Spot Colors!

Screens and Graduated Screens

Vignettes and Color Mixing

Print Margins: Does it Bleed?

Lines per Inch

Spot Colors!

Because we are a flexographic printer, each different color requires its own individual polymer plate. A one-color job requires one plate, a two-color job requires two plates, and so on. Each plate is responsible for the application of a single color. These single colors are referred to as spot colors. Accordingly, electronic art must be set up using spot colors. Most graphics applications have a standard color menu that lists common spot colors (such as black, red, blue, yellow, and so forth). Many allow you to import spot colors from real-world color-matching systems. The most widely used color-matching system by designers would be the Pantone Matching System. When using either standard colors or imported colors, please make sure that you use the same color for different elements in your file. A common pitfall is to assume that colors that look identical on the screen are equal. To make sure that your art is properly separated, print your color separations to a printer. We print black and white separations for every electronic art file we receive to guarantee that the art is set up correctly.

Screens and Graduated Screens

We can print screens anywhere from 3% to 100%. This information applies to screens (tints) and also graduated screens.

Vignettes and Color Mixing

This is an example of how mixing blue and yellow might turn out

Due to the nature of flexography, attempting to mix colors can sometimes produce unpredictable results. Furthermore, because our inks are water-based, inks that do mix tend to look "muddy" and dull. This not only applies to one solid color mixing with another solid color, but also vignettes, or color blending. Because of the extreme, erratic behavior of mixed colors, we highly recommend against it.

Print Margins: Does it Bleed?

When setting up your electronic art, please be aware of the print margin. We require at least an eighth of an inch (1/8") border around the label. Text and graphics must both be contained within this border. This border is called the print margin. If there is a background design or solid color that must extend to the edge of the label, then that color "bleeds" off of the edge. When a color bleeds, we require the art to extend past the label's edge by at least an eighth of an inch.

Lines per Inch

The polymer plates used in our printing process have an ideal line screen range of 65 to 105 lines per inch. Of course electronic art could be printed at a lower line screen to achieve a certain effect. Unless specified otherwise, we will output your file at 105 lines per inch.