Harmony: Xerox Confident Colour Certified

Harmony is proud to be the first company in the world to be Xerox Confident Colour Certified. In fact, Harmony worked with Xerox to help develop this new program for the printing industry worldwide. Its objective was to develop in-depth training and standard operating procedures for graphics professionals to achieve optimal and consistent digital colour output. As part of the certification, all of Harmony’s digital operators took courses in, and earned, Digital Colour Management Certificates from a joint program of Xerox and the School of Graphic Communications Management at Ryerson University. Xerox's Sept. 18, 2012 press release.

Harmony’s Tree-Hugger Blog: Re-Blogged

Don Gain Jr., Harmony’s Director of Sales & Marketing also spearheads our environmental initiatives. He recently posted a blog entitled “Tree Hugger”. He was asked to be a guest blogger for Unisource Unplugged, Unisource’s blog about sustainability issues. The first guest blog was Don’s “Tree Hugger”. Don’s blog generated some discussion on the Unisource site as well. To see the Unisource blog and discussion about his blog, click here

Harmony’s Cross-Media Solutions in the News

Ruby Thomas, Vice President Operations and Julie Northrup, Innovations Specialist were interviewed for an article by Graphic Monthly Canada about Harmony’s expansion into cross-media solutions. To read the article, click here.

Hong Kong Delegation Visits Harmony

On September 19th, Harmony was host to six members of the Hong Kong Special Administrative Region Delegation for the duty visit to Ontario. Ontario was chosen for the visit because of the similarities in the labour laws and the number of manufacturing establishments in the province. The purpose of their visit to Harmony was to gain insight into how SME’s work with employees beyond the minimum government requirements to create a harmonious work environment. They were interested in understanding how we communicate with employees regarding wages and benefits, vacations, health & safety issues, equipment upgrades, staffing requirements. They acknowledged our success because of the length of time Harmony has been in business and the number of long term employees that continue with the company. We were happy to share our open and ongoing communication methods and demonstrated by taking the delegates on a tour of our plant and introducing our employees.

The members of the delegation shared information about labour relations in Hong Kong. Hong Kong has government regulated labour laws that cover minimum wage, statutory holidays, and vacation entitlement, health & safety regulations among other things. Surprisingly, the regulations and minimum standards are very similar to Ontario laws.

While the purpose of the meeting was to enlighten and inform our guests, we learned much about the culture and working environment in Hong Kong.

PM Visits Harmony

Harmony Printing was proud to be selected as the host for Prime Minister Harper to announce the establishment of a Red Tape Reduction Commission on January 13, 2011. The RTRC’s mandate is to identify and recommend options to reduce the burden of federal regulatory requirements on businesses, especially for small and medium-sized companies.

Before the press announcement, Prime Minister Harper toured the plant with Don Gain, Sr., owner and President of Harmony Printing Limited and Catherine Swift, President of the Canadian Federation of Independent Business. The announcement coincided with the country’s second Red Tape Awareness Week, a CFIB initiative. In the course of the tour, the Prime Minister met with and spoke to many of Harmony’s employees and generously posed for pictures.

Harmony was short listed along with two other manufacturing establishments to host the Prime Minister’s press conference. We believe being selected to hold such an event reflects well on Harmony’s employees, our corporate culture and facilities. And if we do say so ourselves, the press conference was a great success!

If you haven’t yet had the opportunity to visit our facilities and would like to see what the advance team saw in recommending Harmony to host the Prime Minister, please don’t hesitate to contact us and we’ll gladly arrange your own personal tour.

Harmony's President, Don N. Gain, in the news

Don Gain, Harmony's President and owner, was interviewed for an article by Graphic Arts Magazine. To read the article, click here.

Harmony wins OPIA award for Personalized Digital Printing

Harmony earned the 2011 OPIA (Ontario Printing & Imaging Association) Excellence in Print Award for Digital Print for our Lunch 'n Learn invitation. While the award recognizes the variable print element of our invitation, in fact in was a multi-channel initiative designed to showcase Harmony's expertise in data-driven strategies including print, micro-sites, emails and data collection.

The cross media campaign included a printed personalized card, PURL (Personalized URL) microsite with a survey, and email messages to the recipient, appropriate account manager and event organizer inviting our customers and prospects to a Lunch 'n Learn about How to Leverage Data-Driven Solutions.

The concerns of a marketing manager are different from those of the production coordinator to those of the owner or sales manager. As well, each industry has its own interests and vocabulary. Therefore messages on the card were personalized based on each recipient's name, function, their industry vertical as well as their Harmony account manager. Individualized QR codes were included for mobile savvy clients to link them directly to their PURL (Personalized URL microsite). Once on the PURL, clients could register, access an interactive map from their location to our building and note any dietary preferences. In the survey, they were asked questions about their current understanding of data-driven marketing and cross media campaigns which Harmony has used to deepen our understanding of their requirements and to develop our relationship with them.

The success of Harmony's cross-media campaign was demonstrated not only in winning the OPIA award, but more importantly, by "having" to host 2 Lunch 'n Learns, by being asked to present the same information at 5 customer locations and by the additional work and projects that resulted from this initiative.

Harmony to Speak at INTERQUEST 2011 Toronto Digital Printing Forum

Julie Northrup, Harmony's Innovation Specialist, will be participating in a panel discussion on "Synergies between Printed & Electronic Communications" as part of INTERQUEST and Ryerson's University's 2011 Toronto Digital Printing Forum. The panel discussion will highlight case studies of successful cross-media (i.e. print, email and on-line) campaigns. INTERQUEST will also be presenting research on recent trends in personalized marketing communications and the convergence of direct mail and transactional printing applications. The 2011 Toronto Digital Printing Forum is taking place Wednesday, May 11 from 9 a.m. to 5 p.m. at Ryerson University. For further information, click here.

Recent Awards

The Retired Teachers of Ontario/les enseignantes et enseignants retraités de l'Ontario (RTO/ERO)

PIA (Printing Industries of America) 2010 Premier Print Award for the Toronto District School Board's Vocational Posters.

OPIA (Ontario Printing & Imaging Association) Excellence in Print Awards, 2010, held May 6 of this year, awarded Harmony another two awards:

Harmony in the Community

Harmony helps to support a number of community groups and charities. We donate all or a portion of the cost to print materials for specific events or general information. Our support frees these groups to allocate more of their other donations to accomplish their core work. Recent contributions include the following organizations. Feel free to link through to their sites to learn more about their work to benefit our community.

September, 2010

International Festival of Authors: Harmony donated the printing of their preview brochure highlighting the schedule for 11 days of readings, interviews, lectures, round table discussions, and public book signings by contemporary, world authors. For more information, go to http://www.readings.org/?q=ifoa