Hammesfahr

Based near Duesseldorf, Germany, Hammesfahr is a commercial printer offering a wide range of printing and finishing solutions. It prides itself on offering an in-line cold-foiling service, an option that is not yet available through UK printers.

"When we installed Manroland’s inline foiler Prindor in February 2007, we were the first printer in Germany and in Europe to offer this kind of foiling. A lot of clients came to us specifically because they knew we had this technology– the beverage, cosmetic and automobile industries particularly find this kind of finish meets their needs so that 20-30% of the printing we do now involves a cold foiling finish.

Whereas hot foiling is best for small areas on the printed product, such as company logos, cold foiling is ideal for giving larger areas, such as whole images, a metallic finish. Applying this kind of effect on large areas with a hot foiler would be too expensive as coloured foils would have to be used. Cold foiling, by contrast, works by applying cheaper silver foil to the product first and then applying ink on top. So clients such as Mercedes, BMW, L’Oréal and Jim Beam whisky can opt for this process to produce posters and flyers with a luxury finish.

Not only is cold foiling a cost-effective way of applying a metallic finish, the results can be neater and more polished than some hot foiled pieces.

Because it is an inline machine, the cold foiler ensures that registration between the foiled areas and the rest of the piece of print is spot on, whereas there’s always a possibility with hot foiling that it won’t be in the right place as you have to manually transfer the pieces from the press to finishing unit.

This kind of foiling is also more durable than hot foiling as, instead of being sealed around the edges, cold foil is actually joined to the substrate.

The two processes do produce a different result and hot foiling’s shinier and more tactile effect will still be most suitable for some jobs. But the look of a cold-foiled product is preferred for other applications, so we can add value by being one of only a handful of printers to offer this effect."

David K?ppen sales manager, Hammesfahr

Hudson Display Services

Hudson Display Services is an Essex-based wide-format printer producing work for designers, signmakers and builders of exhibition stands. They add value for their customers by teaching designers to add more colour.

"There’s nothing glossy about the added-value we offer, it’s just a case of teaching designers how to use more colour. Because wide-format inkjet presses are often thought of as proofers, printing trial copies of large web offset press jobs as a guide to how the press output will look, designers often don’t realise that wide-format machines are capable of a wider range of colours than other presses.

The majority of designers use Adobe CS, which ships with US Web Coated SWOP v2 as its default CMYK space. Sadly, that means little to a lot of printers and designers, yet it’s vital to understanding digital colour. SWOP is the range of colours produced by a web offset printer so most designers by default limit their artwork’s colour range to this space.

What we do is hold tutorials to educate designers about the wider range of colours that a wide-format job can potentially feature. We add value by sitting down one-to-one with a client, ideally at their graphics workstation, and working through a couple of examples that demonstrate exactly what can be done and how to do it. I will also be holding a free colour management seminar in the new year and launching YouTube videos covering the basics. One-to-one is obviously the best way, but I want to get this idea used by more designers, and I can only see so many people in a week.

It’s hard to quantify the positive impact that colour management has for clients as obviously you never run a project with a narrow and wider range of colours for comparison’s sake. The difference is something you can’t quite put your finger on; the graphics are just that bit "better" and an observer won’t necessarily know why.

There are many companies addressing colour management issues for print companies but they focus on making the printer output predictable. By contrast we are dedicated to demonstrating to clients how much more striking and vibrant their posters, billboards, banners, wallpapers and exhibition displays can be."

Craig Hudson managing director, Hudson Display Services