Pantone flexographic color guide unveiled

The Flexographic Trade School (FTS), under license with Pantone, Inc. and teaming with eight vendor sponsors of the school, including Trinity Graphics, Raflatac, Harper Corporation of America, Mark Andy/Comco, Lohmann, Environmental Inks and Coatings, Akzo Nobel, and American Die Technology, has printed the first ever Flexographic Color Guide in Pantone colors.

This application Guide, called the FTS Flexographic Application Guide in Popular Pantone Colors, was created to assist in matching popular Pantone Colors used in flexographic printing. It provides designers and printers with a tool to show how a color will appear with high gloss UV varnish versus a water-based overprint varnish (OPV), on coated and matte coated pressure sensitive label paper.

'This guide,' states Art Fields, program director for the school, 'is an excellent tool for color communication in any flexographic pressroom. For the first time, flexo production personnel will have a matching tool not only printed with flexographic inks and pigments, but showing exactly what was used to achieve the color. This guide is unique in that the color pages have a matching color swatch printed on high gloss and mattes substrates, and half the swatch has a UV varnish and the other half has a non-gloss Over Print Varnish (OPV).' (See next issue of Labels and Labeling for full story)