Hotfoil (or gold blocking as it can be otherwise known) printing is a process which transfers coloured foil to a product. The coloured foil can be either a metallic, matt or gloss or a holographic finish. The coloured foil is transferred to a product using heat (which can vary from job to job, depending on what you are printing) and pressure (again, this can vary from job to job, depending on what you are printing).
Printing Plates/Dies
The dies/plates supplied by WOOM Creative are etched using magnesium plates in 16 (1.63mm thick), 8 (4.00mm thick), 5 (5.00mm thick) and 3 (6.35mm thick) gauge sizes.
Some of our customers choose to supply their own artwork and if deciding to do this please take note of the file formats accepted on the right hand side of this page. If however you need the artwork creating then WOOM Creative can supply a very affordable graphics and artwork service utilizing vector graphic drawing which will be created with hot printing in mind which includes seperation of artwork with ease of printing in mind.
Cutters
Cutters are made to order to suit each individual job and these range from simple shapes such as squares, triangles and circles to more complicated shapes, examples being flowers, trains, cars and rosettes. Customers using our service are using the cutters on products including leather, paper, card, plastic etc. Please ring for a quote.
Artwork & Design
WOOM Creative is in the best possible position to produce your artwork and design for hotfoil printing due to the many years experience we have in this specialist industry. Our artwork and design service complements our die making perfectly as we are aware of what can and can't be done and will notice any pitfalls that may arise from complicated printing jobs.
For the best possible etch, we vectorize all designs as much as we can and seperate artwork accordingly to make sure you get the best possible print, thus impressing your customers, which is important to us at WOOM Creative.
FILE FORMATS ACCEPTED
To help reproduce the best possible plates and therefore a better print for yourself, it is better if any artwork supplied is is a vector format. Hi resolution images are also accepted but please bear in mind that the files sizes can be quite large, especially when emailing our studio with work.
WOOM Creative has a vast libarary of fonts/typefaces to choose from, but please do not assume that we have the exactc font you are using. We therefore ask that all fonts/typefaces used are created in outline before forwarding the artwork to us.
.ai - Illustrator up to CS3
.eps
.pdf
.cdr
NOTE: It is important to create outlines of all artwork. We have a large number of typefaces in our studio but in order to process the job quicker we ask that all artwork is in outline.
Artwork Process
Vector artwork is preffered as this will produce cleaner artwork and therefore a better etch on the die. If non vector artwork is supplied then this will be reproduced as vector artwork. Please note that a small charge may be incurred at this point. Our aim is to produce the best possible plate so you can produce the best possible labels for your customers.
Artwork that is designed and created by WOOM Creative is sent to the client for approval prior to plate being made. To speed the process up we send the artwork via email as a PDF attachment. Adobe Acrobat Reader is available for FREE download:
