How to enhance Gold and Silver Foil Finishes?

HOW FOIL LAMINATION WORKS

The personalization process with gold or silver foil is carried out by applying a transparent polymer, which serves as a base, to the areas marked in your file with the "Finishing" color swatch (see this on how to create special finishes). If you selected gold or silver foil, a gold or silver film is applied on top of the transparent polymer.

WHY IT IS IMPORTANT TO REMOVE GRAPHIC ELEMENTS UNDER GOLD AND SILVER FOIL AREAS

Gold and silver foils are completely opaque, meaning they will hide any graphic elements beneath them. If the areas to be foiled overlap with parts of the printed artwork (i.e., they are duplicated in the color print layer), an unwanted “shadow effect” may occur due to misalignment between the color print and the foil layer. This is because a perfect alignment between the two layers cannot be guaranteed.

Therefore, we strongly recommend that you always remove any duplicated elements that match the foiled areas in your artwork.

In this incorrect example, created using Illustrator, when the visibility of the “Finishing” layer (which marks the foil application zones) is turned off, it is clear that the “Artwork” layer (intended for color printing) contains graphic elements and text that overlap with those in the foil layer—they are duplicated.

If this file is printed with the “Finishing” layer reactivated, the final product will show an unattractive “shadow effect,” caused by the unavoidable misalignment between the duplicated elements in the “Artwork” layer and those in the “Finishing” layer.

In this correct example, when the visibility of the “Finishing” layer is turned off, you can see that the duplicated graphic elements and text underneath the foil (in the “Artwork” layer) have been removed. When this file is printed (with the “Finishing” layer reactivated), the result will be clean and free from the unwanted “shadow effect” observed in the previous example.

Here are some additional tips to enhance these finishes:

• You will achieve better results if the gold foil is applied to small details rather than large areas.
• The thickness of lines to be foiled in gold or silver should be at least 1 pt.
• The minimum font size for text to be foiled in gold or silver should be 10 pt.

To make the most of the gold or silver foil finish, remove any duplicated graphics from the CMYK print layer, this will help ensure a clean and professional result.

If you have any questions, please don’t hesitate to contact us; we will be happy to assist you.