GWG releases sign and display sector specific spec

The Ghent Workgroup (GWG) has released a specification for the sign and display sector. The new specification incorporates the notion of viewing distance and scaling factor - allowing for one specification, but addressing the differences in printing techniques within typical sign and display jobs.

“We started working on the new Sign & Display specification quite a while ago,” said David van Driessche, executive director of the GWG and chief technology officer at Four Pees. “Because this new specification has to cover a very broad market, and as a result is more challenging for preflight vendors to address, we even released a public beta version six months ago. We now believe the specification is ready for prime time.” Peter Kleinheider, CEO and CTO of calibrate workflow consulting GmbH and co-chair of the specification subcommittee that developed the new specification, added: “After the release of the public beta we already started implementing the Sign & Display specification with a first customer. Having support for wide gamut colours and the concept of scaling factor made its implementation in this web shop completely straightforward. This new specification will make the delivery of PDF files for Sign & Display much easier and bring much-needed standardisation to the market segment.” As well as viewing distance and scaling factor, the other factor that sets apart this new specification from earlier Ghent Workgroup specifications, is that it opens up which colour spaces can be used in a PDF file. For the first time, a GWG specification allows the use of colour spaces such as calibrated RGB or L*a*b* for all elements within a PDF document. The specification, and application settings built from it, are available from the Ghent Workgroup website for free: https://www.gwg.org/sign_display/