Friday 20 December 2013

Design for Print: Novelty Inks and Printing

Novelty Printing Through the 5 Senses
graphicartsmag.com


SIGHT: Seed Paper
Seed paper, like varieties available at Botanical Paperworks (www.botanicalpaperworks.com), is an innovative paper technology whereby seeds are embodied within handmade paper products. Once the paper is used for its intended purpose (business cards, promotional items, wedding initiations, etc.) it can be planted and watered to produce new life. The paper itself is handmade from post-consumer waste, and once its expected life as a printed product is over, all that remains are beautiful flowers, herbs or vegetables. It is a sustainable process that leaves behind no waste. The paper products sold by Botanical Paperworks can be passed through a home inkjet printer, increasing opportunities for consumer end use.


TOUCH: Personalized Flip Books

Personalized flipbooks are amazing little keepsakes that capture favourite memories. There are several online printers who provide this service and create customized, variable data flipbooks. Customers simply upload a short video they want to capture and image stills are extracted, printed and bound into book format. The price is right too, with some flipbooks selling for under $15 (like the ones at flipclips – www.flipclips.com).


TASTE: Edible Inks and Papers
Everyone loves a tasty piece of cake… even more so if they are eating a picture of their own face! Edible inks and papers are used mainly by the baking and confectionary industries for commercial use creating unique cake designs. The edible paper can be passed through an inkjet printer and it can be made of rice paper or, alternately, a sugar and starch combination. The ink consists of food colouring that dyes the edible paper in the same way that inkjet ink would be deposited onto a sheet of paper. Edible papers have very little flavour or texture, and are therefore perfect for this application as they almost “melt” into the icing on top of the cake. The resulting effect appears as though the image has been printed directly on the iced top of the cake. Any inkjet printer can be used to facilitate the printing of edible ink onto the edible paper, however the resolution of the output device must be taken into consideration when aiming for a high quality end product.


SMELL: Canadian Tire’s Scentvertising
Here’s a new take on an old process! In a series of full-page Canadian home magazine advertisements, Canadian Tire harnessed the power of “scentvertising”. They employed visually appealing ads, printed on traditional perfumed peel-back scent flaps, with aromas such as “freshly mowed grass” and “charcoal barbeque”. On the back of the advertisements were coupons for products to get ready for spring. This clever ad provides an innovative sensory experience to get consumers excited about spring-related products at Canadian Tire.


SOUND: The Paper Record Player
Kelli Anderson is a Brooklyn-based designer and artist who works with a variety of media including photography, digital design and print. (She even has her own letterpress from 1919 housed in her apartment!). One of her recent projects is “The Paper Record Player” and I had the pleasure of speaking with Kelli about this project.

“The Paper Record Player” is a feat of paper engineering that is not only functional, but also captivatingly beautiful. It was designed and created for a friend’s wedding invitation, where recipients received a neatly packaged booklet that, when opened, morphed into a self-contained record player made almost entirely of paper.

“Part of The Paper Record Player’s charm is the awkward, handmade feel. People feel like they can mess with it and use it with their hands.”

The record itself was a flexidisc (a thinner and cheaper alternative to vinyl records that were manufactured at Pirate Press in San Francisco), however the needle arm, turntable base and booklet structure are all comprised of paper. A simple set of three instructions guided invitees to fold the paper record arm so that the (sewing) needle could make contact with the record at a 90-degree angle. Once the needle makes contact, the user then spins the record manually at 45 rpm to hear the song play. There is no speaker or added amplifier contained within the record player. The folded, thin paper arm facilitates vibration allowing the sound to be naturally amplified through this crafty device. All pages of this piece were simply sewn onto the cover stock, binding all components together.

The project took a period of four months to complete from original concept to the accomplishment of 200 printed and assembled copies. Lots of prototyping took place during this time and a few paper engineering-specific issues cropped up. One issue involved unwanted friction produced from manually spinning the disc on the inside back cover, thereby creating excess noise. Kelli’s clever solution was to laminate the back cover to reduce friction and therefore reduce the noise.

When Kelli was asked if she would venture into another paper engineering project, her response was a resounding, “Yes, absolutely! But I have to recover from The Paper Record Player first.”

Check out the record player in motion: http://bit.ly/ghRyow .

You can find Kelli on the web at www.kellianderson.com.

These and other innovations in novelty printing are exciting for the graphic communications industry and push the boundaries of how we understand print to exist in our everyday lives. Whether you see printed matter on a page, feel it in the form of a print-on-demand flipbook, taste it in your birthday cake, smell it in a magazine or hear it in a wedding invitation, there are so many interesting ways to interact with printed pieces.


Invisible inks
uk.games.yahoo.com

So how do you do it? Depending on the security you need, the materials you have, and the amount of time and effort you want to put in, there's a variety of options. Almost any kind of acid will work as invisible ink, as long as it dries clear: gently warm the paper (over a hot light bulb, say) and the heat will oxidize the acid, revealing the hidden message. Lemon juice, vinegar, wine, and milk are all easy-to-source choices.

But that's not going to do a great job of keeping your secrets; applying heat is the first trick an enemy agent will try. More complex inks exploit chemical reactions to do their developing. Write your message in a clear substance, then later coat the paper in a special developer that sparks a chemical reaction, changing the color of the ink and revealing your scrawls. These are harder to improvise at home, though red cabbage water (the liquid left behind after you boil red cabbage) serves as a developer for a number of household chemicals including ammonia and lemon juice, and iodine does the same for starch.

Other invisible inks only show up when they fluoresce under a blacklight. Bodily fluids work here, though in the interests of hygiene we don't advise too much experimentation. Laundry detergents usually contain optical brighteners that will serve the same purpose, though, and commercially available security pens are also worth a go.


1.Lemon Juice



Lemon juice is a great example of a ‘heat-fixed’ invisible ink. An invisible lemon juice message, scrawled onto a piece of paper, can be developed by exposure to any heat source such as a radiator, an iron or a 100W light bulb.

Many acidic household liquids (Coca Cola, wine, apple, orange and onion juice included) behave in quite the same way, as do a number of bodily fluids. During the Nazi occupation of Poland, people frequently sent postcards containing hidden messages written in saliva and even urine.

Equipment & ingredients: you’ll find them in most local grocers

Suitable for:
anyone

Ease of use: really easy


2.Vinegar

Vinegar is another household liquid that can be used as an invisible ink. Unlike lemon juice, messages written in vinegar are best developed by a chemical reaction. Red cabbage, which contains a pigment called flavin (an anthocyanin), can be used in solution to develop vinegar and other strong acids. Red cabbage solution turns a vinegar message dark red.

Equipment & ingredients: ubiquitous

Ideal for: anyone wanting to hide a message

Ease of use: simple

3.Cerium Oxalate


In 2006, two researchers from Michigan State University finally discovered the secret behind the Stasi’s invisible ink. The Stasi would sandwich a piece of material impregnated with cerium oxalate between two sheets of paper, writing on the top sheet to transfer a chemical message onto the sheet below. A solution of manganese sulphate, hydrogen peroxide and other chemicals could then be used to develop the message, turning it orange.

During World War II, numerous chemicals were used as invisible inks: copper sulphate, developed with sodium iodide; iron sulphate, developed with sodium carbonate; and sodium chloride (common table salt), developed with silver nitrate, were some of the more common. The search of one Nazi spy’s hotel room uncovered several large and unusual looking keys, which turned out to be invisible ink writing implements, with hidden nibs and chambers for ink.

Equipment & ingredients: access to a lab would help

Ideal for: anyone wanting to hide sensitive information

Ease of use: time consuming

4.UV

Specially formulated UV inks are invisible in daylight, but glow under UV light sources. UV pens filled with such inks are used to mark items in case of theft, products in manufacturing and hands or tickets for readmission to events, particularly at nightclubs.

Many common substances, from laundry detergents to soap and bodily fluids, can be used as crude invisible inks, as they fluoresce under UV light. Photocopiers can be used to develop messages written in these inks, due to the UV components in their scanner heads.

Equipment & ingredients: easy to pick up UV lights and pens

Ideal for: hiding information at school or work

Ease of use: simple and reliable

5.Printer Ink

Invisible UV ink is also available for use in printer cartridges and is used for printing information onto business forms, so as not to clutter the visible content. The United States Postal Service also uses UV ink to print barcodes and routing information onto mailed envelopes.

By following the instructional video above, you can make your own makeshift invisible inkjet printer cartridge with just an ordinary inkjet cartridge, four invisible ink pens and a syringe. One little tip: make sure you wear gloves!

Equipment & ingredients: easily sourced from most electronics stores

Ideal for: home and office use

Ease of use: ridiculously

6. Pure Distilled Water

When there’s nothing else around, even water can be used as invisible ink. Writing a message in water disturbs the surface fibres on a piece of paper. Such a message can then be developed using the fumes from heated iodine crystals. The marks made by the water turn brown, as iodine particles stick more readily to disturbed areas. This method is not perfect however, as exposure to direct sunlight or bleach can erase your message completely.
7. Disappearing Ink

Disappearing ink is unlike any other ink in this list: it begins visible, but soon disappears. The normally colourless thymolphthalein, which turns blue when mixed with the base sodium hydroxide, is a great example. Over time, the base reacts with carbon dioxide in the air and its pH drops. Once it ceases to be a base, the blue colour disappears. Ink like this is used by events managers on non-reusable passes – and by practical jokers in their water pistols!

Equipment & ingredients: thymolphthalein may be tricky to source

Ideal for: good for using on single-use, time-sensitive identity cards

Ease of use: once setup, it’s easy

Read more about 7 Amazing Types Of Invisible Ink & How You Can Use Them Cartridge Save Blog by CreativeCloud from the UK's leading supplier of printer cartridges

Thursday 19 December 2013

OUGD504: Design For Print & Web Research

My chosen ISTD brief was Mutton Quad. The task was to create a typographic restaurant. I began by researching into existing typographic food ideas. I wanted to work with the idea of 'Editble Type' - inspired by our Typogato brief last year. For typogato we were asked to design and bake a typographic cake of our choice, to be entered into a competition among the class. I really enjoyed that brief, so thought it would be a fun concept to further experiment with.

I began researching typographic food with the idea of 'food for thought' and 'edible type'. I researched food in general to begin to get ideas of what type of food I wanted to use in my own restaurant.


Edible Gelatin Type: 
Lucía Rallo and Aranxa Esteve of Spanish design duo m-inspira.

Food Type: 
Nuria Bringué Bergua
 


Robert Bolesta
 

Anna Garforth
 
 
 
 
 
  


Famous British desserts in pictures


End of Work - Meet the Greek Identity & Interiors
www.endofwork.com.au
menus
invite to the opening night
business cards
interiors - Greek Taverna
typographic map of Greece - made up of three layers of the typographic family names
Authentic and historical










Sunday 1 December 2013

Content Reseach for Print Publication

graphicdesign.about.com

Audience
When beginning a project, it is important to think about the experience of your audience, which differs greatly between print and web design. At the most basic level, the web is interactive and print pieces are usually not.

In print, you are trying to get your audience to stay on a page long enough to get a marketing message across. You are often faced with a limited area in which to achieve this, such as a one-page magazine ad. In some cases, you are trying to catch their attention and have them dive deeper into your product, as with a book cover or the first page of a brochure. One of the benefits of print design is that you are dealing with a physical product, so physical properties such as texture and shape can help you achieve your design goals. As an example, paper companies will take out magazine ads printed on their own paper, allowing the audience to feel the weight and texture of their product.

Layout
  • In print, your space is generally measured in inches.
  • You can be dealing with anything from a business card to a highway billboard.
  • You know the space allowed from the start and that your finished product will look the same to everyone who sees it.
  • You must have bleed and safety areas to guarantee print results.

Colour
  • Consider the difference between your colors on screen and on paper.
  • Again, a “proof” can help ensure you are getting the desired results.
  • You often choose “spot” or “process” colors for your printer to use. These are colors you choose from a palette and identify with a code that you provide to your printer.


It is important to prepare and design your documents correctly to ensure that the final PDF will output correctly and to the best quality. This page highlights some of the main issues to be aware of when designing for print.

Colour space
Files intended to print in four-colour process should be supplied in the DeviceCMYK colour space, and contain only cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. Any objects in RGB, calibrated RGB or LAB must be converted before being imported into your layout application.

Total Area Coverage (TAC)
Combined colour values should not exceed 300 per cent. This may be required to be lower depending on the paper being printed on. This TAC applies to pictures printed in colour - 300 per cent in the darkest areas.

Image specification
Resolution and size
Colour and greyscale continuous-tone images should be saved at 300dpi at a print size relevant to its final size on the page. Bitmap images (linework) should be saved at at least 1200dpi and preferably 2400dpi. Resolutions lower than this or images smaller than the final size on the page will lead to a loss of quality.

Format and Compression
Ideally, images should be saved as TIFFs, but JPEG compression can be used to reduce file size. I do not recommend the use of RAW files from digital cameras or PhotoShop .psd files as results can be unpredictable if not properly handled.
JPEG compression is a "lossy" format where pixel information is thrown away to reduce file size. Algorithms rebuild the discarded data when the file is decompressed. LZW compression within the TIFF format is a lossless method, replacing repeating code with a tag which is replaced when the file is decompressed.

Vector graphics
Files originated in vector-based illustration software such as Adobe Illustrator should have all fonts embedded or outlined. The colour space should be CMYK and all transparency must be flattened.

Placing graphics
When you place pictures in your layout application allow a "safety margin" between the edge of the picture box and any part of the image that is not meant to appear. This will avoid "rebates", particularly noticeable when you place keylines around your images.

Fonts
Do not style fonts bold and/or italic using the styling buttons in your layout application. Always select the styled version of the font from the font list. If this is not possible, remember that not all fonts have bold and italic versions.Your screen does not recognise this and will display them regardless of whether italic or bold printer fonts exist (common examples are symbol fonts such as Zapf Dingbats or Symbol, for which there are no italic or bold printer fonts). With no associated printer font, a styled screen font will output unstyled, as the default font or not at all. Do not trust your screen - always check that Printer fonts are available before styling bold and/or italic
Outline and shadow text created by style menus should be avoided. Most desktop printers will not successfully show the final printed result, and you may get unexpected or undesirable results.

Fine lettering
Thin lines, rules, medium and small type sizes should be reproduced at 100% (solid) of only a single colour wherever possible.
Do not use rules defined as "Hairline" in your DTP application. Desktop printers and similar devices will not give an accurate representation of a hairline rule on your proofs.
Keep to a minimum rule weight of 0.25pt for a solid single colour.

Reversed out lettering
Reversed 1-1 out lettering, or knocked-out type, should be out of a minimum of colours. Type or objects smaller than 10pt in size should ideally be reversed out of one colour only. Small letters reversed out of multiple colours - particularly fonts with fine serifs - will show colour in white type areas even with the slightest mis-registration on press. Check to ensure that reversed-out lettering does not become illegible due to the text's background.

Tints and backgrounds
If you wish to reproduce a large solid black background I would recommend that the black prints at 100 per cent, along with a 40 per cent cyan tint to provide more density. This is often referred to as a "shiner", and produces what is sometimes called a "rich black".
The inclusion of a common colour background or strap heading across several pages of a feature or sections of a magazine can draw attention to the natural minor variations in colour balance that occur across a press/presses and during a press run. This can be minimised by creating these common colours out of as few process colours as possible. Give careful consideration to the use of one, or perhaps two colours to produce the common colour. Such a colour will enable a more consistent reproduction than the same object defined using all four process colours. However, certain two-colour combinations can also be prone to unattractive colour shifts - particularly when both colour values are midtones. Two-colour combinations where one colour is considerably higher than the other prove more stable, producing a more consistent, balanced result.
To assure accurate reproduction on press it is advisable to supply a colour swatch or contract-colour proof.

Tracking

Tracking occurs when ink is consumed by an area of a sheet with a high percentage of one or more colours, creating a deficiency of that colour within a later area running in track. This effect is more evident on heavy tint areas running across the sheet. To avoid the effects of tracking it is important to consider the final imposition and design your layout accordingly.

Black overprint
100% black elements will automatically overprint other colours. This prevents normal black text knocking "holes" in tints. Therefore, it is important that larger 100% black page elements, such as boxes or very large point size text, do not have variations in colour beneath them. These will show through in the printed page. Alternatively a "shiner" (see above) can be used to produce a heavier, more consistent solid. If a black element is overprinting a four-colour image, include at least 1% pf CMY in your black to ensure the picture does not show through the black.

Trims and Bleeds
All page content that runs to the edge of the page must extend off the page by a minimum distance of 3 mm. This minimum distance is referred to as bleed. If bleed is not applied there is a risk of an unsightly white area appearing at the bleed edge.
Elements that do not bleed should be a minimum distance of 5 mm from the edge of the page. This is referred to as the margin. Elements closer to the edge than this standard risk being trimmed off during the finishing process.
Do not attempt to place text sitting exactly on the trim - you will almost certainly be disappointed with the finished trimmed result.
Consideration should be given to the binding style when setting the margins.
For perfect-bound titles consideration should be given for the area in the backs lost in the spine glueing.
For wire-stitched titles remember that larger paginations cause "bulking" resulting in the centre pages of the magazine being considerably shorter in width than the pages at the front and back. The uneven fore-edge is trimmed away after it is stitched. You may wish to allow a larger fore-edge margin in such cases or a larger margin in the backs to allow for "feathering" at the imposition stage. Pages that read across the spine cannot be feathered so attention must be paid to the fore-edge to avoid important content being trimmed away. Check with your Production Controller at Headley Brothers for advice on how to proceed.




Particular attention must be paid to the covers of perfect-bound magazines. The cover is glued along the spine and attached to the first and last page of the contents and can lose an area of around 6-8 mm in the "hinge". Check the Downloads Page for the PDF "DPS For Covers Template" that will guide you in dealing with this.



Perfect Binding
Paginations below 56 pages are not suitable for perfect binding. Depending on the weight and bulk of the paper, fewer pages than this do not produce a spine of a viable width for the perfect binding process. Please consult your Production Controller for advice.

Elements across spreads
Accurate alignment of elements that go across a spread cannot be guaranteed. Items that can look bad across spreads on a final printed result are: rules; tint edges (especially diagonals); text and lineart. If it is necessary to run a line of text across a spread make sure the spine falls between words.
This is even more evident in perfect-bound titles which cannot be opened out flat. There is always a certain amount of the page in the backs that cannot be seen. To overcome this, pages which cross a spread should be "thrown out". Check with your Production Controller at Headley Brothers for advice on how this is achieved.

Ink Rubbing

Ink can be transferred through abrasive contact on press and bindery handling systems during the manufacturing process. Matt and silk/satin papers are particularly susceptible to ink rubbing. Consideration can be given to this at the design stage. Where possible avoid facing pages of heavy ink coverage against white, unprinted pages.
Where possible avoid designs where the outside front cover is heavily inked and the outside back cover has large areas of white space or vice versa.
If this is unavoidable, consider a seal, which can sometimes prevent marking.

Web growth
Paper has a tendency to expand as it absorbs moisture and shrink when it loses moisture. In the heatset web offset process heat is applied to the paper in order to flash off solvent and dry the ink. After heating the paper is cooled, and a layer of silicone emulsion is applied to "recondition" it. The heating of the paper removes a percentage of the moisture content which cannot be replaced in the printing process. The width of the web will have reduced by several millimetres when it leaves the press, which results in about one millimetre of shrinkage per page.
In sheetfed printing the opposite occurs. Paper takes up water in the printing process and may stretch due to water absorption.
When sheetfed covers are bound with web offset sections, the covers are trimmed flush with the inner sections. After the trimming the covers release moisture into the air and the web offset sections absorb moisture from the air. The covers may shrink slightly and the web sections will grow and hence show a difference in size. Since the industry-accepted best-practice is to run paper grain parallel to the spine, web growth beyond the sheetfed cover will normally be evident on the fore-edge.
This effect is common within the printing industry and is most often seen when sheetfed covers are bound with web offset sections.
It may be possible to minimise the impact of this effect by careful design of the cover and page one of the content. Speak to your Production Controller at Headley Brothers for advice.



designdisease.com
How Printing Works
To start off, a basic knowledge of how different types of printing work, while not necessary, will help you understand what it is you are doing when clicking that ‘print’ button.

There are many types of printers: laser jet, bubble jet, thermal printers, inkjet, etc. Inkjet printing is probably what you will come across and use the most. Inkjet printers use liquid ink to form the images you print. Usually inkjet printer will contain either ink cartridges or ink tanks, the difference between the two being that ink cartridges have inbuilt print heads while ink tanks are simply a container.

The ink is “sprayed” or dropped onto the page drop by prop by the printheads, building up the image you are printing
CMYK and DPI



One of the most important things to understand is how colours work when printing. Your basic inkjet printer usually will use 4 cartridges: one black, one cyan, one magenta and one yellow, CMYK. Using the CMYK colour model, the printer can lay down a combination of cyan, magenta, yellow or black creating pretty much any colour you would need. White is not needed and in a way is simulated by a lack of dots of colour, showing the white paper behind it, creating either white or a light colour.

When designing for print it can be best to make sure you either design or convert to CMYK before printing as colours will appear differently than when using RGB, but we’ll talk more about that later.



Another important factor is resolution and DPI. What resolution you design and print at really depends on how high quality you want the image to be and what sort of limitations your printer has. Due to printers having the limitation of only using 4 colour cartridges, the DPI has to be considerably higher than when displayed on a monitor to be able to replicate the more complex colours. When designing for print, for example the minimum DPI (dots per inch) for a magazine or leaflet will usually be 300, all though the higher the resolution the better the image will look.
Designing For Print

Designing specifically for print is not the same as designing for digital and web use, in fact it can be a little complicated.

As mentioned before, traditionally, when designing for print you should use CMYK, and this is still the case when using top end printers. The complicated part is that a lot of modern day inkjet printers don’t actually accept CMYK data, even if you send a file to print from photoshop with a CMYK colour mode, the printer will convert any data sent over into and RGB colour mode. So it’s hard for me to tell you what mode you should be designing in as it will be different with each printer you use.



Personally when starting a new document for print, I would recommend going with RGB anyway in the first stages of design. The reasons behind this being: RGB file sizes are smaller, some filters and effects don’t work when in CMYK and RGB has a larger colour range. Then once you are ready to print, convert to CMYK if your printer specifies that it can receive CMYK data, the only down side to this being a slight colour loss/change which you will be able to correct.

Now when it comes to DPI settings it is pretty simple. 300 DPI will almost always be as high as you need to go when designing for print. At this resolution, the human eye cannot distinguish between the dots from a regular reading distance, having a higher resolution would usually be pointless.

If printing something that will not be viewed up close, such as a poster or banner, the resolution can be lower, usually around 150 – 200 DPI is good. When designing for something much larger that will be viewed from further away, for example a large billboard, it is common for the resolution to be as low as 12 – 15 DPI.

With some of the larger prints you are probably not printing it yourself, so it’s always good to ask what sort of resolution and colour mode the printer requires.


Paper Stock
www.bbc.co.uk

Paper thickness is measured in grams per square metre (gsm). This is the weight of one square metre of the paper.

Most paper is manufactured from recycledboards and paper. Virgin paper is made from 100% wood pulp and contains no recycled material.

Different types of paper and board have different uses, as shown in the table below:
Types of paper and their uses

Type, Description and uses

Layout paper
- lightweight, thin white paper
- used for initial ideas
- takes colour media well
- low cost

Tracing paper
- thin, translucent paper
- making copies of drawings
- high cost

Cartridge paper
- good quality white paper
- available in different weights
- general purpose work
- can be used to make simple models
- medium cost

Bleedproof paper
- smooth, hard paper
- used with water-based and spirit-based felt-tip pens
- medium cost

Coloured paper
- many different types
- available in different thicknesses
- used for mounting finished work
- used to apply coloured surfaces to models
- low to medium cost

Grid paper
- printed square and isometric grids in different sizes
- a guide for quick sketches and model-making
- low cost


Print Processes
www.howstuffworks.com

There are nine main types of printing processes:
  • offset lithography - what we are exploring in this article
  • engraving - think fine stationery
  • thermography - raised printing, used in stationery
  • reprographics - copying and duplicating
  • digital printing - limited now, but the technology is exploding
  • letterpress - the original Guttenberg process (hardly done anymore)
  • screen - used for T-shirts and billboards
  • flexography - usually used on packaging, such as can labels
  • gravure - used for huge runs of magazines and direct-mail catalogs

www.treetopdesignandprint.com
Print processes explained

Lithographic Printing
The main printing process used throughout the world and encompasses a number of different terms including:

Offset Printing, Litho, Sheet Fed, Web Offset, Continuous.

It is a planographic process where the image and non-image are on the same flat printing plate. The image areas are processed to accept ink and repel water. The non-inage areas are processed to accept water and reject the greasy ink. So by wetting the plate and then inking it, the image area is able to transfer the ink to a blanket cylinder and then from there to the paper (the offset principle). The printing plate never comes into contact with the paper.

Litho plates are made by a variety of methods but most modern print factories use computer-to-plate (CTP) systems which are created direct from the computer files rather than having to output film first.

Digital Printing
Is primarily used for short runs of less than 1000 or for items that need to be individually personalised with text and/or images. Digital printing requires less set-up than other methods but does not gain from economies of scale.

Digital printing uses a dry ink process where the ink does not permeate the paper unlike wet ink. The dry ink is held in place by applying a layer of fuser oil and a heat process.

Large Format Printing
This process uses inkjet printing machines that can print widths up to 3.5m and virtually any length. Large format printing is usually used to produce short run posters, banners and point of sale material and the end results can be lightfast and permanent.

Silk Screen Printing
This process uses a stencil which is mounted on to a fine screen material. The ink is passed through the stencil and screen onto the substrate.

Screen printing can be used on virtually any substrate and any shape using any kind of ink.

Flexography
This process uses a rubber plate and very thin inks and is similar to the original letterpress printing techniques. This is a specialist process and is used most commonly on plastic carrier bags.

Gravure Printing
This process uses an engraved image which is flooded with ink and the surplus is scraped off with a blade, the plate is then pressed onto the paper. This process can produce very intense colour on very low grade paper and so is a popular process for long runs like Sunday newspaper supplements.