Arscentia

What began as a hobby and fun fascination literally turned into a way of life for Dwight Cummings and his two partners when they founded Arscentia as Wy'east Color in 1971. The company derived its original name from the legendary Native American name for Oregon's Mt. Hood. The name was symbolic for strength and at the time, Portland was the largest... per capita city for printing in the country. Wy'east's early days were busy ones. Companies like Blue Ribbon Sports (the precursor to Nike), Fred Meyer, Meier & Frank and Payless Drug Stores sought out the company's prepress services for their printing needs. Four-color film separation was a very labor-intensive technique that Wy'east's skilled craftsman excelled at but still resulted in painfully slow turnaround times. The inefficiencies of such approaches prompted Wy'east to become early adopters of digital imaging technologies that helped differentiate the company early on. During the 1980s and early 1990s, the company's customer base began to grow, with a roster that boasted household names like Kenworth, Boeing, Adidas, Nintendo, as well as many of the Northwest's top advertising agencies including The Evans Group, Livingston and McCann Erickson. Wy'east was the first prepress and photo lab to have a digital scanner on the west coast-and clients took notice. To keep up with demand, Wy'east expanded its operations. Dwight and his company opened facilities in Vancouver, B.C., San Francisco, and, in 1986, its Bellevue, Washington location, which today serves as company headquarters. Wy'east continued to establish itself as an innovator in the field, forging ahead with the implementation of additional technologies like digital pagination of pages, digital proofing and digital archiving of images. When the company got its start in 1971, clients' communication needs were simple, mostly limited to traditional mediums of print advertisements, brochures, television, radio, catalogs and packaging. The advent of the Internet shifted these needs. Conveying a company's ...Read More