Chennai, Oct. 6: A standard printing profile for Indian newspapers will be launched from November 1 at the initiative of Ifra, the world’s leading association for newspaper and media publishing.

Called Icons (Indian coldset offset newspaper standardisation), it will be the standard for advertisement reproduction in Indian newspapers.

It has the support of nine newspaper publishing houses, including ABP (publishers of the Ananda Bazar Patrika and The Telegraph). The other eight are publishers of Deccan Herald, Hindustan Times, Lokmat, Malayala Manorama, Mathrubhumi, Mid Day, The Hindu and The Times of India. Icons will be the common printing standard for reproduction and printing process across these newspapers.

Once the standard enters daily production of newspapers from November 1, an advertiser will supply the same set of ad material to all these publications and expect the same high-quality reproduction. The launch will bring to fruition efforts that were started by Ifra, with support from the nine houses, in January 2004.

More newspapers are expected to join the Icons group shortly.