More Than Just Color Management

Beyond its recent equipment installations, University of West Georgia Print and Mail Services has made another key investment in the quality of its output: G7 certification for color management.

“Some may view G7 certification as overkill for an in-plant, but for us, it’s a deliberate statement about our commitment to quality, consistency, and excellence,” explains Michael Post, director of campus services at UWG. “And as crazy as it may sound, it’s not about chasing more jobs. In reality, it may never directly win us one. But it does give our shop and staff something even more meaningful: a sense of pride, craftsmanship, and professional identity. It affirms that an in-plant print shop can be so much more than a convenient internal service; we can hold our own alongside top-tier commercial printers.”

Post sees G7 certification as one of the defining factors of what makes UWG Print and Mail Services a great print shop — not just an in-plant. “You can’t achieve excellence without a standard, and for us G7 is part of that standard,” he says.

Achieving the level of quality needed to earn G7 certification wasn’t easy, Post admits, requiring a lot of attention to detail and the discipline to follow through. The team worked with a consultant to guide it through the calibration and verification process. Certification wasn’t just a one-time venture, he insists.

“We don’t just want to maintain G7, we want to own it,” he says.

To that end, he plans to have one of his staff become a certified G7 Expert, allowing the team to oversee future certifications internally, and help deepen the in-house expertise the shop brings to the table. That, he says, will be “part of a broader plan to invest heavily in staff development over the next few years. Partnering with professional organizations like Idealliance (a division of PRINTING United Alliance), we hope to elevate our team into a collection of true experts – something rarely seen in an in-plant environment.

“We’re building a team that knows its craft, leads with confidence, and sets a standard for what in-plants can and should be,” he says.

In the end, Post is, deservedly, proud of what he has built at UWG, of the team he has cultivated, and with where they are going as an in-plant.

“We realize this kind of zeal may not be typical, or even expected, in a print shop,” he says, “but that’s exactly what makes what we’re building at Print Services at the University of West Georgia so stinking special and a privilege to be part of.”