Team Impression - Latest Printed Work

I particularly liked these printed designs, so here I was looking at the appropriate paper stock, printing process and GSM that has been used. I also found the Print School Page on Team Impression website, to be useful in helping to prepare files for commerical print. This particular feature focused on foil blocking, which is what I am considering using as a print finish for my the Graduation Brief Design. 

Print School

Foil Blocking: 

The basics:

Foil blocking is a dry printing process in which a thin layer of foil is transferred via a die to the surface to be printed. A combination of heat and pressure releases the pigment and leaves the image on the printed surface.

Uses:
Although it is most widely known and used in its gold and silver forms, there seems to have been a recent resurgence amongst Team’s designer clients to use coloured foils, especially white, black and clear. This can achieve really striking results, such as in the example opposite, where a blue foil has been used on a blue uncoated stock. Clear foils can be extremely effective in cases such as this but on certain stocks a slight ‘mottling’ effect may appear where the fibres of the stock show through, especially if the stock has a very open and tactile surface. The coloured foil provides an excellent solution here, and nowadays it is relatively easy to find coloured foils to match a design.

Tips:
Clear foils can often be much more effective than spot varnishing. Be imaginative. As well as the wide range of colours available, there is also a wide range of special effect foils, such as pearlescent, opalescent, holographic and textured.

Preparing your artwork:
Treat your foiled area as a single coloured colour plate, clearly identified as a foiled area. It is worth considering that different coloured foils achieve different results on different stocks. This can greatly affect the fineness of detail that can be achieved, especially when foiling text in very small point sizes. In general, a smoother sheet will usually be preferable in these cases. There are always plenty of samples of foiled jobs in the Team portfolio.

Examples: 

''This sample shows an excellent result achieved by putting a blue foil onto a blue uncoated stock.''

 

''Different coloured foils can be extremely effective when combined with coloured paper.''

 

''This shows extremely fine silver metallic foil printed onto matt black paper.'' 

 

Lee Cooper look-book- 

This Lee Cooper look-book was designed by 999 in Manchester and printed on 350gsm Stephen Sultry Grey and 130gsm Arctic Volume White, loop stitched with a gloss black foil to finish.

Blue print for success- 

Put an imaginative designer together with a like-minded printer and what do you get? A fabulous brochure with blue foil and a specially mixed blue ink printed onto Colorplan Imperial blue.

  

JD Sports Annual Report and Accounts 2010- 

Team got their best trainers on and shot out of the blocks to produce this in personal-best time. The cover, printed on Colorplan Prisine White, features an exceptionally crisp embossed headline set in a caption balloon of clear foil and a silver foil title.

Cofra brochure- 

This brochure for Cofra, designed by Mark Starbuck and Anthony Hodgson at Face Media, is a brilliant example of getting the most out of Team – using a combination of digital print, litho, foiling and hand finishing.  

The slipcase and cover is Sirio Pietra 210gsm, silver foiled and hand finished in-house. The internal shortened pages are litho printed metallic silver on Sirio Pietra 140gsm with the main text pages digitally printed onto Splendorgel Digital 140gsm (all papers by Fedrigoni).

RGB & CMYK

RGB - Red, Green, Blue
CMYK - Cian, Magenta, Yellow, Black

Pad Printing

Transfering a 2D image onto a 3D object (e.g.Pens, gold balls)

The process of Pad printing is the most versatile of all printing processes with its unique ability to print on three-dimensional objects and compound angles. The theory behind the pad printing process was derived from the screen, rubber stamp and photogravure printing processes.




This is how the process works:
Step 1: Flooding:
The image to be transferred is etched into a printing plate commonly referred to as a cliche'. Once mounted in the machine, the cliche' is flooded with ink. The surface of the cliche' is then doctored clean, leaving ink only in the image area. As solvents evaporate from the image area the ink's ability to adhere to the silicone transfer pad increases.

Step 2: Pick Up:
The pad is positioned directly over the cliche', pressed onto it to pick up the ink, and then lifted away. The physical changes that take place in the ink during flooding (and wiping) account for its ability to leave the recessed engraving in favor of the pad.
Step 3: Print Stroke:
After the pad has lifted away from the cliche' to its complete vertical height, there is a delay before the ink is deposited on the substrate. During this stage, the ink has just enough adhesion to stick to the pad (it can easily be wiped off, yet it does not drip). The ink on the pad surface once again undergoes physical changes: solvents evaporate from the outer ink layer that is exposed to the atmosphere, making it tackier and more viscous.
Step 4: Ink Deposit:
The pad is pressed down onto the substrate, conforming to its shape and depositing the ink in the desired location. Even though it compresses considerably during this step, the contoured pad is designed to roll away from the substrate surface rather than press against it flatly. A properly designed pad, in fact, will never form a 0-degree contact angle with the substrate; such a situation would trap air between the pad and the part, resulting in an incomplete transfer.
Step 5: Pad Release:
The pad lifts away from the substrate and assumes its original shape again, leaving all of the ink on the substrate. The ink undergoes physical changes during the head stroke and loses its affinity for the pad. When the pad is pressed onto the substrate, the adhesion between the ink and substrate is greater than the adhesion between the ink and pad, resulting in a virtually complete deposit of the ink. This leaves the pad clean and ready for the next print cycle.

Limitations of Pad Printing

Versatile as it is, the process does have a few limitations. For example:
1. Image transfer is much more efficient when solvent-based inks are used. The use of water-based or UV curable inks are not recommended.
2. The object to be printed needs to have a higher surface energy than the pad. This rules out printing on silicone and other non-stick materials, as well as wet, greasy parts. Additionally, some types of plastic require pre-treatment.
3. Pad printing is limited to relatively small /images/ compared to screen-printing. Pad printable /images/ are usually less than 100 square inches. Large opened areas (>4.0 sq. in) can be difficult to cover with special, screened cliché’s.
4. Pad printing produces a finished ink film thickness of approximately .00025" to .0003" with a single pass. By screen printing standards, this is very thin.


Examples:

Digital Printing

Printing digitally is a technology that permits the linking of printing presses to computers which proves beneficial in a number of ways: faster turnaround times, lowered production and setup costs, and the ability to personalize documents easier.  This fairly new technology is prominent in the printing industry because it's simply a more efficient way of printing.
It is ideally suited to short run or specials on a range of print media from paper to metal.

Digital printing is an important part of any business that needs to either print their own advertising or for businesses that outsource their printing.

Flexography (Rotary Printing - Flexo - Relif)

Flexography is the major process used to print packaging materials. Flexography is used to print corrugated containers, folding cartons, multiwall sacks, paper sacks, plastic bags, milk and beverage cartons, disposable cups and containers, labels, adhesive tapes, envelopes, newspapers, and wrappers (candy and food).

In the typical flexo printing sequence, the substrate is fed into the press from a roll. The image is printed as substrate is pulled through a series of stations, or print units. Each print unit is printing a single color. As with Gravure and Lithographic printing, the various tones and shading are achieved by overlaying the 4 basic shades of ink. These are magenta, cyan, yellow and black.



Image Preparation:
Image preparation begins with camera-ready (mechanical) art/copy or electronically produced art supplied by the customer. Images are captured for printing by camera, scanner or computer. Components of the image are manually assembled and positioned in a printing flat when a camera is used. This process is called stripping. When art/copy is scanned or digitally captured the image is assembled by the computer with special software. A simple proof (brown print) is prepared to check for position and accuracy. When color is involved, a color proof is submitted to the customer for approval.

Flexographic Plate Making:
Flexographic and letterpress plates are made using the same basic technologies utilizing a relief type plate. Both technologies employ plates with raised images (relief) and only the raised images come in contact with the substrate during printing. Flexographic plates are made of a flexible material, such as plastic, rubber or UV sensitive polymer (photopolymer), so that it can be attached to a roller or cylinder for ink application. There are three primary methods of making flexographic plates; photomechanical, photochemical and laser engraved plates.

Flexographic Printing Presses:
The five types of printing presses used for flexographic printing are the stack type, central impression cylinder (CIC), in-line, newspaper unit, and dedicated 4-, 5-, or 6-color unit commercial publication flexographic presses. All five types employ a plate cylinder, a metering cylinder known as the anilox roll that applies ink to the plate, and an ink pan. Some presses use a third roller as a fountain roller and, in some cases, a doctor blade for improved ink distribution.

Flexographic Inks:
Flexographic inks are very similar to packaging gravure printing inks in that they are fast drying and have a low viscosity. The inks are formulated to lie on the surface of nonabsorbent substrates and solidify when solvents are removed. Solvents are removed with heat, unless U.V. curable inks are used.

Finishing:
After printing, the substrate may run through a number of operations to be "finished" and ready for shipment to the customer. Finishing may include operations such as coating, cutting, folding and binding.

Flexo Printing Plate:


Examples of Flexo Printing:

Rotogravure (Rotary Printing - Gravure - Intaglio)

Gravure printing is characteristically used for long run, high quality printing producing a sharp, fine image.
Typical gravure printed products include:
Food packaging
Wall paper
Wrapping paper
Furniture laminates
Paneling

Greeting cards

Magazines

Gravure printing is an example of intaglio printing.

A rotogravure printing press has one printing unit for each colour, typically CMYK or cyan, magenta, yellow and key (printing terminology for black). The number of units varies depending on what colors are required to produce the final image. There are five basic components in each color unit: an engraved cylinder (AKA "Gravure cylinder") (whose circumference can change according to the layout of the job), an ink fountain, a doctor blade, an impression roller, and a dryer. While the press is in operation, the engraved cylinder is partially immersed in the ink fountain, filling the recessed cells. As the cylinder rotates, it draws ink out of the fountain with it. Acting as a squeegee, the doctor blade scrapes the cylinder before it makes contact with the paper, removing ink from the non-printing (non-recessed) areas. Next, the paper gets sandwiched between the impression roller and the gravure cylinder. This is where the ink gets transferred from the recessed cells to the paper. The purpose of the impression roller is to apply force, pressing the paper onto the gravure cylinder, ensuring even and maximum coverage of the ink. Then the paper goes through a dryer because it must be completely dry before going through the next color unit and absorbing another coat of ink.

Web-fed gravure presses account for almost all publication, packaging, and product gravure printing. These presses are generally custom manufactured machines designed for a specific range of products. The typical press is highly automated and consists of multiple print units. The printing mechanism in a rotogravure press consists of a gravure cylinder and a smaller, rubber clad impression cylinder.

Other types of gravure presses in commercial use today are sheet-fed, intaglio plate, and offset gravure. These types of presses are used primarily for special printing applications.

Examples of Gravure:

Offset V Digital

Offset:
-High quantities, 750+
-Pantone® (PMS) or CMYK
-Turnaround not needed quickly
-Prints higher quantities at much less cost
-Higher image quality, higher resolution and no streaks/spots
-Consistency - Prints can vary from run to run
-Better options of printing larger sheets as long as you are doing more than a few of any item
-No Variable Text
-Must dry or be coated before handling
-Can use special inks
-Works on a wide range of printing surfaces including thick paper, wood, cloth, metal, leather, rough paper and plastic
-If you need hard copy proofs, very accurate color proofing can become expensive
 
 
Digital:
-Low quantities (short runs) less than 750
-CMYK
-Turnaround - Need it quickly, short turnaround
-Prints lower quantities at much less cost
-High image quality not a factor
-Consistency - Every print is the same. More accurate counts, less waste and fewer variations, due to not having to balance ink and water during press run.
-Most digital presses only print up to a 14×20 sheet although 12 x18 is the most common sheet size
-Can print variable text or images where each sheet off the press is unique in some personalized way (database driven, e.g. mailing lists, marketing materials, direct mail pieces, letters, etc. with a different name/address or number/code on each printed piece)
-Once a sheet is off a digital press it can be cut, folded or finished very quickly
-No special inks (metallics, overglosses, fluorescents) since all colors will have to fall within a CMYK gamut
-Offers more accurate proofs, since what you see is an actual sample of the printed piece, printed using the exact process as the intended run

Lithography (Rotary Printing - Litho - Planographic)

Lithographic printing is well suited for printing both text and illustrations in short to medium length runs of up to 1,000,000 impressions. Typical products printed with offset printing processes include:

General commercial printing Quick printing
Newspapers Books
Business Forms Financial and Legal Documents
Offset Lithographic Printing Process Overview

Lithography is an "offset" printing technique. Ink is not applied directly from the printing plate (or cylinder) to the substrate as it is in gravure, flexography and letterpress. 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 substrate (typically paper or paperboard) to produce the printed product.

Sheet Fed:
In sheet-fed offset, “the printing is carried out on single sheets of paper as they are fed to the press one at a time.” Sheet-fed presses use mechanical registration to relate each sheet to one another to ensure that they are reproduced with the same imagery in the same position on every sheet running through the press.



Web fed:
A high run, speed printing press that uses rolls of paper rather than individual sheets.

Web Offset Perfector Presses are beneficial in long run printing jobs, typically press runs that exceed 10 or 20 thousand impressions. Speed is a huge factor when considering turn around time for press production; some web presses print at speeds of 3,000 feet per minute or faster. In addition to the benefits of speed and possible faster turn around times, some web presses have the inline ability to print, but also cut, perforate, and fold. Web offset perfector presses uses roll-fed paper and blanket to blanket method. The delivery system includes an oven that cooks the inks for higher speed (preventing ink offset), and then folds and trim the book. A book on a Web press is usually made-up of 16 or 32 pages depending on the size of the press.