this standard is now nearly ready. The German associations, bvdm and ZMG, are aiming to switch to the new standard by mid-2004, and the standard is expected to be issued in final form later this year. In the article below, Manfred Werfel, Ifra’s director of research, details why the new standard is important to newspaper printing.

For a long time, there were only a few standards in the graphics industry.

In the 19th century, for example, it was still commonplace to have different type heights for hot-metal composition. That meant it was not possible to exchange type between printing plants. In some cases, the inability to swap typefaces and sizes forced users to build their own customized printing presses.

Today, of course, that’s no longer the case. But the printing industry is still debating how standards will apply to certain operations.

Do newspaper printing plants want to distinguish themselves by printing quality or do they want to satisfy customer demands by guaranteeing a minimum standard of quality? The question will be decided by the market development.

Dramatic change

In the past 15 years, there has been a dramatic increase in color printing in the newspaper industry.

Until 2001, when the current economic slowdown began, ink manufacturers reported double-digit annual growth rates in their sales of color inks.

At the same time, newspapers bought new printing presses in order to boost their color capacity. The trend toward new investments is driven by the objective of being able to print full color on all pages.

The use of spot colors, meanwhile, is clearly declining. Many newspapers have totally switched from using spot color to process color printing.

Color in newspapers is no longer anything special. Instead, it has become a fundamental feature of newspaper printing. Color has entered all parts of the newspaper. Even the classified ad columns contain color ads and the editorial desks make extensive use of color.

A significant development of the advertising market was accompanied by the now almost total adoption of digitization. This migration reduced the influence of reproduction studios and increased the expectation among advertisers that their digital files would be printed in multiple locations with the same quality.

As advertising agencies take over the task of digital ad reproduction; reproduction studios and service bureaus are frequently no longer included in the process.

Individual large customers, for example, car manufacturers, build up international databases with product information and images from which worldwide subsidiaries and agents can access to design their own ads. This leads to increased efficiency and cost savings for advertising customers.

On the down side, this development causes specialized printing skills or even specific newspaper printing skills to be lost. This makes it even less likely that advertising customers can be expected to cater to the individual printing specifications of individual houses.

In addition, as a consequence of a drop in profits, agencies are less likely to afford printing know-how. Instead, they tend toward specializing in planning multimedia advertising campaigns. As a result, few newspaper printing specialists remain.

These developments, in combination with other market pressures, are leading the newspaper industry to once again seriously evaluate standardization.

A number of standardization programs have been initiated by a host of countries. Ifra is participating in standardization projects in countries that include Germany, the Netherlands, Spain, the United States, South America and India.

These projects are all based on the 1998 international newspaper industry standard.

Why international?

Europe is a case in point. The European Union is a common market that is facing expansion in every respect. Advertising customers act at an international level. The applied printing techniques are comparable almost everywhere. This is all the more the case in the wake of the latest wave of new investments in newspaper presses.

The ISO 12647-3 newspaper standard has been existence for six years. It was adopted, unchanged, as a German standard in 2000. Every five years, ISO standards are examined for possible revision. Accordingly, last year the opportunity arose to introduce improvements, take into account new technical developments and react to changed market needs.

For this reason, the ISO Technical Committee 130 (TC 130), which is responsible for developing graphic standards, decided to revise the newspaper standard.

 Among the potential changes:

* The description of the color space was adapted to better match reality. For this purpose, it was possible to use an extended database consisting of measured data from Europe, the United States and Japan. The most important aspect here was the correction of the target magenta value.

* The advent of digital workflows. Today’s basis for newspaper production is largely digital. Ads, editorial pages, texts and images from news agencies reach the newspaper in digital form. Digital photography has become an established feature of editorial work. The new draft version takes account of this development by making greater allowance for digital data as the starting point for production. The same applies for computer-to-plate.

* More exact definitions govern screening, gray balance, printable color space, dot gain and solid densities. No such reliable data was available six years ago.

Although all the changes are important, the most critical modification regarding newspaper printing is this: Generally speaking, one specification governs a specific operation, without exception. This means that there is only a single screen ruling, one dot shape, one set of screen angles, one type of color separation (namely, gray component replacement, or GCR).

This adoption of a single yardstick not only gives the standard clarity but also reflects market demands for a unified specification overseeing newspaper printing.

Take the ISO draft for dot gain. The dot gain of a printing process depends on many process steps and technical conditions.

At the same time, it is one of the most important parameters for printing quality. The standard released in 1998 contained nine specifications for dot gain, ranging from values associated with offset printing from conventional plates to offset printing from digital plates. In other words, dot gain, depending upon the technical process concerned, was defined very differently.

New approach

The new draft standard takes a fundamentally different approach. A uniform total dot gain of either 26 percent or 30 percent is specified for offset newspaper printing - independent of the technical production process concerned.

Instead of nine dot gain values, the proposed ISO standard reduced the number to two, reflecting the particular production objectives in Europe and in the United States. There is now a clear definition of dot gain all can adopt and expect.

Standardization means improving conditions for all market participants. Standardizing newspaper printing means improved communication with customers, lowering the costs of dealing with complaints, making newspaper advertising more attractive and, therefore, improving the market conditions for newspapers in their competition with other media.

The draft version of ISO 12647-3:2004 is fully in line with this strategy. It is worthwhile to get ready for the new standard.

Editor’s note: This article was first published in newspaper techniques, the monthly magazine of Ifra.