Finishing

At Kaligraphic Print, we do inexpensive foiling, and a range of celloglazed finishes. Due to how foiling works, this can be a complicated process or a very simple one. To foil elements on a printed design, we must print those elements in black, and then run the sheet through our celloglazing and foiling machine. The foil then sticks to the printed areas cleanly and permanently.

If you’re having foiled shapes and text on a white background– this is a simple two step process:

1. Print the foiled areas in black
2. Apply foil

If you want foiled shapes that overlap a background, or other background elements that aren’t foiled, this becomes a four step process:

1. Print the background elements that are not foiled
2. Celloglaze background (this applies a layer of clear laminate that will prevent the foil from sticking to the ink of the background elements)
3. Print the foiled areas in black
4. Apply foil.

For designs where you have printed areas, and foiled areas, but they don’t touch or overlap on a white background, you can eliminate the need for celloglazing by using this 3 step process:

1. Print foiled areas in black
2. Apply foil
3. Over print the non-foiled areas

Due to this process, the document set up when you wish to include foiling is also different. In order to foil correctly we require your design to come in two separate pages. One page must be the non-foiled elements only. The other page must be the foiled elements only, in black, regardless of which colour foil you have ordered.

Foiling works best on bulkier fonts, simply because the end result can be a little tricky to read, and the bulkier it is, the clearer the words are. We do not recommend it for paragraphs of text, or thin lines that must be perfectly aligned.

In mass production, things can get out of alignment by a millimeter or two quite easily, and if your line is only a millimeter wide and is out of place- this can be very obvious- while we are always watchful for when this occurs, the more margin for error in a complicated 4 step process like foiling is best. For example- if you have foiled lines of 0.5mm to border a black square on a white background, if the machine shifts a page 0.3mm in one direction, suddenly the border of the square is noticeably out of place. When this kind of mistake is made, the two printing, and one celloglazing layers that came before on this page have now gone to waste. And if this happens in 1 out of 5 pages, of a 100 page order, this results in 20 wasted pages of ink and celloglaze. Had the border line been 1mm or 2mm thick- this slight misalignment would have caused no issues. So keep in mind that we require a certain amount of margin for error to avoid waste and delay in completing your order.

If you have any questions about this or any other kind of file set up feel free to email De at graphics@kaligraphic.com.au, and she will assist you!

We also offer Die-Cutting. This allows us to provide custom cut shapes for a number of products. You can create small custom shaped goods such as business cards, greeting cards, stickers, tags, packaging, book covers, etc. You can also die cut large products, such as adhesive window decals and wallpaper.

In order to produce these products, we need correctly set up files, including both the printed design, as well as the die-cut line that outlines the custom shape required.

For designs that have a background colour (that isn’t white) or image, we also need 3mm bleed. This means we need the background colour to extend beyond the edges of the final product (the die-cut line). See to the right for examples of this.

It is also important to make sure that any text or logos be 3mm away from any die-cut lines. This rule also applies to shapes cut out of products.