History

The Focoltone Color System was patented by a Welsh printer, Gordon Phillips, in 1984. This color system was the outcome of his ten-year search for a solution to color printers' inablility to match colors to specifications from designers.

Since the launch of Gordon Phillips' Focoltone Color System, he received numerous orders from well known design and advertising agencies and attracted strong interest from print professionals. At that time, printers could not take into consideration factors, such as dot-gain during the printing process, resulting in the use of trial and error for printing colors.

Using a precise and definite way of specifying process colors through mathematical formulas and process percentages, along with the Focoltone color charts printed with dot gain taken into account, the colors shown become easily reproducible.

In 1993, the Focoltone patents were bought over by Winson Lan, who is the founder of a group of companies specialising in high end print solutions.

Recognising the potential in the Focoltone Color System, he began his research and development endeavours, in the desire to improve on the Focoltone Color System to meet the demands of designers, printers and organisations. With Focoltone Color System as a starting point, Winson developed the Focoltone Plus, which had an astounding 20,000 colors from the original 763 color range. Focoltone Plus also had a metallic range of colors including gold and silver. This made more colors available for consistent and accurate reprinting.

In 2003, Winson developed and patented the Focoltone Intelligent Color Calibration System (ICCS) based on its original two patents. It is an entirely new system using Artificial Intelligence to detect errors in digital print materials, and using negative comparison, correct all color differences in accordance with Focoltone color standards. Focoltone ICCS is also able to standardise the color quality of most digital print equipment across brands and makes.

Gordon Phillips first invented the Focoltone Color System to tackle the printing problems of the past, and successfully sparked a revolution in the printing world with Focoltone colors. Now, in the 21st century, Winson Lan made his mark on color history with the revolutionary Focoltone ICCS, which provides the perfect color calibration solution for today's digital color printers.