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On Friday, I went To Sydney Olympic Park at Homebush. It wasn’t to see the Adele concert. Instead, I got there a little earlier in the day for the last day of the Auspack 2017 Packaging & Processing Expo. The biggest thing I noticed amongst the many exhibitors at Auspack was that technology has a […]
If I was to ask this question 20 years ago, the answer would almost certainly be no. This is because almost all labels were printed with artwork, converted to film which was then converted to plates. Then the labels were printed in large rolls before being die-cut to the shape required. Then the labels would […]
Most of us when placing an order for a product, think of just one thing. What is in it for me? That is fair enough. We are all consumers and if we buy something we want to know that we are getting a fair price, a high quality product and ideally, good customer service as well.
As you know, the Australian federal government will very soon be trying to put a carbon tax through the parliament. Putting politics aside for a moment, the carbon tax and more importantly, the welfare of the environment has become a fourth consideration in the buyer’s decision. In other words, what is the impact on the environment and the welfare of others on the product you are buying?
As a child in the western suburbs of Sydney, one of the products my father had was an incinerator. There were no yellow recycling bins in those days. About once a month, we simply got all of our newspapers and possibly other waste material and burnt them. This created smoke for our neighbours and no doubt did no benefit to the environment.
You are probably wondering what this has to do with digital label printing. Well, digital label
Once every four years, the big providers of printing and label printing machines gather together to display their new equipment. The Expo was at Darling Harbour this week. Again, the emphasis was on digital printing. The trend is for shorter runs and faster turnaround of general printing and custom labels.
The label printing industry is still the poor cousin to the general printing industry. This is understandable since despite the value of label printing to society there is still far more general printing than label printing.
As a result, the new technology for general printing, i.e. business cards, booklets, brochures, presentation folders and the like, is still more advanced than label printing machines. However, even though there were many more digital printing machines for regular paper stock than there were label printing machines, there was one label printing machine that caught our eye.
Of course, from the customer’s point of view, you do not really care how your labels are printed. Price, quality and speed is really what matters. Well, there are
Before choosing your wine labels, you must choose your wine bottle. According to http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cleanskin_(wine) these are easily obtained by any number of retail wine outlets. Here is what Wikipedia says.
“In Australia, cleanskin wine is a term for bottled wine that does not carry a label or any other identifying marks. Cleanskin wines are sold in sealed cartons of six or twelve bottles and the carton must display a label that meets the minimum legal requirements as defined by Australian law. Cleanskin wines have been sold in Australia since at least the early 1960s.”
Next, you need to work out the size of your wine labels. Are your cleanskin wine bottles regular sized, tall and thin or mini bottles? Generally, the approximate sizes of such wine labels are 99mm x 139mm for regular wine bottles, 65mm x 140mm for tall thin wine bottles and 66mm x 54mm for mini wine bottles.
If wine labels are to be given as gifts for say, a wedding or Christmas present, then most likely the wine will be consumed quite quickly. However, wine labels are also designed to be durable. For most cases, wine labels are water resistant rather than waterproof. This is because wine bottles are commonly stored in wine cellars or people’s homes at room temperatures. However, the wine bottles can be immersed in an ice bucket without disintegrating.
Most people in business have at some stage had to order business cards or fliers or brochures or catalogues. Generally, it is pretty easy to do because the printing company you work with would almost certainly have done the exact same order as yours except for the different artwork.
This is not so when it comes to labels. You can’t just choose A4 or A3 or DL or some other standard size as you do in printing, you really do have an almost infinite number of sizes you can choose.
Again, when you print regular business cards or brochures, you are almost certainly going to produce these items as a rectangle. Rectangular labels are the most common shape but you get to choose your shape. Circular and oval labels are quite common but you can have special shapes for special products. You can make the label into the shape that best fits your product. The best example of this is labels for bottles and especially labels for wine bottles.
Your regular printer will never ask you, “What are your using your business cards for or for what purpose are these catalogues printed? Printing companies do not need to ask many questions. The most complex question they are likely to ask you is how would you like your brochures folded and are they are being inserted by hand or by machine into envelopes?
Digital label printing simply means that your labels are printed directly from your artwork. There is no need for plates. Your labels are printed in one step. Your artwork which is typically a PDF file, an EPS file or TIF file is printed directly from this file.
Your file is emailed to your label printer’s computer and that image is then sent to the digital label printing machine.
Digital printing of paper has been around for some time. If you type a letter and print it onto a laser printer, then this is an example of digital printing. This was the first form of digital printing but letters were always printed in black. Next came colour laser printers. These enabled your colour image to be printed directly onto your laser printer.
The next step up from colour laser printers was commercial digital printing machines. 20 years ago, all commercial printing was offset, i.e. artwork had to be converted to plates before printing. Colour separation was needed to produce four plates, i.e. black, cyan, magenta and yellow. These are the four printing colours. Today, a lot of commercial printing is done digitally.
