When designing a product, the first consideration should be which printing type the product will use. The process characteristics of different printing types are completely different. REENYOUNG Paper Cards Printing Taking the four major printing methods as an example, offset printing presents rich and delicate layers, convex printing products have clear contours, powerful strokes, bright ink colors, concave printing has clear lines, fine and beautiful, silk screen printing ink layer is thick and has a floating and convex feeling, and the concise color blocks and lines of flexographic printing products create a strong visual impact on people. Different printing types have their own specific design requirements, which must be taken into account during the design process.

1、 Design requirements

For the design of offset printing products, designers have more exposure and relatively rich experience. The main points to pay attention to are: whether the image resolution is sufficient; Is the trapping value suitable; For small text, try to avoid four-color overlay to avoid unnecessary printing difficulty; Whether the rules, cutting lines, etc. are complete; Try to avoid designing large format full page solid color blocks as much as possible; The directional relationship between graphics and paper fibers is fully considered, taking into account the requirements of post-processing.

The design of gravure products should avoid multi-color overprinting. Due to the high thermal elasticity of the printing materials used in gravure printing, coupled with thermal deformation during high-speed printing, it is more difficult to achieve printing overlay. Therefore, when designing patterns, it is important to avoid multi-color overlay as much as possible without affecting the design effect. In addition, some materials not only have high elasticity, but also poor ink adhesion. For example, PE film and black and white film are currently used in fresh dairy products. Therefore, when designing packaging patterns for these types of products, it is not only necessary to avoid multi-color overprinting, but also to achieve simple and generous patterns, and avoid large-scale coloring. To fully consider the requirements of the bag making process, for back sealed bags, the front pattern should have an appropriate amount of internal bleeding according to the finished product size to prevent the front pattern from appearing too small after making the bag. At the same time, it is necessary to consider whether there should be no seams in the top, bottom, left, and right directions. Whether the position setting of the light spot meets the requirements of cutting and bag making, etc. In addition, whether transparent or the same color is needed to connect the patterns between the finished units is also a point that should be noted in the design of gravure products.

When designing flexographic printing products, if the original product was printed using offset or gravure printing, when considering the use of flexographic printing, one cannot simply copy the previous design scheme and blindly pursue the printing effect of offset or gravure printing. When designing flexographic prints, the following aspects should be avoided: avoid designing text that is too small and lines that are too thin; Avoid overprinting of two-color or multi-color lines and text; Avoid designing small white text and lines; Avoid high gloss or 1% small dots in the image; Avoid designing text or lines in bitmap software such as Photoshop; Avoid designing wide and long solid areas and gradients along the horizontal direction of the printing cylinder; Unless there are special requirements, avoid placing large areas on the same page as branches and small text, etc.
When designing products, the original manuscript used in screen printing is generally not significantly different from that used in other printing methods. However, in specific plate making and printing practices, the requirements are different, mainly due to the characteristics of screen printing. Especially due to the thick ink layer and bright color of screen printing, the special effects of screen printing should be fully considered when selecting the original manuscript and plate making. In addition, the accuracy requirements for the lines and dots of the original text used in screen printing are different from those used in ordinary printing methods. If the lines and dots of the original manuscript are very fine, it is very difficult to use screen printing for plate making. So screen printing technology is not suitable for reproducing fine lines and dots in the original manuscript. When screen printing plate making, it is important to choose the appropriate wire mesh to achieve the goal of fully reproducing the original manuscript. Screen printing is more suitable for representing monochrome color sets with clear text and lines, and is also suitable for representing color originals with high contrast and clear layers. Through the special effect of screen printing, the replica has rich expressive power. Through rich and thick ink layers and contrast of color tones, it fully expresses the texture and three-dimensional effect of the original content.

2、 Material selection

When designing a product, the packaging materials used must match the market positioning of the product, in order to achieve the best packaging effect at the lowest cost. When selecting materials, one should consider both the variety of materials and the specifications of the materials. Different types of printing materials have significant differences in printing adaptability, even completely different, and their actual performance effects on products also vary greatly. One of the successful examples in the use of new materials is the packaging of a bowl of fragrant instant noodles by Hebei Zhongwang Group. It boldly breaks through the design materials, draws inspiration from the design style of small food packaging, and uses transparent ink to print on aluminum plated film. Its bright colors quickly become the “eye-catching” focus among many similar products, providing a new way of thinking for instant noodle packaging design and achieving good promotional effects in the market.

The specifications of materials are also an important aspect that affects product costs. For example, due to the need for different types and specifications of paper for packaging trademark printing in different businesses, it is often necessary to reserve dozens of different types and thicknesses of paper. Common thicknesses for single-sided copperplate paper, single-sided laminated paper, single-sided copperplate cardboard, coated paper, cast coated glass powder cardboard, white paper, gold paper, aluminum foil paper, cowhide white paper, etc. are 80g, 90g, 250g, 300g. 350g, 400g, 450g, etc. When designing products, it is necessary to consider the issue of material specifications to avoid additional costs due to improper selection of material specifications. Taking book and magazine printing paper as an example, for book and magazine covers, inserts, and liners, 100-150g paper is generally used for covers with less than 200 pages, and 120-180g paper is used for covers with more than 200 pages; Use 80-150g paper for insert pages; The lining page is generally selected between 80-150g according to the thickness of the book. The heavier the weight of the same type of paper, the higher the price. The weight of the main text paper increases, and the thickness of the spine also thickens. Sometimes, it is necessary to adjust the weight and opening of the cover paper, which can create a series of interrelated relationships and often increase the cost of paper.

3、 Color and Resolution

When choosing colors, it is necessary to consider the actual reproduction effect of printing, such as avoiding using colors in the purple color scheme as much as possible. The reason is that the purple color obtained by superimposing cyan and magenta inks in printing ink generally appears “dirty”, making it difficult to achieve the color displayed on computer monitors or the color effect expected by customers during design, which can easily cause quality accidents related to color. If it is necessary to print the ideal purple color, it is recommended to either use peach red ink for stacking during design or use spot color printing. If the designed product is in the experimental stage of new market launch during the sales process, it is recommended that customers use spot colors to print the main color of the packaging. This can not only improve the brightness of the packaging pattern and color, but also reduce the risk of delayed sales if the main color of the packaging does not match the popular colors in the packaging market (if the main color of the product is printed with spot colors, the main color of the packaging can be changed at any time according to market needs during the sales process).

In printing graphic design, the resolution setting must be determined based on the requirements of the design and printing process, especially the printing materials used (mostly paper) and other factors. Not all images must be adjusted to the highest resolution. The network cable used for printing newspapers is lower than that used for exquisite picture books, and they also have different requirements for the resolution of image files.

If the resolution of the images on newspapers printed with news paper is adjusted to the same resolution as the picture books printed with copperplate paper, it is not only meaningless, but also leads to printing paste. The resolution settings for different objects in computer graphic design for printing are as follows: the printing line for color or black and white newspapers printed on general news paper and offset paper is 60-100 lines, and the design resolution is 120-200dpi; Color images, such as book covers, posters, product advertisements, etc., are generally printed on offset paper, illustrated newspapers, copperplate paper, cardboard, and whiteboards. The printing network has up to 150 lines and the design resolution is 300dpi; High end books, exquisite picture books, and high-end advertising printed materials are printed on high-end copperplate paper, with printing network lines reaching 175 or more and a design resolution of 350dpi; Premium rare books, special securities, special banknotes, etc., with a design resolution of 400dpi.

4、 Layout plan

Designers must provide clients with a reasonable layout plan based on their needs. The market prospects of the product designed in flexographic printing are promising, and the product packaging has a large printing volume at once. It is recommended that customers arrange multiple unit patterns vertically and increase the circumference of the plate roller to improve printing efficiency. When typesetting, attention should be paid to the direction of the paper, such as the bottle wine trademark. Due to its mechanized labeling, the speed is fast, and the back of the paper is automatically coated with glue and will deform and bend instantly when wet. The bending direction of the paper should match the automatic labeling machine, otherwise production cannot be carried out on the automatic assembly line. Therefore, in order to meet the needs of different customers, the horizontal and vertical threads of paper must be considered first when splicing layout, to prevent the entire batch of products from being scrapped due to the production of trademarks that do not meet the customer’s horizontal and vertical thread requirements.

The significant difference between packaging trademark printing and book printing is that one page, one image, and multiple collages are used. If there are few, connect two graphs; if there are many, connect dozens of graphs. How many images are more suitable for printing by piecing together? This is a question that needs to be considered in design and craftsmanship. Mainly consider the following aspects. ① The difficulty level of post press processing. If a manuscript has multiple post-processing steps, it is important to carefully consider not making the printing layout too large. Otherwise, due to poor temperature and humidity control in the printing workshop, it is easy for the paper to stretch and shrink, making it difficult for the next step of hot stamping and embossing to be accurate. This results in the need to hot stamp multiple times instead of once. In addition, if there are too many splices and the paper is deformed, it will seriously affect the alignment and be difficult to remedy. ② Alien trademark. The trademark label is generally not very large. For thin paper shaped trademarks that need to be die cut, the number of splices should not be too much, otherwise it will affect the quality of die cutting due to the accuracy of die cutting plate production. ③ Printing quantity. If the printing quantity is not large, don’t make too many collages. Due to the large layout and limited printing quantity, the cost of die-cutting is high, which inevitably increases the cost of individual labels. ④ Paper opening number. The size of the packaging paper matches the size of the paper, so the printing paper is very standard and there is no waste problem. Packaging trademarks, on the other hand, cannot be accurately assembled into eight open, four open, or split prints due to the influence of single label size. So whether to adopt splicing methods such as inserting, horizontal and vertical splicing, nesting, one punch, and drawing is based on the principle of saving printing paper as much as possible. Choosing a good process splicing method can directly create profits for the enterprise. For example, in book and magazine design, if the format selection is unreasonable, it will increase the amount of scraps and reduce the effective utilization area of the paper. Books with a lot of short lines, such as horizontally arranged poetry collections, use 32 format editions, which have many blank cuts and bindings, and require a lot of paper. If a narrow 36 format notebook is used, it can save paper. If the size is too small, there will be more losses in terms of folds and edge materials. In order to facilitate printing and assembly, irregular format books should be avoided or minimized as much as possible, which can reduce printing and assembly costs.

In summary, in order to achieve a successful transition from “work” to “product”, pre press designers must deeply study the relevant knowledge of printing technology, make good choices and settings of parameters in the process issues discussed above, proficiently apply them to specific product designs, in order to successfully meet the requirements of mass industrial production of printing, continuously guide and reduce production costs, and create more value for customers.