Graphic Arts Technical Foundation

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Graphic Arts Technical Foundation is a nonprofit, scientific, technical, and educational organization which promotes the technological advancement of the printing industry worldwide.

The Foundation fulfills its missions through its five divisions: research, training, consulting, quality controls, and publications.

Its headquarters in Sewickley, Pennsylvania, a suburb of Pittsburgh, includes state-of-the-art prepress, pressrooms, testing laboratories, libraries, and classrooms that provide a platform for sheetfed and web printing research. GATF's research activities include waste control, environmental studies, press and prepress research, and quality control. Educational activities include a large graphic arts library, a publication program, career and curricular consultation for schools and universities, and seminars, workshops, and conferences for the graphic arts community.

In 1999 GATF consolidated with the Printing Industries of America. PIA/GATF, as it is now known, continues to have a lobbying presence in Washington. The main headquarters, however, remains at GATF's campus in Sewickley, Pennsylvania.

GATF was established in 1924 as the Lithographic Technical Foundation, when lithography was a relatively new commercial printing process. It was headquartered in New York and Chicago for many years until the 1960s, when it was renamed GATF and moved near to Carnegie Mellon University, with whom it often partnered.