Welcome to Under The Cone

A St. Patrick's Day meditation on metamerism, rich blacks, and what our eyes are missing Every St. Patrick's Day, millions of pints of Guinness are poured and people across the world try to “split the G”. While most beer admirers see a beautifully dark, black stout topped with a creamy white head, those who work […]

We're almost at the end of Q1, so we wanted to share some things we learned over the last few months. The first quarter revealed some clear patterns across print operations, which we can use to create more productive Q2’s. The shops adapting successfully are building workflows that let skilled operators focus on complex problems […]

Spring is almost here, but is your workflow ready to bloom? March and April typically bring production volume increases as brands launch Spring campaigns and retailers refresh seasonal marketing. Here’s a pre-rush workflow checklist to help get you ready for the changing season: 🌱Audit your Switch error logs from the past month. Patterns reveal where […]

One of the great things about working with switch is all of the numbers of ways that you can get jobs into the system. Over the next few videos we're going to look at a few of those ways. So what we're going to do is we're going to take a look at this switch workflow where we're […]

Your turn to be a mad scientist by purposefully testing your workflows with bad files to see how your system responds. Most workflows are built and tested with perfect files, but this can leave you unprepared for when a problem file shows up. One smart testing strategy to help you stay ahead is deliberately submitting […]

Your workflow's slowest step might not be where you think it is. We often see shops who assume their bottleneck is in preflight or RIP processing, when it's actually something mundane like file copying or network transfer. Use Switch's built-in timing to identify the actual bottlenecks in your flow. You might discover things like network […]

Open your Switch ‘Temporary Processing’ folder. How many files are still there from last week? Last month? Temp files that don't get cleaned up can be symptoms of other issues, like flows that error out without completing cleanup steps, jobs that got stuck, processes that copy files but never delete the originals. These can all […]

This May in Barcelona, the FESPA Global Print Expo is making sustainability impossible to ignore. The event has earned ISO 20121 certification for sustainable event management, demonstrating a comprehensive commitment to reducing environmental impact across every aspect of the show. From venue selection and waste management to carbon footprint reduction and sustainable sourcing, FESPA 2026 […]

Struggling with consistency across different locations’ workflows? Here’s how to stop emailing Preflight Profiles between locations. For print operations with multiple sites or remote prepress teams, consistency is the biggest challenge. For example, the Denver office using one version of an Action List while the New York office uses another, creates quality variations that customers […]

☎️ An easier approval process is calling ☎️ Your client isn't always at their desk, but they probably have their phone on them, so your approval process just got faster. Enfocus Review has released a mobile-first interface for client approvals, and it's addressing a reality we've all been dancing around. Today's print buyers aren't sitting […]