This fall, FPPA is bringing technical education directly to your team with a three-part virtual Lunch & Learn Series.
Each session will focus on practical, relevant information for the flexographic prepress and platemaking community, with insights designed to help attendees strengthen their technical knowledge, solve real-world challenges, and bring new ideas back to their organizations.
Sessions are approximately one hour and held virtually during lunchtime hours, making it easy for individuals or entire teams to participate.
Who Should Attend?
The Fall Lunch & Learn Series is designed for professionals throughout the flexographic prepress and production process, including:
- Prepress technicians
- Platemaking professionals
- Pressroom personnel
- Production managers
- Customer service representatives
- Technical and operations teams
- Sales professionals supporting the flexographic printing industry
Whether you work directly in production or support the teams that do, each session is designed to provide useful information you can take back to your organization.
Fall Lunch & Learn Schedule
October 14 | From File to Plate to Press: Where Flexo Problems Really Start
Join Kern Cox of Clemson University and Colleen Larkin Twomey of Cal Poly for a technical Lunch & Learn on the challenges that affect flexographic print performance.
Kern and Colleen will walk through common upstream decisions that can lead to downstream print problems, including image resolution, overprints, transparency, spot colors, dielines, screening, trapping, barcodes, minimum dots, type, knockouts, and white ink.
The session will then connect those decisions to what operators actually see on press, helping attendees better understand where issues begin and how they show up later in the process.
October 21 | Topic and Speaker Announcement Coming Soon
This session will feature a technical, educational presentation from an FPPA supplier member focused on practical information for the flexographic prepress and platemaking community.
Presentations are educational in nature and are not intended as product sales presentations.
Interested in presenting? FPPA is currently accepting speaker proposals.
October 28 | Too Many Colors, Not Enough Stations
Join Brad Turner of GMG Color and Mike Agness of Hybrid Software for a technical Lunch & Learn on a common corrugated prepress challenge: meeting brand expectations when spot colors and process images have to fit within a limited number of press stations.
Brad will explore how modern color tools can help teams modify existing color data, integrate new inks and spectral information, and reduce the need for advance press trials.
The session will also cover what a proof needs to get right in the corrugated market, including plate-accurate dot rendering, flute simulation, and substrate simulation, so teams can better predict results on press and set the right expectations with customers.
Meet Your Speakers
Kern Cox
Senior Lecturer
Clemson University
Kern Cox is a distinguished senior lecturer in Clemson University’s Department of Graphic Communications, where he delivers engaging undergraduate and graduate courses on major printing processes, electronic prepress, package printing technologies, and color management. With a passion for advancing the field, his professional and research interests focus on flexography, corrugated packaging, and color management. Since joining the department in 2012, Kern leverages his 20 years of expertise in professional education development, providing innovative training and R&D services through Clemson University’s Printing and Converting Research Center and the Sonoco Institute of Packaging Design and Graphics. His impactful work has served diverse market segments, including post-print corrugated, narrow and wide web flexography, and offset lithography.
Colleen Larkin Twomey
Senior Lecturer, Graphic Communication
California Polytechnic State University-San Luis Obispo
With thirty years in the printing and graphic communications space, Colleen Larkin Twomey has developed a wide range of experience and expertise—working both in the industry and in the classroom. Currently a professor of Graphic Communication, she teaches courses such as Flexographic Printing, Consumer Packaging, and Digital File Preparation and Workflow. Prior to joining academia, she was a fixture in the industry, serving more than twenty years at MacDermid Printing Solutions.
Brad Turner
Technical Sales Director
GMG Color
Brad has spent his career focused on color management — from process control and R&D to managing color standardization programs across conventional and digital printing, including nearly 20 years at Sealed Air/Cryovac, 13 of them as North America Color Manager. Now at GMG Americas, he helps packaging printers, prepress teams, and converters tighten color control and reduce makeready across production. He uses his press, inkroom, and graphics experience to guide them through a range of color challenges, so they can focus on consistent, predictable output instead of fighting it.
Mike Agness
Executive Vice President of the Americas
Hybrid Software
Mike Agness is the Executive Vice President of the Americas for Hybrid Software. Hybrid Software delivers innovative prepress software solutions to the various packaging related businesses with a focus on the corrugated business. Hybrid’s software tools are flexible, open, built on industry standards, and have proven to deliver great efficiencies to the packaging industry. Hybrid’s technology for the corrugated industry adds efficiencies to flexo plate manufacturing, including patching, along with print quality improvements.
Interested in Sharing Your Expertise at a Future FPPA Lunch & Learn?
We’d love to hear from members who have ideas, insights, or practical experience to share with the FPPA community.
FPPA welcomes presentation ideas from members interested in sharing technical knowledge, educational insights, and helpful takeaways with the flexographic prepress and platemaking community.
Future Lunch & Learn sessions may include member-led presentations on best practices, case studies, technical processes, workflow improvements, and other industry-focused topics that attendees can bring back and apply within their own organizations.
A few guidelines to keep in mind:
- Presentations must be educational and industry-focused
- Content should remain vendor-neutral and not sales-oriented
- Product demonstrations, promotional pitches, and commercial advertisements are not appropriate for this program
- Preference will be given to presentations that offer practical takeaways, best practices, case studies, technical knowledge, or process improvements that attendees can apply in their organizations
- FPPA may request modifications to presentation content to help ensure it aligns with program objectives
FPPA leadership will review submissions and follow up with potential presenters as future opportunities become available.