Comart's Poonawala, a crackerjack in pre-press

80 years ago when Comart was established, it was known as Commercial Art Lithographers, taking from their block-making proficiency. “Now we are an established pre-press house catering to short- and medium- run digital printing, colour management, engraving, brand identity POP fabrication and so on,” said Poonawala.

One of Comart's long-standing association is that with Conde-Nast India, a publishing group. Poonawala reminisced,"We won Conde Nast with our expertise in colour management at the time when the price competitiveness were at the zenith. We refrained from indulging in the price-war and shifted focus on improving our offering and quality."

While in conversation with Ramu Ramanathan, Poonawala said, “We went an extra mile and opted for an ISO 12647-2 standard especially for Conde-Nast jobs and being the pioneers to obtain an ISO, we then conformed the ISO for our colour management workflow."

"Today only pre-press service or colour management is an obsolete offering. It is merely one of the service under the umbrella of pre-media. Today the offering of a pre-media firm to a brand includes pre-press, design, printing (proofs/ mock-ups), fabrication and implementation across various mediums and substrates."

The demand of pre-media services, according to him, has upsurged in the recent times. He reasons this increase to the brand demand. “Why would a company spend lakhs of rupees just to standardise a press? The answer to this question is, standardisation helps in bringing down your costs. All the standards are set in terms of colour profiles, colour transformations,” he said while explaining the advantages of standardisation.

"We (pre-media service providers) are the custodians of a brand's image and identity," he concluded.

The next Masterclass session will be Bimal Mehta of Vakil & Sons