Introduction
Have you ever thought why a piece of design work looks like it does? Have you ever considered the effort that goes into producing it? You may think it starts in the creative studio but that is not the case.
It is therefore essential to fully understand the process and all the wonderful elements, including paper, inks, soft where and inks etc, that go into creating a piece of design work.

How Paper Is Made
Paper is made from a mix of types of trees, some are hard and some are softwood.  Hardwood trees such as oaks and maples have wood with very short fibres. Paper made from these species is weaker than that made from softwoods, but its surface is smoother, and therefore better to write and print on.
Softwood trees such as pine and spruce have wood with long fibres, and paper made from this type of wood is much stronger. This paper is ideal for making products like shipping containers that require superior strength. But the finish is rougher, and that's not as good for writing, printing and many other uses.


Almost all of the paper you use today is made of wood fibres. Some specialty papers, like stationery and money, are made from linen, cotton, or other plants.

We blend fibres from hardwoods and softwoods into a single paper, getting just the combination of strength, whiteness, writing surface and other characteristics that we want.
The basic recipe - wood, water and energy - is adjusted to make just the paper that's needed.

Firstly the wood is refined into chips and sawdust. Then water is added to produce a pulp. Then the water is removed out of the wood-fibre soup. The soup is then put through drying machines. In the dry end, huge metal cylinders are heated by filling them with steam. The wet paper, which can be up to 30 feet wide, passes through these hot rollers - sometimes dozens of them, and often in three to five groups. Heating and drying the wet sheet seals the fibres closer and closer together, turning them gradually from pulp into paper.

Interesting Facts
1/ the first piece of paper that was ever made (recorded) was made by a Chinese man called Ts'ai Lun, 2,000 years ago. He did this by getting a big wet mush of separate fibres, and then he spread it all out in a mat made of coarse cloth and a bamboo frame. He then left it in the sun to dry and the matted material became a sheet on which they could right on with charcoal or other elements!
2/ The Paper Machine is a very large piece of machinery. A typical machine is about the length of two football pitches and around 4 metres wide. It can run up to speeds of 2000 m per minute - or 60 miles per hour!
3/ Modern paper factories use energy at the same rate as a small city! Paper mills turn entire forests into paper every day; the equivalent of a seventy-five-acre clear cut per mill per day!
 4/ Paper accounts for 2 percent of world trade and 2.5 percent of world industrial production!
 5/ sometimes the paper is coated, often with fine clay, to make it glossier and easier to print on. A coated stock has a surface coating that has been applied to make the surface more receptive for the reproduction of text and images in order to achieve a sharper detail and improved colour density. Coated paper finishes can be categorized as matt, dull, cast, gloss and high gloss depending on how hard it has been pressed. Generally the harder it is pressed the glossier it is.
6/ Recycling one ton of paper saves about 17 trees!

7/ It takes about 24 trees to produce 1 ton of paper (approx).

What you can make from one standard hardwood tree.
 
250 copies of the Sunday Times
1,000 to 2,000 pounds of paper (depending on grade)
1,200 copies of FHM or Vogue
2,700 copies of an average (36 page) daily newspaper Mail or Sun
4,000 one-gallon milk containers
61,370 standard envelopes
89,870 sheets of letterhead bond paper
460,000 personal checks
4,384,000 postage stamps
7,500,000 toothpicks
Recycling one ton of paper saves about 17 trees!

Inks
Ink is available in dozens of standard colours and hundreds of non-standard inks which are called Pantones, which have there very own distinct colour, number reference and price!
The following is a list of some of the standard ink colours provided by many label suppliers:

• The ink can be applied in various ways:
• Spot Colour - colours applied using separate plates to add colour in specific areas, each plate having a different image that is printed.
• Duotones - two halftone images, which were produced using different screen angles that are printed over each other. Duotones are generally printed in black and another colour.
• Tritones - three halftone images, produced at different screen angles, which were made from the same image and then printed over each other in three different colours.
• Quadtones - four halftone images, produced at different screen angles, which were made from the same image and then printed over each other in four different colours.
• Process Colour - four process colours, cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, printed on top of each other. Each colour uses the same image produced at varying intensities, to reproduce a full colour image.
• High Fidelity Colour (hi-fi) - a method of colour printing which utilizes additional process ink colours to produce a greater range of colour.
• Prismatic Ink - the blending of two or more colours in a single printing unit. This produces a blend of colour that is difficult to duplicate. It is most often used as a security feature.

Specialist Inks

• UV Inks - UV inks provide denser ink coverage than conventional inks. They cause minimal dot gain, resulting in excellent quality when printing fine lines, vignettes and process colour. The ink must be cured by a UV light source, which hardens the ink rather than the ink drying as it does when conventional inks are used. UV ink also provides rub resistance, chemical resistance, colour consistency and opacity. A negative aspect of UV inks is that it has environmental issues which can cause skin irritations and allergic reactions.
• Glitter Ink - Glitter ink contains flucks of shinny mylar that result in a printed image with a shiny reflective look. This ink is used on labels to create special effects.
• Metallized Ink - The use of metallized inks can give your label a distinctive look. They can give your label the look of foil. Different types of metallic powders are blended into the ink such as aluminium powder to create the look of silver and bronze powder to create the look of gold.

Why Print
They are many different types of print. Below is some information on some of the main types.

Traditional Offset Litho Printers – Jobs Over 500 QTY

Offset printing is a printing method used for accurate reproduction. Most brochure, folder and catalogue work done in smaller QTY that we do are done using this method. The output is very high-quality. We recommend this for jobs over 500 in QTY. Once you get below that it is not really economical to run on this type of press. If you are getting a quote on Offset printing make sure you get the quote on a few different quantities. What you will find is that usually the cost does not increase that significantly when you go from say 500 to 1000. So the more you run the cheaper the cost per piece.

Web Printing – Very large Jobs 10,000+QTY
If you print anything in large quantity you may need to go a Web Press to do it economically. Web printing is used for large runs of magazines and newspapers. The paper is on a roll and runs through continuously rather than the sheet feed offset presses.

Digital Printing
The latest technology is a great choice for lower quantity production runs. It is a good choice for running a handful to a few hundred pieces. The process is different than Offset printing in that it uses a toner based process. It is better in quality than say running out of a colour laser printer, but not as good as Offset printing, colour can be a little flat.
Good choice for running say 100 Folders, Binder covers, posters.

Screen Printing
Screen-printing, also known as silk-screening or serigraphy, is a printmaking technique that creates a sharp-edged single-colour image using a stencil and a porous fabric. A screen-print or serigraph is an image created using this technique.
It began as an industrial technology, and was adopted by American graphic artists in the 1930s; the Pop Art movement of the 1960s further popularized the technique. Many of Andy Warhol's most famous works were created using the technique. It is currently popular both in fine arts and in small-scale commercial printing, where it is commonly used to put images on T-shirts, hats, ceramics, glass, polyethylene, polypropylene, paper, metals, and wood.

Flexography
Flexography, normally abbreviated to flexo, is a method of printing most commonly used for packaging. Flexo print is achieved by creating a mirrored master of the required image as a 3D relief in a rubber or polymer material. A measured amount of ink is deposited upon the surface of the printing plate (or printing cylinder) using ananilox roll. The print surface then rotates, contacting the print material which transfers the ink.
Flexo has an advantage over print processes lithography in that it can use a wider range of inks and is good at printing on a variety of different materials. Typical product printed this way includes: 'brown' cardboard boxes, cornflake packets, crisp packets, yoghurt pot tops, paper serviettes and even wallpaper.

Paper Finishing
There are many different types of finishing including die cutting, drilling, scoring, folding, creasing and kiss cutting. There are also many different coatings that can be applied to give a different look and feel.

UV Spot Varnish
Spot varnish is a high gloss UV varnish applied to selected areas of a printed image to enhance the product impact or form part of the graphic design. A raised texture can be achieved using UV Spot Varnish this is known as High Build UV.

UV Textured Varnish
UV textured varnish is a satin effect textured coating applied to selected areas of a Printed image to form a tough protective barrier to the underlying print surface that enhances product impact.

UV Sparkle Varnish
Sparkle varnish is a high gloss UV varnish containing metallised polyester flakes that adds "sparkle" when applied to selected areas of a printed image and will provide "shelf appeal" to a wide range of printed products.

Gloss OPP Lamination
Gloss OPP (oriented polypropylene) lamination provides a wide range of uses across the whole spectrum of printed products. The properties of good gloss are strength and low cost which make it suitable for all the following applications:
Company report and accounts, Brochures, Catalogues, Carrier bags, Greeting cards, Book jacket covers, Magazines, Maps, Labels, Point-of-sale and Displays.
The standard film thickness is 12 micron but 19 micron is available if you require extra durability. Film can be laminated over apertures and a window lamination created.

Matt OPP Lamination
This Matt finish coupled with its smooth texture offers a very high quality image to brochures and book covers. Matt finishes are also particularly suited to surfaces which need to be easily read such as wall maps, but can be prone to scuffing and should be handled with care.

Foil Blocking
These finishes can provide the ultimate in decorative appeal. They are not limited to gold and silver foils, but extend to an impressive range of pigmented, holographic and security foils.
All of these can be combined with embossed images to produce varying tactile effects – Any one of which will enhance the printed message and provide shelf appeal for greetings cards, cartons, magazine covers, brochures etc.

Embossing & Debossing
This is where an image, pattern or logo can be embedded into the paper.