Controlling Digital Interests

For nearly 65 years, the Miles Kimball Company has provided consumers with gifts, gadgets and other novelty items designed to make everyday life a little easier and more enjoyable. Now, thanks to digital technology and workflow solutions implemented over the last two years, the Oshkosh, WI-based cataloger has eased its own daily burden by streamlining its production operations.

Prepress services, such as scanning and color separations—which had been outsourced previously—are now performed in house. In addition, Miles Kimball has established its own on-site digital photography studio.

Certainly each of these tasks required a great deal of effort; however, for the cataloger, the technology was ready, the time was right and the potential benefits were compelling. “We wanted hands-on control,” explains Frank Gosein, vice president of creative services and digital imaging for Miles Kimball, noting that the cataloger intended to leverage that control to achieve faster turnarounds. “We want to create, view, correct and finalize catalog pages as quickly as possible,” he adds.

By adding digital photography, the cataloger not only gained image capture clout, but reduced costs. “We’ve enjoyed substantial savings,” Gosein reports. “Our total cost for film, processing and transparencies was about $157,000 per year. We realized payback on that within six months of going digital.”

Miles Kimball shoots new products with MegaVision digital cameras. “We use the MegaVision T2, which is a triple-pass system for still shots, and the S2 single-pass camera for live action,” reports Al Niemuth, Miles Kimball’s Macintosh network manager. The cataloger is also a beta site for the MegaVision T3.

Gosein estimates that 30 percent of the images in each catalog are new and 70 percent are pickups from the company’s image database, organized by SKU. “We take about 250 new shots for a core catalog, and as many as 500 to 600 for our fall book,” he calculates.

Miles Kimball’s typical gift catalogs each comprise a 60-page core book, augmented by one or two eight-page inserts, depending on the target recipient. A 180-page annual fall book is mailed to existing customers, with a 60-page version sent out to prospects.

Who’s doing what

The cataloger’s in-house creative and production staff, managed by Gosein, includes three designers, one full-time production person, one production assistant, one color and imaging specialist and two photographers.

For each new catalog, the designers get a folio structure from the merchandising department (which also handles the copywriting), with instructions about product placement and layout. Low-res images, captured with handheld digital cameras, are imported into the layout as FPOs. The complete preliminary layout is output on a laser printer and given to the photographers, who then shoot the high-res images. Final pages are created in a Mac-based environment primarily using QuarkXPress, Adobe Photoshop and Adobe Illustrator.

A catalog’s creative cycle is six to eight weeks, Gosein notes. “We have overlap,” he adds. “Typically, we’re fine-tuning one catalog while starting another.”

Currently, Miles Kimball uses a Kodak DCP 9000 for in-house proofing and has plans to upgrade. “Our printer, Perry Judd’s, is pulling Kodak Approvals for us now, but we will internalize that function as soon as we can,” Gosein says. Perry Judd’s is facilitating that transition by helping Miles Kimball smooth out its color management workflow.

Final files are sent to the printer’s prepress facility in Madison, WI, for preparation for computer-to-plate (CTP) production. “We have ISDN and FTP capabilities to send files; however, primarily because of the size of the files—up to 4GB for a single catalog—we typically download files to a hard drive and ship the whole drive to the printer,” Gosein notes. “As soon as it’s affordable and practical, we will transmit files digitally.”

Miles Kimball supplies pages as Quark application files, which Perry Judd’s converts to Post Script and RIPs for CTP output. In a CTP workflow, application files can be problematic, in part because they are editable. “We had discussions [with Perry Judd’s] about sending encapsulated files as PDFs or PostScript, but, with all the revisions of RIP software we’ve seen recently, we thought it was a function better handled by the printer,” Niemuth comments. “So, for now, we’re sending Quark files with documentation. We will revisit the issue, however.”

“The future is PDF, but neither of us is at that point yet,” agrees Ed Bacsik, general manager of Perry Judd’s Madison prepress facility. “With Acrobat 4.0, however, we believe that that will be happening this year.”

The Perry Judd’s prepress facility uses Markzware FLIGHTCHECK preflighting software and proofs created from a RIPed file to ensure the integrity of Miles Kimball’s files. It also uses Creo PreScript to optimize file performance.”PreScript rewrites the PostScript in a way which both flattens the file and reduces its size by cropping images,” Bacsik clarifies. After running FLIGHTCHECK and PreScript, Perry Judd’s RIPs the file, does virtual proofing on screen looking at the rasterized file, and pulls a hard proof for approval by Miles Kimball.

“Once we’re comfortable that a file has integrity, we release it to the imposition station, ... then, using [ScenicSoft] Preps software, we take a look at the imposition, checking for trim, color bars, etc.,” Bacsik adds. After imposition, the printer outputs a position proof for internal review.

Imposed flats are sent electronically from the prepress facility via an ATM (asynchronous transfer mode) network to platesetters in a Perry Judd’s printing plant either in Baraboo, WI, or in Waterloo, WI. Plates are imaged on Creo Trendsetter 5080s, then run on Heidelberg Web Press M-3000s or other presses.

Acing the test

Miles Kimball has been CTP for about 18 months. “We were really pleased with the results of our testing,” Gosein recalls. “At that time, less than 20 percent of the industry was CTP, so we were a bit apprehensive.” After testing with different printers, Kimball chose Perry Judd’s. “The actual results are very good,” Gosein says. “We are getting cleaner, brighter images, and the registration is much better. Overall, CTP simplifies the production process for us and for the printer.”

In this case, successful CTP production is certainly the product of teamwork. “We had been printing catalogs for Miles Kimball for years and, around the same time, we both saw the advantages of digital workflow,” Bacsik remembers. “Since, we have worked together in partnership to resolve issues—with file formats and proofing, for example—and, as a result CTP has afforded Miles Kimball enhanced quality, shortened turnaround and reduced costs.”

“We’ve made tremendous strides in the last two years, and I have to take pride in that,” Gosein remarks. “I believe that our success is result of our mentality. With corporate support, we achieved everything we set out to do in our designated timelines.”

Now, Miles Kimball is seeking to add e-commerce capabilities to its Web site (www.mileskimball.com). “We have a preview site now, which allows us to take customer service and order status information requests, and expect to go live with the fully operational site within the next few months,” Gosein claims.