International Color Quality Club
NAA and IFRA, the international newspaper-research organization, have announced the formation of the International Newspaper Color Quality Club.
The object of this joint project is to promote consistent reproduction quality at newspapers and to evaluate color printing through an international program. Newspapers that score above a set level of points will be awarded membership in the club. The awards will be given every other year.
The effort is an offshoot of NAA's Color Quality Initiative, which was launched last year to help newspapers improve their color reproduction from press to press and from newspaper to newspaper. It also replaces the IFRA Colour Quality Club. By the joint effort, NAA and IFRA hope to increase the participation of newspapers in North America, Asia and other parts of the world.
"Newspapers need to pay attention to the needs of their customers-in this case, their advertisers-for high-quality reproduction and consistent color," says Eric Wolferman, senior vice president of technology at NAA. "The International Newspaper Color Quality Club provides a forum to raise color-quality standards and promote good reproduction at newspapers. Membership in this club will give newspapers international recognition. By joining with IFRA to form this club, we are committing ourselves to serving newspapers the best way we can."
"Newspapers all over the world want to deliver first-class print quality to their readers and to their advertisers," says Günther W. Böttcher, managing director of IFRA. "The IFRA Colour Quality Club has set well-accepted quality benchmarks in the past. Together with our American friends from NAA, we will be able to promote high-quality newspaper color worldwide."
NAA and IFRA will convene a panel of experts to judge the entries with objective measurements and evaluation of sample newspapers. All participating newspapers will receive detailed reports and feedback on what they can do to improve reproduction quality.
The first awards will be announced in October 1998 at the IFRA Congress and Expo in Lyon, France. A recognition ceremony will also be held at the NAA SuperConference in January 1999. A second set of awards will be presented in June 2000 at NEXPO in San Francisco, and a recognition ceremony will be held at the IFRA Congress and Expo in Stockholm in October 2000.
For further information or to obtain an application form, visit NAA's Web site (http://www.naa.org/technology/cqclub/) or contact Tom Croteau, NAA's director of newspaper services. E-mail, crott@naa.org; phone, (703) 902-1850; fax, (703) 902-1842.