Print on unfamiliar media 66 Responses

Last post: 5 months, 1 week ago | Thread started: Jun 25, 08, 11:15 a.m.

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• detritus

  As part of an on-going theme in my questioning here, I am doing another job to be printed on a shiny silver plastic.

  I'm now trying to play around with the medium, to see what effects I can achieve. Problem is, I don't think I have any way of printing proofs to preview the different effects.

  I don't know how I can print on a reflective surface (perhaps I've just not found a material suitable for my ink jet) nor can I print in white (as the underbase).

  The jobs I've done previously were relatively easy - I printed a white underbase where I didn't want the silver showing through, and didn't where I did (so that the overall colouration was 'shiny').

  Now I want to mix things up a little, partly by printing halftone gradients on the white underbase layer (think the effects that are printed on drinks cans).

  Has anyone here been in a similar boat? If so, how did you go about experimenting/proofing (I can't just send ideas to the printer, as they're in China, and they'd need to create individual colour plates for output = quite expensive, obviously).

  I've thus far been reduced to dicking around with white paints and tracing paper, held over reflective foil, neither of which is really satisfactory, tbh.

  Any thoughts?

  Jun 25, 08, 11:15 a.m. – Permalink

• agentfour

  can you find a printer locally who can do something similar on the same stock? Then you can set up a wet proof/scatter proof and chuck a whole load of crap onto a B2 page and test as much as possible? or just ude white-out, crayons kitchen foil and tracing paper....same result...;)

  

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  Dog-earJun 25, 08, 11:36 a.m. – Permalink

• spendogg

  do some silk screen tests or old school draw down style

  

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  Dog-earJun 25, 08, 11:38 a.m. – Permalink

• tesmith

  There used to be a custom letraset process called Chromatec which was a good way to proof something like this. It can be done in any pantone colour. I know of one supplier still doing it here in Toronto. The generic name was "rubdowns". Don't know about your area though.

  

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  Dog-earJun 25, 08, 11:41 a.m. – Permalink

• mg33

  If by any chance you need help printing on, oh, I don't know, an elephant, you should talk to Bansky.

  

  

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  Dog-earJun 25, 08, 11:44 a.m. – Permalink

• detritus

  agentfour, spendogg & tesmith, thank you for your responses (you can go to hell, mg33 ;)

  I hadn't considered the screenprinting option. This makes me even more annoyed that I got rid of all my equipment a couple of years back! grrr. Perhaps I could buy the minimum of equipment back in to play around with.. though then I've got the problem of the size of the halftone resolution conflicting with the mesh density. Hmm. Still, I guess I could upscale and 'look from further away' :) Hmm. *ponders*

  Nor had I considered rubdowns, that definitely warrants investigation, thanks for that suggestion, tesmith.

  in the meantime, I guess I'm stuck with raiding the kitchen and local art supply shop :)

  

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  Dog-earJun 25, 08, 11:52 a.m. – Permalink

• chuparosa

  Have you considered hiring a comp house to make a mock up? It's expensive but usually you can bill it back to the client and beautiful comps sell. Just a thought.......

  • Sadly, they don't quite have that budget. Otherwise they'd probably hire someone more competent than me :)– detritus

  

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  Dog-earJun 25, 08, 12:08 p.m. – Permalink