Stick it to Em’ with Stickers!
Jason Wright
Prepress Manager, Twelve Year Slate Group Veteran, and Zen Master
Growing up in small town with a father who served in the military, structure was instilled at an early age. A mom who loved art – whether drawing, painting or working with ceramics – inspired an appreciation for design. Spending summers working on a farm, it didn’t take long to learn the value of hard work. This perfect blend of part creative and part analytical helped him become the person he is today. Introducing Jason Wright – Prepress Manager, Twelve Year Slate Group Veteran, and Zen Master.
If you are looking for somebody that “looks good on paper” it’s going to be Jason. He could fill up a resume with all of the right buzz-words and lingo needed to look successful in the printing industry. This in itself is a great accomplishment, yet it falls short of being able to explain just exactly why we consider Jason to be the best of the best. The kind of smarts Jason applies at Slate Group everyday only comes from years of hands-on experience coupled with formal training and education resulting in an understanding of printing very few are able to obtain.
Jason attended Texas Tech University in pursuit of a degree in Graphic Design. At this time, he began working at Slate Group in the prepress department. This allowed Jason to excel quickly in his graphic design studies. Since he worked with files coming in and out of the shop everyday, he became an expert at spotting bad files, fixing them and preventing them.
During college, he pursued martial arts – Shotokan, Jui Jitsu, Kali & Wing Chun. Searching for discipline and enlightenment, it helped him think in more than one dimension – teaching him to view problems from every angle.
Early in his Slate Group career, Jason was tasked with ushering a brand new department into the company – Digital Printing. This included continued work in preflight, but also imposition that differed from the offset side of the business. As the digital department continued to grow, the need for automation became increasingly evident.
With technology changing quickly in the graphics industry, Jason led the charge in finding a solution that would automate a task that had been performed manually for decades. After evaluating the top automated workflows, Jason selected the robust Apogee workflow to handle all of our prepress needs – from preflight to color management and from offset to wide format.
With Apogee, we have been able to achieve:
- More thorough file preflight
- Automated proofing with faster turn times
- Enhanced color management
- Cross company standardization
With this exposure to the experts at Agfa, he began to see an opportunity to improve the color management program at Slate. He began the G7 certification process studying the scientific and engineering side behind color management. Now a G7 Professional, he has placed Slate Group on the map by doing something that so few others in the industry have accomplished. Color management is more than a slogan, it’s a process of which we are lucky to have such a devoted leader.
One of Jason’s favorite quotes is “If there’s not a way, you find a way”. Looking over his career, he has done just that. He has taken his passion for learning and life experiences to always push for better solutions. He has taken this knowledge and helped create valuable tools on our Resource Center to help with file prep. He has created a File Prep Guide that he uses to train designers on how to design for print. He is also working on a video series to provide this information in a more visual way.
Whether it’s a 5 am kickboxing class, playing fetch with the dog or going for a run with his family, his strong physical and mental focus is what keeps him ready for the challenges of each day. Always prepared.
To Download The File Setup Guide:
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