Colour coordination

To the best of my knowledge, the first colour cards manufactured in New Zealand were by a company called Martin Print. They operated what is known as the paint deposit process, whereby paint is deposited directly onto a colour card using a lacquer-based paint. Peter North, the founder of Color Communications Inc (Australasia) Limited (CCI/A), had seen this process while working for Clark and Matheson – a wellknown Auckland printing company. Clark and Matheson was sold during the lead up to the 1987 Black Monday market crash, and in the wake of the fallout, Peter took it upon himself to explore the opportunity to manufacture colour cards in New Zealand. He had trained in the London Printers Guild in London before emigrating to New Zealand.

From a fledgling idea, Peter set about producing colour cards in New Zealand. He reached out to Color Communications Inc (CCI) based in Chicago and secured a license agreement to manufacture colour cards in New Zealand using their technology. This differed from the deposit process in that CCI’s technology produced a colour card by placing individual colour chips onto a colour card in what’s known as the chip mounting process.

Basic equipment was shipped from Chicago to CCI/A’s small factory in East Tamaki, and in the early days, CCI Chicago also sent colour matched and coated sheets to New Zealand which CCI/A cut into chips and mounted onto colour cards. The very first job for CCI/A was the Resene Total Colour colour chart. Resene’s Colour Controller travelled to Chicago to approve the colours and the coated sheets were then sent to CCI/A to be converted into the Resene Total Colour colour chart in the Auckland plant. As is the case in all new ventures, there was no shortage of challenges – all of which were overcome with a combination of Peter North’s tenacity and innovative spirit combined with the early support that Resene offered by placing the first colour card order.

The next significant development was a world first. CCI/A and Resene discussed the possibility of CCI/A using Resene’s own waterborne paint to make Resene’s colour cards. This made sense from many angles but most importantly it eliminated metamerism from the colourmatching process. Metamerism is a phenomenon that occurs when two colours appear to match under one lighting condition, but not when the light changes.

It was decided to ‘give it a go’. Once again, the spirit of innovation and culture of continuous improvement shared by CCI/A and Resene set both companies on another journey into unchartered waters. As is often the case, talking about a new innovative development is the easy part. Both companies remained ambitious in their desire for this new, ‘world first’ development to succeed, and it did… eventually, after much trial and error, persistence and patience to get the manufacturing process just right.

Since that time, Resene’s colour cards have been produced using Resene Environmental Choice approved waterborne paints, straight out of the can so what you see on the chart is what you get on the wall.

BlackWhite magazine

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