In 1903, Ira Washington Rubel was considered as the first person to approach and apply offset printing technology on paper. Independent of Rubel, brothers Charles Harris and Albert Harris also discovered this and built offset printing machines for the Harris automatic printing company.
These are the two foundation marks that make up the strong development of this printing technology. After many ups and downs, in 1950, offset printing became the most popular printing technique for the commercial printing industry. In addition, after many improvements have been made to typesetting, ink and paper, optimizing print speed and life of typesetting, today, most printing, including press printing, use this technique. So what is offset printing and what processes does offset printing have to undergo to complete the print? Let’s learn more about this technique with HA AN!
1. Offset printing concept in packaging production
Offset printing is a printing technique in which ink-stick images are pressed onto rubber sheets (also known as offset plates) and then pressed from this rubber pad onto the surface of the paper. When used with lithography, this technique avoids water staining the paper with the ink. Offset printing has many advantages, so it is very popular with manufacturers. Among the outstanding advantages include:
The image quality is high, sharp and cleaner than printing directly from the printout to the paper because the rubber pad evenly applies to the surface to be printed. Application printing on many surfaces, including uneven surfaces (such as wood, fabric, rough leather). Make offset prints easier Prints last longer.
2. Offset printing steps in packaging production
2.1 Preliminary design
To get a quality, error-free offset printing, first you have to create a standard printout on a computer, or it can be understood as a standard print design file.
The information should be presented on the design in a harmonious way in terms of content, form and color according to the actual needs of businesses and customers. After agreeing and completing the design process, the offset printing unit can move to the next step, which is outfilm.
2.2 Output film
After the prepress design is completed, the printing technician will publish for outfilm. For prints with images, the film will be out into four sheets representing the four color layers C (Cyan), M (Magenta), Y (Yellow), K (Black).
The CMYK color system is the primary color system that can be dithered to create all other colors. The necessary colors are combined from 3 of the 4 colors mentioned above or all 4 colors with different parameters will achieve many different color results. This process is called “output of 4 films”.
2.3 Zinc plate exposure
After having 4 films, the printing technician will dry each sheet one by one on the zinc plate or in a simpler way, take pictures of each film on each zinc plate with a zinc drying machine. This is the third step in the offset printing process.
2.4 Offset Printing
In the offset printing process, the technician will print each color one by one, the arrangement of the front and back of each type of printing color will depend on the technique and experience of the technician. First, the printing technician will choose one of 4 colors to install on the offset printer batch. In the ink input part of the machine, the technician will also give the corresponding ink. For example, C color zinc plate (Cyan), the technician also gives C ink and proceeds to print. The roll that rotates over the paper will knock the printing element onto the printing paper.
After running all the printing quantities, the technician will remove the zinc, clean all the old ink, install the new zinc, put the new color printed paper in and continue the old process. The process proceeds sequentially until all 4 colors are exhausted, those 4 colors are printed on top of each other to produce the final print.
During the printing process, the print technician will have to run drafts to ensure stable printing colors. When conducting offset printing, the printer must deduct paper loss to ensure quality.
2.5 Machining after printing
After offset printing, the printing technician will carry out the final step to perfect the offset print, which is the post-printing processing process. Usually, the post-printing process that is widely used is the matt lamination and glossy lamination process. In which, matt lamination will create a smooth and soft surface. Polishing will give the surface a glossy finish.
Matt lamination is the process of embellishing the product and is not required to be processed, depending on the customer’s wishes. Matte lamination is laminating a thin film on the surface of the leaflets after printing, the matt lamination will make the leaflet printing smooth and help the images become eye-catching. To ensure that the offset printing process does not have errors and must be reprinted, the printing technician must be really meticulous in the steps to create quality prints. (Source: Collector)
To get printing products, packaging with the best and modern offset printing technology. Please contact Ha An via: Ha An Printing Joint Stock Company Email: business@inhaan.vn Phone: 024 625 36492 – 0985.649.304
Thousands of years after writing was invented in Iraq, the work of copying documents is still mostly handwritten. A copy takes a huge amount of time, it can take months to years to complete, and the price of these prints is probably only affordable for the upper class. save. This has created a huge barrier in the transmission of knowledge, information, ideas, etc., and thus dragging down the development of an entire society.
It is the thirst for knowledge through books and documents that motivates people to invent a new method: printing. Since the first printing methods appeared in China and India in the first centuries AD, until the Xerox – The first electronic printer was announced in 1949 in the US, the calendar The history of printing technology has almost paralleled human civilization.
From primitive printing methods
In 175 AD, the Emperor of the Han Dynasty ordered the collection and sealing of Confucian books in order to save these invaluable documents for future generations. This made the pages of Confucius books extremely scarce, and Confucianists, wishing to own these books without having to exchange almost their entire fortune, gave birth to the first printing method: carbon paper. By using carbon paper over the original, then rubbing it several times with wooden planks, they got a copy with a black background with white text
However, it was the Buddhists, not the Confucians, who made a breakthrough in printing technology. It is called the printing method: documents and images are embossed on a wooden plank, then ink is applied on top, and finally stamped into paper, clothes, etc. This technology then becomes extremely popular in East Asian countries.
In Korea, printed copies of Buddhist scriptures have been found, dating to around 700-750 AD. In Japan, printing technology has even advanced to the level of mass production. In 768 AD, in honor of the Buddhist Narra, the court urged the mass printing of lucky charms and prayer books. It is said that this project lasted for six years, and the number of copies produced reached millions of copies. Many copies still exist to this day.
However, the mold printing method has too great disadvantages. A print takes a long time to complete, and once it’s done, it’s quickly thrown in the trash. In addition, if the craftsman accidentally leaves a small error on the print, he will have to start over from the beginning.
To solve these problems, Bi Cheng, a printer in the Song Dynasty, devised a method to separate the characters. First, these characters are embossed on a piece of clay, then the clay is fired and attached to a thin iron plate — a print is made. Once completed, this print will be cut apart and stored for future printing.
Obviously, this is a great idea but completely impractical, as Chinese characters can number in the thousands of individual characters. However, the technology still quickly spread throughout Asia, and through the Silk Road — to Europe.
With the alphabet, separate printing technology becomes much simpler and easier to apply. In 1448, Johann Gutenberg became the first to apply this method. Gutenberg selects metal materials to create discrete letters, numbers, or characters, then enters them into molds and arranges to create a message before it is mass-printed.
With metal materials, it is clear that Gutenberg’s printing technology has become superior to what the Chinese had envisioned: prints become more delicate, sharper, and easier to maintain. He was also the first to use oil-based inks in printing technology, and with this improvement, prints become bolder, more durable than previous prints using water-based inks.
Just over 40 years after its introduction, the loose printing method quickly spread across Europe with more than 20 million books. It really created a communication revolution at that time, and it can be said that this is the invention that opened a new era in European civilization: the Renaissance. Gutenberg’s printing technology has been rated by Life Magazine as the greatest invention in the past 1000 years.
Printing technology has remained largely unchanged in the three centuries since the introduction of Guntenberg’s method. This method shows much higher efficiency than previous methods, however, it still requires too much labor. In 1800, Lord Stanhope developed this form of printing using heated steel plates, thereby reducing labor, but still did not improve productivity (about 250 pages / hour).
The first steam-powered printer was designed in 1811 by the German architect Friedrich Koenig, with the ability to print about 1100 pages per hour. This printer was later sold to the Times magazine, where it was improved to print on both sides of the paper.
However, it was not until the Lino printer was born in 1884 that the history of the printing industry really had a memorable milestone. By using a type-writter, the Lino machine allows characters to be entered by mechanical operation instead of by hand as before. With a capacity of up to millions of prints in a day, the Lino printer made newspapers the main means of communication at the time.
20th century, era of electronic printers
In 1938, Chester Carlson, a Caltech graduate student, developed the idea of creating “dry printing” technology through an electronic printer. He’s tried to sell the idea to more than 20 companies, including IBM, but everyone thinks the guy’s out of his mind — who needs a machine to do the job of a carbon paper?
Finally, in 1949, the Haloid Corporation in New York agreed to spend money to make Carlson’s idea a reality. They called this technology “Xerography” (Greek for dry printing), and later this corporation changed its name to Xerox – The largest printing corporation in the world today.
The working mechanism of this printer can be summarized as follows: the print shaft will be electrostatically charged to create a potential up to tens of thousands of volts, then a beam of light is scanned through the original, sending it images from the original to the print plate, creating a difference in the charge distribution on the print axis. A special powder ink is sprayed onto the platen surface and adhered to the print plate according to this charge distribution. Finally, the paper is applied to the platen and the image is copied from there.
Về cơ bản, một máy photocopy sẽ có ba trục: trục in để in lại những hình ảnh cần photo lên giấy, trục ép để ép chặt những hạt mực vào giấy, và trục lau để lau sạch trục in, chuẩn bị cho một lần photo mới.
Một chiếc máy photocopy cổ điển gặp rất nhiều vấn đề trong việc photo hàng loạt. Để photo ra 50 bản sao từ một bản gốc, bạn sẽ phải tiến hành quét đến 50 lần. Trong khi đó, với những chiếc máy hiện đại, được tích hợp công nghệ in số hóa và thiết bị in laser, bạn sẽ chỉ cần quét qua bản in một lần, những hình ảnh này sẽ được lưu vào bộ nhớ và thiết bị in sẽ tạo ra 50 bản in — nhanh hơn và hiệu quả hơn rất nhiều.
Máy in Laser được phát triển bởi Gary Starkweather, một nhà nghiên cứu thuộc tập đoàn Xerox vào năm 1969. Về cơ bản, những chiếc máy in laser cũng có cơ chế hoạt động tương tự như những máy photocopy, nhưng điểm cải tiến ở đây là việc sử dụng những chùm tia laser để quét qua văn bản gốc do đó rút ngắn được thời gian in và tăng công suất cho máy in. Với những văn bản đen trắng, những chiếc máy in laser có thể cho ra 200 bản photo trong vòng chưa đầy 1 phút. Và tốc độ này với những bản in màu là 100 bản/ phút — vẫn là một tốc độ cực kỳ lý tưởng.
The first laser printers sold for £8,500, a figure that was beyond the reach of many at the time. While today you can get a mid-range laser printer for as little as £100, and for £150 you can get the equivalent of the ones that cost £3500 in 1985. The above example shows the great advances of printing technology in bringing this product closer to the consumer market.
Just a few years after the advent of laser printing technology, in 1970, Maynard electronic technology corporation, Massachusett launched a new product: the dot-matrix printer. This printer works somewhat like a typewriter: it consists of movable printheads that dab through an ink ribbon and reveal ink onto the page to be printed. With characters created with points, the number of fonts becomes very diverse.
As soon as it was born, dot matrix printers have become a popular product in the market because of their flexibility, variety of models, and at the same time, the price is very suitable for the pocket of the user. However, these printers quickly became obsolete due to many disadvantages: slow printing, very low print resolution, inability to print images and too noisy when printing. work. Today, these printers are only used to print invoices at stores and supermarkets.
Inkjet printing technology
Inkjet printing technology was born quickly to meet the need to convert vivid images on the computer into images on paper. True to its name, this technology works by “shooting” ink droplets onto the background paper to create the desired image. The ink will be sprayed through the small holes drop by drop at a very high speed (about 5000 times/second). Due to the very small size of each ink droplet (only the size of a…hair), the resulting print will become extremely sharp. With a very thick pinhole density, the native resolution of the printer can be up to thousands of dpi (that is, the printer can spray thousands of ink drops per 1 inch of printed paper, equal to about 2.5cm). At the same time, the ability to blend colors is very diverse from the primary colors, this technology can create the most vibrant colors you want in your print.
As soon as it was born, dot matrix printers have become a popular product in the market because of their flexibility, variety of models, and at the same time, the price is very suitable for the pocket of the user. However, these printers quickly became obsolete due to many disadvantages: slow printing, very low print resolution, inability to print images and too noisy when printing. work. Today, these printers are only used to print invoices at stores and supermarkets.
Kinh Kim Cương là bản in có tuổi thọ lâu đời nhất còn tồn tại cho đến nay, khi được ra đời vào khoảng năm 868 sau công nguyên. Cuốn kinh này đã được tìm thấy tại hang Đôn Hoàng nằm dọc trên con đường Tơ lụa lịch sử, vào năm 1907
The fastest printing record belongs to the IBM Infoprint 4100 printer with a print speed of 330 pages per minute. It is also the most expensive printer in the world with a cost of about 100 million dollars for one.
The world’s largest printer: This record belongs to the MITSUBISHI DIAMONDSTAR printer, with the size of about… a 4-storey building. The price of a printer is about 50 million Japanese yen, equivalent to more than 6 hundred thousand USD.
The continuous development of industries leads to the development of packaging industry of all kinds. To make their products stand out, more eye-catching than their competitors, manufacturers are always looking for ways to design beautiful and unique packaging, boxes, and labels to impress the eye. of cutomer.
Customers always have a good impression and are motivated to shop for eye-catching packaging products. Understanding this problem, manufacturing enterprises invest a lot of money in the creative stage of product packaging.
However, in order to create standard and beautiful paper packaging products that meet the needs of manufacturers, designers need to understand the basic principles and rules of design. In particular, master these principles to ensure that the products you design meet the standards, while also keeping the designer’s inspiration. So, what rules do paper packaging designers need to master to design packaging and labels that are both creative, eye-catching, and appropriate?
1. Simple and clear paper packaging design
Most product packaging designs when produced in the market are sold with many other products of the same type. In the thousands of products on display at the shelves at supermarkets, stores… your packaging products need to be more eye-catching than other products.
However, if your design is too sophisticated and confusing, the product message is not clear, your product packaging is not convincing enough for customers, not attractive enough for customers to hold the product and read. information and content to motivate customers to decide to buy products. Therefore, the first rule in designing paper packaging and paper boxes is that the design needs to be simple and clear. A “clean” design always attracts customers at first sight.
2. Paper packaging design needs to be honest
Honesty in the design stage is not to “exaggerate” the product too far from reality. As a professional packaging designer, you are the one who “draws” on the product in the customer’s imagination right at first contact.
However, in order for the product to reach users, you should design a packaging that is closest to the actual product, should not let customers imagine the product in an aspect too far from reality, avoid letting customers Customers are disappointed and criticize the “virtual” packaging design, causing bad emotions to customers. A successful product packaging is eye-catching packaging based on honesty.
3. Personalized, unique packaging design
Paper packaging products, used to communicate with customers, introduce customers to the properties and characteristics of the product. However, sometimes just that will cause boredom even though a simple packaging makes it easy for people to find information. When a unique, new and individual design is shown on the packaging. packaging will bring interesting impression to users. As a result, the packaging has its own attraction to customers, also increasing the ability to reach customers.
To leave a deep impression on customers, your packaging design must be unique and different. This is the principle of packaging design that depends on many factors such as creative ideas, design styles, target customers…
4. Packaging design must pay attention to the stall effect
A product never appears alone, but always appears with many other similar products on the shelf. Usually, products are arranged in many horizontal and vertical columns on the shelves to create an eye-catching effect for consumers. This principle needs to be applied smoothly with packaging products often displayed at supermarkets, showrooms, fairs, exhibitions…
When designing products, designers need to calculate and understand the effect. The effect of the design when displayed with many packages of the same type to create an attraction for the product.
5. Packaging design is important for scalability
A perfect package design should take into account the extensible nature of the design, that is, the design can allow the introduction of an interconnected series of products.
For example, the same product line of a brand, you must design the packaging so that this design product can be applied, transformed into similar designs, in the same style, with the same expression. so that customers can look at the product and recognize which brand it belongs to.
Product packaging of the same brand must have a certain association and level of brand awareness. This is an extension of the bag design
6. Packaging design with reality
The final packaging design principle that designers need to grasp is practicality. The packaging design is impressive and useful not only to contain, preserve and introduce the product but also to make it more convenient for consumers during use.
A good packaging design is practical packaging design, making your product packaging sophisticated and modern. If you implement this principle well, you will solve a lot of problems, adding “plus points” to your packaging in the eyes of customers.
A good packaging design is one that when this packaging leaves the product that the packaging is manufactured to protect, it is also used by the customer for later use, containing other objects. This is considered a useful design and a success of the designer.
The rules to design paper packaging that meet the criteria of beautiful, unique, eye-catching and useful are many. However, if you apply the basic rules outlined above, you can completely design an eye-catching and appropriate packaging design in general and paper packaging in particular.
Printing decal labels is increasingly popular because of the many practical benefits it brings. Ha An Printing Company specializes in printing packaging and decal labels, professional service, guaranteed quality.
Decal labels are small-sized labels, often affixed on products and goods with the purpose of helping consumers easily identify the brand, based on which to distinguish and choose suitable products. Through printing of labels and decals, businesses can promote products with images and information printed on them, and at the same time show their class and prestige to customers.
Print labels and decals to show the prestige of the business
Product labels contain information about products, slogans, company logos, etc., so they can be used as effective anti-counterfeiting stamps. Thus, the printing of product labels also helps the authorities to easily control the sources of goods of enterprises in the market in order to limit counterfeit goods, imitation goods, and poor quality goods.
Currently, there are many different types of labels for customers to choose from. Materials for printing decal labels are quite diverse such as clear decal, reflective decal, seven colors. They have high grip, suitable for single use, which saves money.
Ha An Printing Joint Stock Company is proud to be a unit specializing in providing high quality, professional packaging and label printing services:
With modern machinery system, operating 24/24, working quickly and efficiently, ensuring on-time delivery.
A team of experienced, creative and enthusiastic staff will advise and design templates for printing labels and decals, ensuring product quality for you. Customers will be able to work directly with the business and the company, without intermediaries. Reasonable competitive price.
We always try to bring our customers the best product labels at the most economical prices. Coming to In Ha An, you enjoy many other attractive incentives for bulk orders.
Are you in need of fast – beautiful – cheap label printing? Please contact us immediately for advice on suitable printing materials with the cheapest quotation in the market.
