Fairfax, Virginia - During the Thursday Night Dinner Party at the 2010 SGIA Expo, Joe Fazzi, Vice President of Print Media at IDEAlliance, presented Mike Ruff with the IDEAlliance Leadership Circle Award. The award is bestowed to individuals who have made a substantial difference in advancing methodologies and best practices in the graphic communications industry.       

"Mike Ruff has brought a level of enthusiasm and dedication to IDEAlliance and has worked tirelessly to further education and innovation to the print industry. His contributions to IDEAlliance committees and working groups have already made a significant impact, including his work on updating the ISO Standards for screen printing," said Fazzi. "Mike is a key contributor to the screen and digital print working groups and our print properties committee, and it was an honor to give him the IDEAlliance Leadership Circle Award at the SGIA Expo."

Mike Ruff, chief technology officer at Nazdar Consulting Services, is a two-time winner of SGIA's esteemed David Swormstedt Sr. Memorial Award, which recognizes the best technical article of the year. His work as a teacher in the Master Print Seminar Series, as prepress educator in the SGIA four-color training Workshops, along with leading many SGIA Webinars each year. He also has been inducted into the Academy of Screen Printing Technology.  

Ruff continues to educate and bring new technology to the screen and inkjet printing industry. He actively serves on several IDEAlliance and SGIA committees and is dedicated to the betterment of the specialty imaging industry. Most recently, he has helped the SGIA community take advantage of G7, an innovative neutral print calibration methodology developed by IDEAlliance, which calibrates any print device to a common gray scale appearance and promotes a similar neutral appearance across those devices.