The reason for the conference call was to discuss how best to print the design we had settled upon. We were looking at 4 spot colors plus 4 color process in order to include a beautiful plate shot (which we art directed, prop styled and food styled earlier this year) on the back of the sleeve. The press that this was going to run on could only go up to 7 colors.As it was explained to me, extended gamut printing enabled printers to match PMS colors with a process print. Instead of printing 4 color process they're printing 7 color process. This means, in essence, that you could design a package with 20 PMS colors if you really wanted to. While the graphic designer in me began to salivate, the production designer in me began to throw up red flags."I've seen plenty of printers try to match PMS colors and I've never been thrilled with the results," the pre-press version of me thought. Just look at a Pantone Color Bridge and you'll see the vibrant blues and oranges reduced to bland little swatches that are embarrassed to even reside near the PMS versions they're meant to emulate.Mick at Graphic Packaging suggested we have them produce sample swatches for approval before deciding on a course of action. Seemed like a reasonable suggestion so I put aside my apprehension and waited for the swatches.I was astounded by the results. I don't 100% understand it...but I dig extended gamut printing. The swatches were dead-on matches to the spot colors and that accuracy carried itself over to the press check and the actual printed sheets. I brought a list of the PMS colors we had called out with me to their Oroville, CA facility and held them up to each block of color that was presented to me. One time we had to bump up the orange (the days of being limited to playing with cyan, magenta, yellow or black are apparently gone) to really get the PMS 185 red match to be true. Beyond that...nothing.We at TIV have always prided ourselves on understanding the printing process. It doesn't make sense to design something incredible that can't be produced; that's just common sense and we've always designed with that in mind. But with this type of technology I feel a renewed sense of freedom. I don't need to focus on limiting my use of spot colors to fit within a certain number of stations on a press and with that freedom I'm sure there will come some great new packages.- Brandt Hoekenga