Specialised Finishing

Did you know that you don’t have to have just boring paper and card cut into rectangular shapes. You can have all types of coatings put on to it to make it feel it’s coated in wax, have your logo shine up all glossy on a matt background, or have them cut to funky shapes like cars and jigsaw puzzles. This is the world of specialized finishing. Read on to discover what you can have done to your printed material.

Lamination – sealed edge

This is where we sandwich your printing between two layers of hard wearing plastic to make it watertight and damage resistant. The standard finish is gloss which is slick and shiny, but we can also do it in a matt which softens the colour and has a ‘waxpaper’ feel. If you want only one side done or gloss one side & matt the other that can be done too. The only limit is that all your printing will have a thin edge of clear plastic to seal it tight.

Lamination – clean edge

This style of lamination is done where the customer wants an effect of the lamination but doesn’t want the plastic sealed edge. Setup and finished look is the same, but it’s not waterproof and damage resistant like the sealed version, and depending on how it’s being used the lamination may peel off eventually.

UV / Starmarque coating

This takes the concept of the laminating with a matt plastic and then prints on top of it a clear gloss ink. The idea is that you get an ‘embossed’ effect as the gloss printed areas have a different feel to the matt and shine when the light hits them. It’s largely replaced much of the embossing area of the market as it’s cheaper and faster to setup and you can do some effects that embossing can’t do.

Embossing

We get requests for this on a regular basis. Embossing is where a sheet of paper or card is pressed between two metal plates that have a negative (cut out) and positive (raised surface) to stretch it and give it a raised surface. It still has a place where you want a raised effect but without changing the actual feel of the paper or card. It’s largely been replaced by Starmarque setting up the embossing plates makes it expensive unless you are doing large print runs.

Watermarking

This is where a stamp would be pressed into the surface of the paper when wet during the production process to alter the surface slightly giving it a brand without changing the look or feel. It was once done show a high quality paper or company brand but these days you get the same effect by printing a very faint background image under the main image so it’s fallen by the wayside.

Die Cutting

If you have ever used a cookie cutter on playdo as a kid, then you will understand how die cutting works in printing. A die has a set of sharp knife blades and it presses into a sheet of paper or card cutting a shape The scrap is trimmed off and you get the shape you want. There are a large number of standard pre made shapes you can use for this sort of work so you pay only a labour charge on top of normal printing costs. If you want something custom, it’s not a huge expense to have it made up and as long as you keep using on a regular basis it’s a one time charge.

Creasing & Perforating

Can be done as part of die cutting or on it’s own as part of normal printing. Creasing bends the paper or card along a straight line so it naturally folds along that line. The hinge part of a greeting card is a perfect example of it. Perforating runs a notched wheel along the paper/card partly cutting it but leaving enough intact that the sheet stays whole until you tear it.

Hole punching

Can also be part of die cutting or done on it’s own, it’s simply putting a round hole in something. Great if you need papers that can be put into ring binders, or to loop thread through for price tags.
Naturally there are other finishing options out there but that’s where we are getting into very custom products. If you are interested in adding a specialized finish to a piece of printing then please contact us at Copy Express. We will step you through the options, work with you to get the best value solution and manage the process on your behalf.