Black Cardboard Envelope With Bronzing Logo prepress design should consider the four elements of the printing process

Black Cardboard Envelope With Bronzing Logo prepress design should consider the four elements of the printing process

 

It is often the case that pre-press designers feel very perfect works, after the delivery of printing production, there are a lot of actual printing process problems, resulting in the production process can not continue, or increase the unnecessary processing difficulty, resulting in the rise of costs. Therefore, this paper starts from the actual production, summarizes the basic elements of the printing process that should be considered in the prepress design, so that the prepress design personnel in the design process, can start from these elements, pay attention to the process of printing design, so as to realize the seamless docking of the prepress and printing, as well as after the press, high quality and efficient to provide customers with quality services at low prices.

 

A beautiful design work, no doubt, is the crystallization of the wisdom and inspiration of designers, but from "design work" to "printed products", there is a considerable distance between this. Because a single piece of work is easy to achieve, if the design is widely spread for the purpose of a large number of copies, to print proof to compare the effect of the work is significant, from the printing point of view, the complexity of the printing process makes a printing of this practice is very luxurious. At this time, we not only need the foundation of artistic design, but also need to consider and master the relevant printing process issues, and reflect in the specific product design, in order to complete the perfect transformation from "work" to "product". In real life, the designer and the printing house often in the accident, because the responsibility is not clear and make both sides very unhappy. In fact, as long as the designers according to the printing process knowledge, change the product design scheme, can print better. So, what printing process problems should be paid attention to in the design of products?

 

1. Printing type

When designing a product, the first consideration should be what type of printing the product will be designed. The process characteristics of different printing types are completely different. Taking the four printing methods as an example, offset printing performance is rich and delicate, relief printing products have clear Outlines, strong strokes, bright ink color, gravure printing is clear lines, fine and beautiful, silk screen ink layer thick and convex sense, flexo printing products simple color blocks, lines cause a strong visual impact. Different printing types have their own specific design requirements, which must be taken into account in the design.

 

For the design of offset printing products, designers contact more, relatively experienced, mainly pay attention to these points can: the resolution of the picture is enough; Whether the trapping value is suitable; For small text, try to avoid four-color overlay, so as not to increase unnecessary printing difficulty; Rule line cutting line is complete; Try to avoid the design of large full plate field color block; The direction relationship between text, text and paper fiber, fully consider the requirements of post-processing.

 

Gravure products in the design to avoid multi - color overprinting. Because most of the printing materials used in gravure printing have large thermal scalability, coupled with thermal deformation in the process of high-speed printing, it is more difficult to print overprint. Therefore, when designing patterns, multi-color overprinting should be avoided as far as possible without affecting the design effect. In addition, some materials not only scalability, ink adhesion is also very poor. For example: at present, PE film and black and white film used in fresh milk products, so the design of this kind of packaging pattern should not only avoid multi-color overprinting, but also make the pattern simple, generous, avoid large area of color filling. The requirements of bag-making process should be fully considered. For the back sealing bag, the front pattern should be made with appropriate amount of internal bleeding according to the size of the finished product, so as to prevent the front pattern from appearing too small after making the bag. At the same time, it is necessary to consider whether there is no seam up or down. Whether the position of light spot is set in line with the needs of cutting bag making, etc. In addition, whether it is necessary to use transparent or the same color to connect between the patterns of unit finished products is also the place that should be paid attention to in gravure product design.

 

In the design of flexo printing, if the original product is offset printing or gravure printing, when considering the use of flexo printing, can not simply copy the previous design scheme, to blindly pursue the printing effect of offset printing and gravure printing. Flexo printing in the design, should avoid the following aspects: avoid design too small text and too thin lines; Avoid overprinting of two - or multi-colour lines and text; Avoid designing small anti-white text and lines; Avoid picture highlights off grid or 1% small dot; Avoid designing text or lines in photoshop. Avoid designing wide and long field and gradient along the horizontal direction of the printing drum; Unless special requirements, avoid large areas of the field and dot and small text do on the same page, etc.

 

Screen printing in product design, the original used in principle and other printing methods used in the original is not very different, but in the specific platemaking, printing practice, its requirements are different, which is mainly due to the characteristics of screen printing. Especially because of thick screen printing ink layer, bright color, so in the selection of manuscript and plate to fully consider the special effect of screen printing. In addition, the accuracy requirements of the lines and dots of the original text used in screen printing are also different from those of the original text used in ordinary printing methods. If the lines of the original manuscript, dot is very fine, the use of screen printing plate is very difficult. So screen printing technology is not suitable for reproduction fine lines, dot of the original manuscript. In screen printing and platemaking, attention should be paid to choosing the appropriate network cable in order to achieve the purpose of fully reproducing the original manuscript. Screen printing is more suitable for the performance of text and bright lines of the monochromatic color of the original manuscript, also suitable for the performance of large contrast, clear layers of color manuscript. Through the special effect of screen printing, the reproduction has a rich expression, through the rich and thick ink layer and color contrast, fully express the texture of the original content and three-dimensional effect.

 

Two, material selection

Product design, the packaging materials used must be consistent with the product market positioning, to achieve the lowest cost to achieve the best packaging effect. In the selection of materials, on the one hand, we should consider the variety of materials, on the other hand, we should consider the specification of materials. Different types of printing materials, their printing suitability is very different, even completely different, the actual performance of the product is also very different. One of the more successful examples in the use of new materials is the packaging of a bowl of fragrant instant noodles by Hebei Zhongwang Group. It boldly breaks through the design materials, draws lessons from the packaging design style of small food, and uses transparent ink to print on the aluminum-plated film. Its bright color soon becomes the focus of many similar products as soon as it is launched, providing a new way of thinking for the packaging design of instant noodles. It has achieved good promotion effect in the market.

The specification of the material is also an important aspect affecting the cost of the product. For example, because different businesses need different varieties and specifications of paper for packaging label printing, it is often necessary to reserve dozens of different varieties and thicknesses of paper. Such as single-side coated paper, single-side offset paper, single-side copperplate cardstock, coated paper, cast coated glass powder cardstock, white paper, gold paper, aluminum foil, cowhide white paper, the common thickness is 80g, 90g, 250g, 300g. 350g, 400g, 450g, etc. When designing products, the problem of material specifications must be taken into account in order to avoid additional costs due to improper selection of material specifications. Take book and magazine printing paper as an example, book and magazine cover, insert and lining, cover within 200 pages generally use 100 ~ 150g paper, 200 pages more than 120 ~ 180g paper; Insert with 80 ~ 150g paper; Lining page according to the thickness of the book generally between 80 ~ 150g selection. The same kind of paper, the number of grams, the higher the price, the gram weight of the text paper increases, the spine thickness also thickens, and sometimes must adjust the gram weight of the cover paper and the number of open, which will produce a series of joint relations, often increase the cost of paper. [next]

 

3. Color and resolution

When choosing colors, you need to consider the actual reproduction effect of printing, for example, try not to use colors in the purple system. The reason is that the purple color obtained after the superposition of the green ink and magenta ink in the printing ink is generally "dirty", which is difficult to achieve the design pattern displayed in the computer monitor to the customer's color or the desired color effect in the customer's mind, which is easy to cause the quality accident about the color. If it is necessary to print the ideal purple color, it is either recommended to use peach ink overlay during the design, or use spot color printing. If the designed product is in the new market experimental stage of the sales process, it can be suggested that customers use spot color to print the main color of the package, which can not only improve the brightness of the packaging pattern and color, but also reduce the risk of lagging sales caused by the main color of the package once it is not in line with the popular color of the packaging market (if the main color of the product is printed with spot color, In the sales process according to the market needs at any time to exchange the main color of the package).

 

In the printing class graphic design, the resolution must be set according to the requirements of the design and printing process, especially the printing material (mostly for paper) and other factors to determine, and not any picture must be adjusted to the highest resolution. Such as newspaper printing network cable than fine album to lower, they have different requirements for the resolution of the image file. If the resolution of the picture on newsprint is adjusted to the same resolution as that of the photo album printed on copperplate paper, it is not only meaningless, but also leads to the printing of paste. The resolution of different objects in the printing computer graphic design is set as follows: general newsprint, offset paper printing color or black and white newspaper printing network cable for 60-100 lines, design resolution in 120-200dpi; Color pictures printed on offset paper, painted newspaper, coated paper, cardboard and white board are generally used, such as book covers, pictorial newspapers and product advertisements. The printing network cable is up to 150 lines, and the design resolution is 300dpi. High-grade books, exquisite picture albums, high-grade advertising prints, using high-grade coated paper printing, printing network cable can reach 175 lines or more, the design resolution is 350dpi; Fine books or special securities, special banknotes, design resolution can be 400dpi.

 

Four, layout scheme

Designers must provide customers with a reasonable layout scheme according to their needs. If the product designed in flexographic printing has a promising market prospect and the product packaging has a large printing volume, it is recommended that customers arrange the unit pattern vertically and improve the printing efficiency by increasing the circumference of the plate drum.

 

When typesetting, we should pay attention to the direction of the paper, such as the bottled wine label, because it is mechanized labeling, fast, automatic glue on the back of the paper when wet, instantaneous deformation and bending, the bending direction of the paper should match the automatic labeling machine, otherwise it can not be produced on the automatic assembly line. Therefore, in order to meet the needs of different customers, the paper horizontal and vertical wires must be considered first when the joint typesetting, in order to prevent the production of trademarks because they do not meet the requirements of customers and cause the whole batch of products scrapped.

 

The distinctive feature of packaging trademark printing and book printing is that one plate and one picture are more than one link. At least two diagrams are connected, and at most dozens of diagrams are connected. In the end, it is more appropriate to combine several drawings for printing, which is the design and process to consider the problem. Mainly from the following aspects to consider.

 

① The degree of difficulty of post-press processing. If there are more post-processing procedures for a manuscript, it is necessary to carefully consider that the printing layout can not be made large. Otherwise, because the temperature and humidity of the printing workshop is not well controlled, it is easy to cause paper expansion. In this way, the hot aluminum and embossing of the next process are difficult to overprint accurately, which should have been once hot aluminum and embossing, and have to be embossed several times. In addition, the combination of more and paper deformation, will seriously affect the alignment, difficult to remedy.

 

(2) Unusual trademarks. Trademark labeling is generally not large, for the need to die cut thin paper special-shaped trademarks, do not overlink, otherwise it will affect the quality of die cutting because of the precision of the production of die cutting version.

 

③ The number of prints. If the print quantity is small, don't overdo the spelling. Because the layout is too large and the number of printing is small, the cost of die cutting is high, and the cost of single standard is bound to increase.

 

④ Paper opening number. The size of the packaging paper matches the size of the paper, so the printing paper is very standard and there is no waste problem. Packaging trademarks, however, cannot be accurately combined into octave, quarto and folio printing due to the influence of single label size. Therefore, whether to adopt splicing, horizontal and vertical splicing, set splicing, one knife punching, drawing knife and other splicing methods is based on the principle of saving printing paper as much as possible.

 

Choosing a good process splicing method can directly create profits for enterprises. For example, in the design of books and periodicals, if the folio selection is not reasonable, it will increase the side material and reduce the effective utilization area of paper. Books with more short lines, such as horizontal poetry, use 32 copies, with a lot of blank incised and stapled mouth, and more paper. If you use a long and narrow 36 - folio, you can save paper. If the folio is too small, the number of folds and the material loss is more. In order to facilitate printing, try not to use or less irregular folio, so as to reduce the cost of printing.

 

To sum up, in order to achieve a successful leap from "works" to "products", prepress designers must deeply learn the knowledge of printing process, do a good job in the selection and setting of parameters on the process issues discussed above, skilled application to specific product design, in order to successfully achieve the requirements of industrial production of printing batch, and constantly guide and reduce production costs. Create more value for customers.