Customize your packaging with hot stamping or four-colour printing
Large, traditional, online, small, if you sell products it is important to personalize your packaging to best convey your company values.
Through packaging you can convey your brand identity, the history of your company and increase the value of your products: taking care of the appearance of your shopping bags, cases and boxes means having another important marketing opportunity to exploit to make an impression about your customers.
What are the most common techniques for personalizing and printing products? Let's see them together in this article dedicated to four-color printing and hot stamping.
How does four-color printing work?
Four-color printing allows you to print an image based on the use of four colors, cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
The acronym CMYK comes from the English words (Cyan Magenta, Yellow and Key).
They are mixed to create most of the colors visible to the human eye.
Why these four colours? For a matter of convenience ! Printing with CMYK colors allows you to reach the widest spectrum of colors with the lowest number of starting colors.
There are machines that also print in six or eight colors or you can opt for printing with Pantone colours, a catalog of 1114 unique shades composed by mixing 13 different color pigments; but these types of printing are much more expensive and complex.
Four-color printing remains the most convenient and is today considered the standard for offset and digital printing because it allows us to recreate in print what we see on the screen in a simpler and more immediate way.
The four colors that make up this model are mixed to create many other colors in a process called subtractive synthesis .
The basic colors work like a filter : the light passes through the first color and the ink absorbs part of that light, the remaining light passes through the second color and is partly absorbed again.
The remaining light is reflected by the white sheet and hits our eye, allowing us to see the specific color.
When we talk about color mixing we are referring to a process similar to that of impressionist painters: a myriad of single-color dots are printed next to each other, using particular models called screens. A machine prints these dots with a certain size and frequency, it is our eyes that perceive and reprocess this information with a very precise shade of color.
How does hot stamping work?
Among the most used techniques for personalizing your packaging there is also hot stamping : perfect for shopping bags and the inside of cases, but also for creating valuable packaging for your most luxurious products.
Hot stamping guarantees excellent quality and durability over time at an affordable price and is, for this reason, a widespread technique appreciated by entrepreneurs who choose to personalize their packaging.
This process is also called foil because it allows you to give a shiny or metallic appearance to the texts that you decide to include in your personalized packaging.
The metallic effect can be conveyed through the colors (gold, silver, bronze or copper) but also the consistency of the print.
On a technical level, this is a process that involves the deposit of a thin metal sheet, the foil, placed between a heated cliché and the support we want to print.
The right pressure at the right temperature allows you to transfer a bright and elegant image, logo or text onto our packaging.
There is also a version of hot stamping called dry stamping , which does not involve the use of foil.
This technique allows you to print images and texts without the glossy and color effect of the surface itself : even if pressure and heat are always used, the absence of the foil will allow the shape of the cliché to be transmitted to the surface concerned.
Which one to choose for your business?
As with any asset, the most suitable answer to this question is: it depends.
It depends on the products you sell, the cost they have, the experience you want to offer and the values you want to convey.
We at Kapasity can offer you two proposals , one with four-color printing and one with hot stamping, to make your packages truly unforgettable.
Kapasity proposals
The e-commerce boxes with four-color printing are developed to facilitate assembly and optimize packaging times. The interlocking closure with front flaps allows different types of products to be safely and adequately contained. Personalization is available on the lid of the box and can be made in various sizes with digital print personalisation.
For more luxurious or premium products we recommend hot stamped coated boxes . These elegant packages are designed to contain high-end products: they are available in 7 sizes and covered with Favini Burano Kraft pulp-dyed paper in 6 different colours.
Delivered flat, they are very easy to assemble thanks to the 2 hidden magnets. Also in this case customization is possible on the lid of the box.