G7

An explanation of G7 is really a description of how we see colour and how we’ve come to measure and control it.  What started with early man mixing organic pigments together for cave painting is now a process that does everything from print children’s books to entire building wraps. 

G7 is a method for making very different printing techniques and hardware have a shared appearance.  For the designer or photographer this means that their idea will be made real and recreated accurately regardless of what media or device reproduces it. 

G7 does this by managing something called neutral gray.  That’s what the G in G7 stands for: gray and the 7 refers to the colours cyan, magenta, yellow, black, red, green and blue

Suppose you were on an airplane and wanted to tell someone where exactly on the earth you were.  To do this accurately you’d need three numbers: latitude, longitude and altitude. Defining colour is the done the same way.  It’s a system called CIElab or L*a*b*.  The “L” is the range from white to black, a* is the range from red to green and b* is the range between yellow and blue.  The center of this 3 dimensional colour space is called neutral gray.

G7 matches different printing devices by first calibrating them to hit that dead center gray. Once that is done the technique allows you to monitor your output by making checks of neutral gray quick and easy so that you always stay centered.  This technique isn’t really new; it’s been in use since the earliest days of colour photography.  What’s new is its application to traditional lithography, screen-printing, flexo or even digital output.  G7 allows a shared appearance regardless of the output medium.  More importantly it means that where ever your file is output, if it’s being done by a certified G7 Master Printer you’ll know that it will be reproduced accurately and repeatedly.  G7 is the matchmaker between designer/agency, premedia and printer.