the graphic design school blog.

Deboss­ing & Embossing

Deboss­ing and emboss­ing are the pro­cesses whereby an ele­ment of a design is stamped into the sub­strate with ink or foil, giv­ing prin­ted medium a 3-dimensional, tex­tural qual­ity. Deboss­ing occurs when the design has been pressed into the sur­face of the sub­strate, pro­du­cing a recessed effect on the page. Emboss­ing yields the oppos­ite res­ult; a raised design com­pon­ent on the prin­ted object. Great impact can be achieved through an emboss or deboss, espe­cially when com­bined with a strik­ing foil or spe­cial col­our. In aim­ing to com­mu­nic­ate a more subtle effect, design­ers might also want to con­sider blind deboss­ing and emboss­ing. The pro­cesses are identical, save the fact that no ink or foil is used (see below right).

(L>R): A subtle deboss com­bined with what appears to be a white spot var­nish. Image cour­tesy of © Septem­ber­In­dustry; Debossed gold card. The emboss was achieved by oper­at­ing a “curi­ous indus­trial machine with a ‘single but­ton”, explains © Kari­ann Bur­leson.

Foil Block­ing

Few fin­ishes can rival foil block­ing for sheer razzle-dazzle. The pro­cess (also inter­change­ably known as foil stamp, heat stamp, hot stamp, block print and foil emboss) is achieved by press­ing col­oured foil onto a sub­strate with a heated die, which causes the foil to sep­ar­ate from its back­ing. Foil block­ing can be used to great dec­or­at­ive and mem­or­able effect. It is also ver­sat­ile, and may be used to sig­nify an array of signs and mean­ings, such as lux­ury, futuristic-ness, mod­ern­ism and metallic-ness.

London-based graphic design stu­dio North are fam­ous for not hav­ing a web­site. They instead show a single page of logo­types they have designed, which segue ran­domly from grey to col­our in a del­ic­ate array of cadences. Shown above is a strik­ing foil-blocked ren­der­ing of the same concept. Image cour­tesy of © Septem­ber­In­dustry.

Die Cut­ting

With die cut­ting, a steel die is used to cut out a defined area of a design. This fin­ish is often used with dec­or­at­ive inten­tions, and can cre­ate pleas­ing res­ults on prin­ted pieces, which res­on­ate with recip­i­ents. Many print­ers stock a range of pop­u­lar dies like circles and radiussed-cornered ingots, but you can also have them designed to your own spe­cific­a­tions. Die cut­ting may also be used cre­at­ively as a func­tional ele­ment of the over­all design; aper­tures in the cov­ers of prin­ted mater­ial allow­ing show-through to the con­tent within being a good example.

From the simple to the com­plex. (i). Many print­ers stock a range of cir­cu­lar dies due to high demand for them. Their pop­ular­ity does noth­ing to dimin­ish the impact a well-designed cir­cu­lar die cut busi­ness card can make. (ii). This coaster was letterpress-printed and die cut in the shape of the state of Ohio. Images cour­tesy of (from L>R) © Malota and © Cranky Press­man. “Don’t Lose Heart” coaster designed by © Mikey Bur­ton.

Var­nishes

In addi­tion to the prac­tical uses var­nishes offer, such as pro­tect­ing sub­strates from smudging and wear (their primary pur­pose), the dif­fer­ent types avail­able can also be used dec­or­at­ively by graphic design­ers to embel­lish prin­ted mater­ial. As with foil block­ing, dif­fer­ent mes­sages can be com­mu­nic­ated through dif­fer­ent uses of this fin­ish, though hav­ing stated this, it should be added that this is per­haps nat­ural, given the wide selec­tion of var­nishes avail­able. Gloss, matt and satin are all com­monly used and explain them­selves. Two lus­trous var­nishes which merit a line or two of their own are

• PEARLESCENT
  Pear­les­cent var­nish, when used, del­ic­ately reflects a whole gamut of col­ours, giv­ing a subtle, lux­uri­ous effect
• SPOT UV
  Per­haps the most “design­ery” of the var­nishes avail­able, spot UV can be applied dis­cretely to areas of a prin­ted page so that when turned toward the light, these areas become highlighted

Dev­il­ishly ver­sat­ile, and there to lend weight to the mean­ings you wish to com­mu­nic­ate, from muted and del­ic­ate to glossy and whor­ish. (from L>R) images sup­plied by © Kari­ann Bur­leson and © Septem­ber­In­dustry.

Deckled Edge

Per­haps not strictly a print fin­ish, as a deckled edge on a paper stock will either be present when select­ing a sub­strate or not, a deckled edge is nev­er­the­less a visu­ally arrest­ing design com­pon­ent when used clev­erly and appro­pri­ately. The name refers to paper that has a soft, raggedy edge to it. There are two types of deckles; nat­ural and tear. Nat­ural deckles occur (obvi­ously enough) nat­ur­ally at the point the paper is made. Dur­ing paper man­u­fac­ture, the slurry of wood pulp fibres which make up the paper are drained of water, and what is left sits atop a screen in a frame called a deckle, and it’s this frame that causes the uneven edge of paper made in this way. Tear deckles are achieved on pur­pose, by tear­ing, after the paper has been made.

Deckled edge paper seems to con­note integ­rity and hand-craftedness. More often than not nat­ural, they betray the very old and esteemed ori­gins of the pro­cess used to cre­ate them. It’s per­haps no sur­prise that deckled edge papers are pop­u­lar with let­ter­press print­ers and book­bind­ers all over the world.

(L>R): Charm­ing letterpress-printed book by © Webb & Webb; Intriguing busi­ness card by Koi­chi Sato using a blind impres­sion on the print­ing press. Both pieces are prin­ted on deckle-edged paper. Koi­chi Sato image cour­tesy of © Kari­ann Bur­leson.

Per­for­a­tion

Per­for­a­tion is a pro­cess that gen­er­ates rows of small holes through a sub­strate which weaken it along their axis and make tear­ing easy. Often used for prac­tical pur­poses like tear­ing sec­tions off forms, in recent years graphic design­ers have awoken to the tact­ile poten­tial of per­for­a­tion and began to intro­duce them into their designs. The pro­cess is there to serve a single, obvi­ous func­tion; for the paper to be torn apart or open, and this seduct­ive pro­pos­i­tion means the human com­pul­sion to inter­act with per­for­a­tions is always in attendance.

Shown below are pic­tures from “Drentse Bodem­week 2008″, a book designed for a Dutch envir­on­mental con­ven­tion by Jel­mar Geertsma of Netherlands-based design stu­dio Type­high and illus­trator Lieslot Moed at Art Academy Min­erva. The book is bound French-folded with illus­tra­tions to the insides of the pages and per­for­a­tions run­ning down their edges, invit­ing read­ers to tear them open and reveal the imagery within.

Few print fin­ishes get recip­i­ents inter­act­ing with prin­ted medium more than per­for­a­tion does. It’s the curiosity-barren per­son who doesn’t exper­i­ence the desire to tear. Images sup­plied by © Type­high, designed in col­lab­or­a­tion with Lies­elot Moed.

Spe­cial Colours

Most full-colour print­ing is achieved through the four-colour CMYK pro­cess, and while myriad col­ours can be repro­duced using this method, CMYK can­not cover everything, and some­times more strik­ing res­ults can be achieved through the use of a spot (or spe­cial) col­our. A spot col­our is a spe­cially made ink all of its own, and usu­ally requires its own plate when passing on press. Dur­ing print­ing, the spe­cial col­our is not mixed with any of the other inks, hence its dense, flat qual­ity. Fluor­es­cent col­ours are spe­cial, as are metal­lics, both unachiev­able through the four-colour pro­cess. The vibrancy attain­able through the use of spe­cial col­ours need not be stated.

Addi­tional spe­cial “spot” col­ours can be added to the four-colour CMYK pro­cess at any pass on press. Eye-catching effects can be achieved through the use of care­fully chosen spe­cial col­ours. Image sup­plied by © Septem­ber­In­dustry.

In Sum

The print fin­ishes out­lined above, and more besides, are all at the creative’s dis­posal for adding a spe­cial final touch to a pro­ject; the graphic designer’s icing on the cake, if you will. As with sub­strates, fin­ishes can be used to enhance mes­sages and com­mu­nic­ate mean­ings to audi­ences. Whilst typ­ic­ally car­ried out at the end of the pro­duc­tion pro­cess, for best suc­cess print fin­ishes should not be applied to a pro­ject merely as an after­thought, but built in to the design from the start.

Prac­tical factors such as costs, budgets and print runs are ever-present in the designer’s life, and it can take some hefty per­sua­sion to con­vince a cli­ent of the bene­fits of spend­ing funds on a bril­liant fin­ish, a task com­poun­ded by global reces­sion. How­ever, with such a dazzling array of fin­ishes there to be used, it has to be worth a try now and again, surely? Many of the pro­jects pho­to­graphed included in this art­icle were prin­ted in the past two years, so we can infer that some cli­ents are budget­ing for lav­ish print fin­ishes. Given this, would it be overly optim­istic of me to cry: “Prof­ligacy is dead. Long live profligacy!”?

The words above may be a strap­line for UK-based graphic design stu­dio Golden, but they might equally apply to us cre­at­ives who tire­lessly strive to explore the bounds of print fin­ishes! Image sup­plied by © Septem­ber­In­dustry.

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