Foil blocking

Foil blocking has been developed using the letterpress principle. A block is produced using zinc, magnesium, copper or brass. These are process engraved.

The block is heated on press and a metallic or coloured foil is put on to the material. Foiled logos are incorporated into many brands, especially on corporate invitations, business cards, letter headings and compliment slips.

Foiling & Embossing

Foiling and embossing can be used on the same image, firstly foiled and then embossed. Again logos and other things.

Its a highly cost effective way to add metallic colour to all or part of printed products.

Fully compatible with laser printers.

Ideal for Invitations, business cards, letter headings and compliment slips ect.

We can print to order on any thickness of material.

Ideal for use in with thermography, embossing and lithography.

Pad printing

Pad printing is a printing process that can transfer a 2-D image onto a 3-D object. This is done using a printing process that involves an image being transferred from a printing plate via a silicone pad onto a surface. Pad printing is used for printing on 3D products that cant be flattened including medical, automotive, promotional, apparel, electronics, appliances, sports equipment and toys.

Changes within the ink film on the printing plate and on the pad allow it leave the etched image area of adhering to the pad, and to subsequently release from the pad in favour of adhering to the 3D surface.

The unique properties of the silicone pad enable it to pick the image up from a flat plane and transfer it to a variety of surface which can be flat, cylindrical, spherical, compound angles, textures, concave surfaces, convex surfaces

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Flexography

Flexography is the major process used to print packaging materials. Flexography is used to print containers, folding cartons, multiwall sacks, paper sacks, plastic bags, milk and drink cartons, disposable cups and containers, labels, adhesive tapes, envelopes, newspapers, and wrappers. Basically most food and drink packages.

Flexo printing is done by feeding the substrate into the press from a roll. The image is printed as the substrate is pulled through a series of stations, or print units. Each print unit is printing a single colour a bit like screen print. However with Gravure and Lithographic printing, the various tones and shading are achieved by overlaying CMYK.

Finishings may include coating, cutting, folding and binding.

Lithographic printing

Lithographic printing is used to print mostly paper based things such as General comercial prints, newspapers, legal documents. Things that you need alot of basically.

Lithography, Litho for short is an printing technique . Ink is applied to the printing plate to form the image (such as text or artwork to be printed) and then transferred or offset to a rubber blanket. The image on the blanket is then transferred to the paper to produce the printed product.

It is done very fast on continuous rolls which is later cut to size. Here is a sketch of what it looks like

Faults of print

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On the back cover it is registration black which should never be used in designes. Inc limit is 300% and that is too much it can make paper tear or bleed over. Also, it is 100% cyan, 100% megenta, 100% yellow and 100% black so too much ink. alternative is to use black ink. Images need to be opened in photoshop to change them and not in InDesign and change mode from RGB to CMYK.
One of swatches is RGB colour which is no good for print. Need to double click on colour and get nearest CMYK match.

Colour not up to bleed line, Theres 8 swatches there are some unused spot colours, pictures are scaled up in InDesigh. One of images missing, The tree image is very low resolution when it is an Illustrator image and it shows up all jaged when it should be smooth.

7 things to know about print

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Colour

Formats

Artwork

Stock

Processes

Finishing

Cost

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Colour

CMYK/RGB

Hexachrome

Spot colour

PMS-Pantone matching System

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Formats

Standard papersize

A & SRA

Imperial/ metric

Tabloid, Broadsheet, Berlinder

Envelop C size

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Stock

Weight

Finish

Laid/wove

Boards, carton

Plastic, acetaits

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Artwork

Document set up

File formats and fonts

Spell check

Colour specification

Printer marks

Preflight check

Mock ups

Proof

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Print process

Lithographic

Gravure

Screen print

Flexography

Pad print

Six colour

Laminate

Foil blocking

Emboss/ de bossing

Spot UV Varnish