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Tuesday, March 31, 2015

How To Prepare Your Artwork for Special Print Effects

It’s every print designer’s dream to work on a project that involves special print effects. Varnishes, fluorescents, foils and embossing are just some examples of cool finishes that can be applied by industrial printing companies, but the added cost makes these projects quite a rarity. If you’re lucky enough to have an adventurous client, or you’re feeling flush and want to splash out on some top quality personal prints, follow along with this guide to learn about the different special print finishes available and how to prepare your print artwork to accommodate them.

The Printing Process

Offset printing press

Having your designs professionally printed will involve either digital or offset printing. Digital printing is common for short runs of 500 or less, whereas traditional offset printing is the standard for long runs or large format printing. It is now possible to find digital printers that can supply white & metallic inks and digital spot varnishes, but you’re really going to need a large print project that requires offset printing to have most special print effects available to you.

Typically prints are created using 4 colour CMYK printing, which adds Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black inks via plates to build up the complete spectrum of colours available in the CMYK gamut. With offset printing however, more plates can be added to accommodate special inks, or prints can be run through additional machinery to apply special finishes.

Spot UV Varnishes

The most popular special print finish is the Spot Varnish. Varnishes are often applied to the whole page to give a shiny or matte finish, but Spot Varnishes use an additional plate to overprint the varnish to specific areas of the design. The term UV relates to the ultraviolet exposure which quickly dries the coating to create super shiny effects.

Fluorescent & Metallic Inks

Another example of a special print effect that is applied directly on the press is the use of special inks such as metallics or fluorescents. These inks can be applied with additional plates, or sometimes they can replace one of the standard CMYK plates to keep the cost down. For example a fluorescent yellow ink is commonly used in place of the standard CMYK yellow.

Hot Foil Stamping

One of the most distinctive special print effects is the hot foil stamp, which is commonly used to create silver or gold highlights and is often combined with embossing for truly luxurious prints. Hot foil stamping is applied post-press and requires extensive setup so it can prove costly, but the results are certainly worth it!

Embossing, Letterpress & Blind Debossing

Embossing, debossing and letterpress all involve the indentation of a die onto the paper stock. Embossing creates a raised relief, whereas debossing and letterpress creates a cavity. The difference between debossing and letterpress is the use of ink. Blind Debossing refers to the lack of ink to create a subtle indentation in the paper, whereas letterpress printing is applied with ink. The letterpress indentation was originally a side effect from the printing process, but it is now a sought after style. Blind Embossing and Blind Debossing are also commonly combined with foils to really draw attention to the image.

How To Prepare Your Print Artwork

Spot varnish mockup

While all the special print effects result in different finishes, the process of identifying these areas in your designs is the same. All print effects are applied by the printer, so your computer based artwork won’t accurately depict the final result. You will need imagination and good communication with your chosen print company to ensure your prints return with the expected result!

Designate the special finish areas

As the designer, you’re in charge of identifying which areas of your design should have a special finish applied. The ‘less is more’ rule is definitely true with special effects. Copy and paste elements onto a new layer, or create additional artwork that will only be applied using a varnish or die onto this separate layer.

Create an identifiable spot color

The special areas in your design need to stand out to the printer, so creating a special spot colour swatch will separate these items from the rest of your artwork. In Illustrator or InDesign create a new swatch from the Swatches panel. Give it a descriptive name and change the type to Spot Color, then make the colour 100% Magenta or 100% Black so it clearly stands out in your design.

Set the elements to Overprint

To avoid the special finish elements knocking out the other print plates the elements must be set to Overprint via the Window > Attributes window. This is crucial for spot varnishes that are meant to highlight underlying areas of the design, otherwise the varnish would be applied directly onto the paper.

Save your print file

Save your document as a PDF, or package the document in the case of InDesign. You can use Adobe Acrobat’s Output Preview mode to see how the artwork is separated into the different plates and how your special spot colour is clearly listed in the separations list.

The post How To Prepare Your Artwork for Special Print Effects appeared first on Blog.SpoonGraphics.

How To Prepare Your Artwork for Special Print Effects

Saturday, March 28, 2015

The Atomic Age Print Kit for Access All Areas Members

Today is a great day to be an Access All Areas member! Dustin Lee from RetroSupply has kindly donated the popular Atomic Age Print Kit for members to download. It’s a powerful PSD that allows you to create authentic halftone and textured ink overlays with one click! What’s more, this comprehensive pack comes with 2 bonuses; The Atomic Age Refill pack contains additional textures, and a full set of high resolution Atomic Halftone Brushes. To round off the pack, it also includes handy instructions and a video tutorial to show you exactly how to apply the effects to your own work.

RetroSupply‘s mission is to bring the awesomeness of handmade goods to digital design. Their range of products make it easy for designers to add the craft and tradition of retro design to their work via textures, brushes and actions. For the next 7 days, all Spoon Graphics readers can receive off their purchases from the RetroSupply Product Catalogue with the code SPOONGFX7, or gain free access to 9 best-selling RetroSupply goods by signing up to their newsletter.

Find out more about RetroSupply Co.

The Atomic Age Print Kit for Members

Atomic Age Print Kit preview

Access All Areas members can now download The Atomic Age Print Kit as part of their membership. Use it to add inky black halftones and rough edge bleeds to your work, just like news prints from the old presses of the atomic age. Just paste your black design work on one layer (clearly marked in the file) and your color background on another. Save the file and like magic you have the effects you see above. Alternatively, use the bonus halftone textures & brushes to manually apply aged effects to your designs.

Download the source file

The post The Atomic Age Print Kit for Access All Areas Members appeared first on Blog.SpoonGraphics.

The Atomic Age Print Kit for Access All Areas Members

Friday, February 6, 2015

This Bundle is a Dream Come True for Print Designers!

What are some of the most sought after resources for print lovers? Professional fonts? Print effect kits? Scalable vector graphics? Or maybe super high-res stock photographs? How about a bundle that contains all these these useful design resources, reduced in price by 97%?! The latest deal from Design Cuts is The Print Designer’s Bundle, which has been specifically put together based on requests from the community. It contains a huge variety of best selling items that are perfect for creating print themed design work, all for just .

This bundle is a true all in one print design solution, giving you all the options you’ll need to level up your print design work, and show it off in style. It contains a nice selection of items to create awesome design work, such as fonts, stock photos and vectors, along with resources that help simulate or mock up realistic printed effects, including PSD kits and mockup templates. Here’s a deeper look at what’s on offer:

Realistic Print Effect Kits

It’s not always feasible to create distressed print effects using old printing presses and authentic inks, but it is super easy to create realistic effects that mimic the coolest print styles with Photoshop Kits. This bundle contains some of the best PSDs such as the Analog Ink Foundry from RetroSupply or PosterPress from Vintage Design Co. Just drop in your artwork to have the effects instantly applied.

Professional Fonts

A designer can never have enough fonts, and professional fonts are crucially important when designing for print. The Print Designer’s Bundle contains a total of 7 premium fonts, two of which are nice, clean corporate typefaces, while the others cover various artistic and retro styles to give you plenty of choice when composing your designs. The great thing about these fonts is their quality. There’s loads of weight variations, plenty of glyphs and extensive language support.

Scalable Vector Graphics

The scalable nature of vector graphics makes them a print designer’s best friend. There’s no need to worry about resolution as these graphics will print with crisp edges at any size. This makes them perfect for every print medium, from booklets to huge banners. Ready made vectors are a huge time-saver too! Forget about tediously drawing, scanning and vectorizing your own illustrations when you can have a complete library of quality graphics to quickly add to your design compositions.

Stationery Mockup Compositions

You’ve just designed a cool new logo and brand for a company, how do you show off your handiwork? You could have every item professionally printed on the highest quality paper stock, then hire a photographer to capture some cool photos of the final products; or you could fake it with a clever PSD mockup template. One of the best ways to wow your clients is to go the extra mile and create a stunning presentation of your design concepts. A preview of how the design will look on real life print products is a fast track to getting the all important sign off!

High Resolution Stock Images

Resolution is crucial when it comes to print design. Any image destined for print will have to be sourced from a reputable stock library, but they’re not cheap! The Print Designer Bundle also contains over 100 ultra high-res photos of landscapes, mountains, and scenes of nature, which are all perfect for backgrounds, headers, articles, presentations and posters.

A Complete Library of Design Resources

There’s a huge variety of items in this bundle, including even more resources that I haven’t been able to feature in my little review. Check out the full overview to see all the items on offer. Remember that these products are best-sellers at their full price, that’s without the extended licensing that is included by default in this deal. Combine that with a discount of 97% and it makes a real bargain. This bundle is only available for a limited time though so grab it while you can!

Buy The Print Designer’s Bundle ()

The post This Bundle is a Dream Come True for Print Designers! appeared first on Blog.SpoonGraphics.

This Bundle is a Dream Come True for Print Designers!

Tuesday, December 30, 2014

40+ Best Free PSD Print Templates

40+ Best Free PSD Print Templates list that contains a selection of the best print templates we have made so far.

The collection includes all kinds of print elements like brochures, flyers, posters, business cards and more. They are completely for free and suitable for any project.

1. Brochure Template PSD 1

Brochure template psd featuring tons of eye-catchy graphics and details. We did our best to design a tri-fold brochure that will grab the attention of your audience. Of course, we took care for everything else – it’s a 300 dpi brochure, made in CMYK color mode. So, all you have to do is just to add your own images and text and you are ready to print the brochure.

Brochure Template PSD 1