New 4 Color Raised Ink Printing for Business Cards

by: BcardMan
Total views: 21 | Word Count: 534

Raised ink printing for business cards have been a popular standard high quality method of printing offered for over 50 years. This type of printing, also called raised thermographic printing, allows the ink on the paper to rise up and harden so one can feel it sticking up on the paper. This raised ink feeling is thought to give a memorable higher quality feeling to what would normally be a flat printed surface.

To create the raised ink a powdered polymer is applied to the printed ink prior to drying the ink. Then when the ink is dried the ink that the powder stuck to dries with a raised feeling of thickness above the flat surface of the paper. Sometimes, it is desired to have only part of the ink raised so some of the ink is dried before the powder is applied. This portion of the ink will stay flat. It is only the portion of the ink that is wet when the powder is applied that will end up having the raised feel.

Many times, raised ink printing is kept limited to only one color. Additional colors adds to the complexity of the printing process. If two or more colors in a design must be printed very close to one another, then there is usually an additional handling charge for the printing due to the tighter registration required in handling. Printing designs with 3 or more colors has been rare because the increased complexity causes the printing to be quite expensive.

A basic alternative to aid in giving more color is the use of a colored paper to print on. This must be thought through thoroughly because ink colors will reflect different on different colored backgrounds. Alternatives on colors, strength, plus texture of card media can give a big quantity alternatives for planning out a card design.

An additional design characteristic which adds intricacy and additional expenditure to the raised ink printing process is whether the design entails the ink to extend to the edge of the card. A design that includes ink being printed to the card's edge is termed to be a full bleed to that card edge. A business card design which uses full bleed causes further handling complications which is regularly handled by further elective charges for each card edge requiring full bleed of the ink.

Recently there has been a new improved full color process developed for raised ink. Business cards can be printed on the front side through a photo like color process, plus have all the edges printed to full bleed, and have all printing raised. As an instance, you can print the front of the card full bleed as color picture and have it all raised. At this instance this is only printed on glossy bright white paper. This new process extends the choices for thermographic raised ink ideas.

This should provide you a brief study of the raised ink printing procedure. So with this information you should be ready to proceed to use your creativity and make raised ink business cards that brand your business image for success.

About the Author

Browse over to Galleria Ventures to take advantage of their free design services for raised ink printing of your business cards. Also learn more about their new full color raised ink printing.  

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