New York, NY - March 19, 2008 - It was not too long ago that Hachette Filipacchi Media (HFM), one of the world's largest magazine publishers, produced in excess of 50,000 hard copy inkjet or photographic proofs for its editorial pages each year.
 
Expensive? You bet. This doesn't include time wasted on courier services and coordinating workflow between the company's editorial departments in New York City, pre-press services in St. Louis, MO and printing in multiple locations across the U.S.
 
Hachette looks for a Monitor Proofing Solution
Because time is critical for publishers like Hachette, the company is continually evaluating new technologies that promise to save time and make their workflow processes more efficient. The emergence of monitor proofing and its proven status as a dependable, reliable component of the digital workflow is one such technology. In 2007 HFM decided that the time had come to push ahead with its plans to introduce monitor proofing into the editorial approval process.
 
Evaluation of several products leads to Remote Director
After evaluating products from several suppliers, HFM determined that ICS's Remote Director offered greater speed, superior features and better color fidelity than the other systems. It was also advantageous that HFM's main printer had already standardized on Remote Director, so no additional training was required on that side.
 
After a successful evaluation period, Remote Director was installed in the editorial offices -- on Macs with Apple monitors -- in a dedicated monitor proofing studio where lighting is controlled to match the press room conditions. When individual images or page layouts are ready to be proofed, the editorial directors visit the studio and approve or edit content and color, confident in the knowledge that they are viewing their files in exactly the right conditions.
 
HFM employee reactions
At first, HFM thought that there might be some resistance to the new technology and processes. However, as soon as employees saw that the new monitor proofs were displaying color accurately, they forgot about their concerns.
 
Hachette's pre-press and editorial staff also found that Remote Director was easy to use and not too technical for the everyday user. And they were impressed with the responsiveness of ICS's technical support team and their willingness to add features specific to the editorial workflow.
 
Referring to the color quality, Steve Romeo, Director of Strategic Sourcing, says, "We're not giving up anything in terms of quality, we no longer have to build profiles, and it's great to be able to see the numbers again. We're saving time and we're saving money." He also notes that the ability to call the pre-press team in St. Louis and collaborate in real time is a huge time-saver. "The press crews have adapted well. In fact, they find that Remote Director eliminates many of the variables they had to deal with before," says Romeo.
 
HFM increasing use throughout the organization
While initially the new monitor proofing system was rolled out for titles where color was not a critical issue, within a short amount of time 8 magazines were up and running on Remote Director and had done away with most of their hard proofs.  Over the next few months the remaining titles will migrate to the newly-designed process -- including those for whom color-accuracy is critical, such as ELLE and Metropolitan Home.
 
In the future, monitor proofing with Remote Director will tackle the advertising workflow. HFM intends to adopt monitor proofing upstream with advertising agencies and other companies that send ads for publication.