Newspaper & Magazines

PREPRESS
Inexpensive Newspaper Workflow from Canada
Too good to be true?
Due to extremely short deadlines, cost pressure, and high demands on
print quality, newspaper and magazine publishers face extreme production
challenges. Newspaper&Magazines discovered NEWSflo, a clever
newspaper workflow solution that is priced for smaller publishers and
smaller budgets.
The daily battle every printer faces is to
continually reduce costs and raise efficiency
without compromising quality
and production safety. In addition to the cost
and deadline pressures, production processes
are often complicated by delivery of customer
data that does not fit pre-press guidelines.
With a workflow solution tailor made
to suit their individual needs, most printers
could achieve significant production gains.
We discovered the workflow system NEWsflo
from the Canadian software company Polkadots.
The solution has been installed over
150 times in the United States and Canada.
Among Polkadot customers are well-known
newspapers such as the Chicago Tribune,
Washington Post, and New York Post as well
as other prominent newspaper and periodical
publishers.
One of the software’s most outstanding features
is that it originates from live experiences
in real-world production environments.
Henri Duhmel Jr., partial owner of Dumont
Publishing, the largest publishing conglomerate
on Canada’s east coast, founded the
company Multi-Media in 1979. At Dumont
Publishing he was involved in the daily operations
of 35 regional newspapers and recognized
first hand the necessity of improving
production processes. Multi-Media stepped
18 N&M NEWSPAPER & MAGAZINES 1/2008
in to deliver printers with pre-imposed plate
templates and the software necessary to
create new variations. It was one of the first
companies to implement a self programmed
OPI workflow in production. Additionally, the
first PostScript interface from Macintosh
computers to Crosfield image setters was
developed by Multi-Media. Magazines, flyers
and catalogues were produced for the most
part with self developed pre-press software.
Multi-Media brought this technology leadership
and a number of outstanding innovations
into Polkadots Software, founded in 1999 by
Henri Duhmel’s son Gil.
Polkadots Software Inc. is a privately held
company with 20 employees covering administration,
customer service, technical
support, and research and development.
Polkadots Software is very successful in North
America and North and West Europe. Currently
sales channels are being opened in the
German speaking countries, Eastern Europe
and in Asia.
Polkadots Software is specialized in the development,
support and integration of prepress
workflows. Drawing on their many
years of experience in data processing for
print production, Polkadots first developed
PrePage-it, an automated workflow for Harlequins
RIPs and primarily used by general
commercial printers. The software includes a
client / server application for priority setting,
RIP activity control, as well as job management,
exchange of foreign language texts,
consolidation of twice set colors, archiving
and much more.
With the extensive knowledge gained through
their own production and over 500 commer-
cial i l print i t iinstallations t ll ti worldwide, ld id PPolkadots lk d t
Software has turned their focus towards special
workflow solutions for newspapers and
magazines. Polkadot’s philosophy: “inexpensive,
flexible, highly productive and extremely
reliable” states Robert Dumas, marketing
and sales director. “Our competence in workflow
and pre-press allows us to offer unique
solutions. We call this an unbeatable performance
at an unbeatable price.”
NEWSflo N is a modular, scalable, software soution
u with extreme reliability and down-time
security.
Additionally, there is the possibility
with w backup systems to create “sleeping ser-
veers”
that in worst case situations – hardware
crash
– only require the exchange of two don-
gles
to recover.
Exceptional E features of
NEWSflo N include:
C
Continuous CTF and/or CTP production
workflow of advertising – from adverti-
sement entry up to finished print form:
Advertising A is ripped immediately after data
nput. n For positioning in layout programs low
reesolution
preview data is generated. Pref-
ight
and error correction of common prob-