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Photo courtesy of Crane & Company
With the exception of engraved wedding invitations and social stationery, engraving is not commonly seen these days. That’s too bad, because engraving offers elegance and a classic look beyond compare.
Here’s how it works: The image is recessed into a relief printing plate. The recessed areas are filled with ink, then the image side of the paper is pushed down into the recessed areas of the plate with a ton or more of pressure on press. Often the paper is also dampened so it will stretch into the plate more. The result is a raised-ink image like the one above.
Although plate making for engraving is no longer done entirely by hand, both the plate making and the relief printing are very labor intensive, requiring the expertise of true craftsmen.
When you design for engraving, there are a number of things to keep in mind.
How many passes?
Pricing for engraving is based partly on how many plates and passes through the press will be required. You may think that you’ve created a one-color design, but differently weighted elements may require a separate pass through the press. This is because delicate, light-weight elements require different pressure to capture the details than bigger or bolder elements.
The number of passes also depends on the characteristics of the specific press and the expertise of the press operator, but here is a simplified visual guide, based on the weight/thickness of the design elements. I once priced a “simple two-color design” that called for seven passes!
Other design considerations
Be sure to find out the size restrictions of the press you’ll be printing on before you get too far along in your design process. The image area on commercial engraving presses is generally small, between 6 x 9 inches and 9 x 13 inches.
Big solids can be problematic. In effect they create a big blob of ink on the plate which will be difficult to hold as a solid. The resulting print will exhibit blobbiness called pooling. Patterning is a good way around this. Check out Andrew Jackson’s jacket on a twenty dollar bill to see how dark values are represented!
Photo courtesy of Crane & Company
Take advantage of the opacity and thick body of engraving inks to print on dark colored stock. White and metallic inks look terrific, too. You can see more stunning examples of engraving like this strawberry on the Crane Insider blog.
The sculptural, tactile quality of engraving makes it a particularly attractive technique for business cards. Card masters can be engraved with the company logo all at once, then batches of cards can be personalized as needed with an offset printed imprint.
Like paper for embossing, paper for engraving must have long, resilient fibers. Cotton stock is an excellent choice because it can stretch into the recessed areas of the plate without tearing and will show less stretching and distortion than short-fibered papers. Avoid recycled stock for engraving.
Disaster avoidance tips
Find a knowledgeable guide to engraving to ensure that your design can be successfully achieved with this printing method. Select a printer who can educate you about what works and what doesn’t and can recommend appropriate paper stocks.
Share your design ideas early in the process so your rep can take a draft of it to his engraver to pinpoint any problems with the design. In my experience, the most common problem is type that is set or tracked too tight.
Have you enjoyed your experiences with engraving? If you’ve got an engraving project you’d like to show off, send me a photo to share with Printing Disasters readers!
Many thanks to author Peter Hopkins for graciously allowing me to use photos from The Crane Insider.
A crisp twenty-dollar bill fresh from the ATM is a perfect example of a type of engraving. Go ahead, pull one out of your billfold and take a look!
Feel the delicate raised ink lines. Admire the vivid opaque colors and the intricate details. Notice the lack of big solid areas of ink. Turn the bill over and see if you can spot any slight indentations—the reverse of the front image. Pretty cool, huh? Photo: Darren Hester.
Crane & Company, the American paper maker and stationery printer (founded in 1801!), has produced this video that describes the many steps in the engraving process as it is done today:
What an amazing process, with gorgeous results.
In my next post, I’ll go into detail on design considerations for engraving.
I call them bunny slippers press checks, since being fashionable is hardly part of the equation. Bed-head disguised by a baseball cap, rumpled sweats, slip-on shoes, and a bleary, “hunh?” look complete the outfit.
Jarred out of REM sleep by the wake-up call, I jump out of bed, climb into my clothes, wash the sleep out of my eyes, brush my teeth, and hit the road, pondering, “Remind me, what is it I love about this work?”
But once I walk through those press room doors, something happens. The lights are bright; the room is noisy; the graveyard shift pressman is jocular and surprisingly peppy. The old adrenaline starts to pump, my senses go into high gear, and I am ON.
Is the logo crisp? Is everything there? Are the stock and stock weight correct? Any typos we missed, heaven forbid? Does the image color match the proof? What’s the best adjustment to make that image pop? How’s the density across the sheet? (One late-night pressman named me “Ms. Three Point” in honor of my uncanny eye for density variations!) Is that type tailing? Do the crossovers match up? How’s everything running? OK now, can we hold that?
Being systematic helps, as does a collaborative approach with the designer, rep, and pressman. After all, they are experts and they want the work to be perfect, too. And at 3 a.m., having four sets of eyes examining the sheet really helps!
That’s what I love about this work: that pride of craftsmanship, that search for excellence that marks the best printers and designers. You can dial in everything by the numbers, but there’s nothing like the subjectivity and artistry that we veteran craftsmen contribute to the job.
Heading back home to my pillow with a fresh press sheet under my arm, I know it will take me a while to unwind enough to get back to sleep, that physical memory of the rumbling of the press still vibrating my bones.
PS After so many late-night annual report press checks, these days I’m grateful that most of my press checks are booked for 9 a.m.!
Relief printing techniques can add a whole new tactile element to a design without adding a lot of cost. Have you considered embossing? Here’s an introduction to the technique.
I had a hand in creating the embossed example below, an invitation for Seattle University donors to a private tour of a Dead Sea scrolls exhibit. Calligraphy taken from an image of an actual scroll fragment was blind embossed onto the invitation to add an air of ancient mystery. The invitations were printed in three ink colors, plus the blind emboss. The run of about 500 invitations was surprisingly inexpensive.
Design collaboration by David Balzer and Nani Paape. Printed by MC Lile. Embossed by Golden Pacific Embossing.
Embossing and Debossing Demystified
A relief die either makes an indentation in the paper, called a deboss, or a raised area, called an emboss. I remember the difference by saying, “Down for Deboss” or “Deboss inDents.” (I also say “Emboss is Up,” but that’s just me!)
Debossing is done on the front of the paper, while embossing is done on the back side. For this reason, a debossed image is generally more crisp. They are both created on a letterpress with a die made from your artwork. Dies can be single-level or multi-level, sculpted, flat-edged, bevel-edged or rounded. The depth of “bite” can be specified. The design can either be registered to a printed part of the page, or “blind,” as in the example shown.
Relief dies for embossing and debossing are etched into either magnesium or brass from your digital file. Single-level magnesium dies have gotten a lot less expensive in recent years due to the automation advances of machine and laser engraving that eliminate most of the handwork traditional die making entailed.
Multi-level dies are made of brass and still require the expertise of a skilled die tooling craftsman. That’s what makes them expensive. While too pricey for your average event invitation, a brass die is a good investment for a corporate brand element that will be used repeatedly, such as an emboss for a pocket folder or business cards. If you choose the size of the image carefully, the same die can be used for a variety of applications.
Capitol Press in Olympia, WA offers this helpful article on embossing on their website, with lots of diagrams and recommendations for designers.
Paper Choice is Key
The right paper choice for relief printing can make or break the project. Embossing stretches the paper and applies heat, so the paper needs to have resilient fibers. Otherwise the entire piece will warp.
This is one instance where virgin fiber papers perform better than recycled. Papers with high recycled content are not recommended because they have short, less resilient fibers which are more likely to crack or break. They also tend to get shinier, for some reason.
Papers that have high bulk (think cushy, not hard) and a softer surface are good candidates for relief printing. Strathmore wove or Crane’s perform well. The Dead Sea scrolls invitation was printed on Neenah Classic Crest, which also embosses nicely. The cotton fiber papers that Crane’s offers make for exquisite relief printing because of their long, especially maleable fibers.
disaster avoidance tip
Select a printer who knows about relief printing and ask to see embossed examples to review. Most smaller printing companies hire a specialty vendor to do their relief printing, but some larger or specialty printers offer relief printing in-house. Many letterpress operators are true craftsmen who have been plying their craft for decades.
Before the die is ordered, it’s best to go over the samples and your design with the print rep so they can determine specifications for the die that will achieve the look you have in mind.
Before press day, ask to approve a test stamping of the die to be sure it’s right. I also like to attend the bindery check to review the job on press. Subtle adjustments there can achieve the just-right impression.
Relief printing is beautiful, and it really enhances a design. Careful, once you try it, you’ll be hooked!
Give me your real price the first time
June 2, 2009 in Cautionary Tales, Industry Commentaries, Offset Printing | Tags: Printing Industry | 2 comments
I should have a pet peeve category for posts like this one.
When I put a print project out for bid recently and got the bids in, one of the bidding reps told me, “Well, my price may be high, but if my company is awarded the job, we can get you better pricing at that time.”
This particular vendor assumed that there would be a round two and that he would of course be in it. He wasn’t. His round one price was the highest of three by a long shot, so I dropped him from the running.
I do understand that further refinements and cost savings are sometimes possible once a job has been thoroughly engineered. In fact, my best vendors usually provide a finalized “live job” price once they’ve received the release files.
But undertaking multiple rounds of bidding is time-consuming for the production manager, and due to time constraints, I’ll often narrow the pool if I need to price a second (or third or fourth!) round.
Disaster Avoidance Tip
Print vendors, you’d be well advised to provide a fair and real price at first round! If a print manager figures out that you’re playing a “how high can I get away with?” game, you won’t get a second chance to bid, while your competitor who came across as the straight shooter with a real price will be on his or her way to printing the job.