Advice for foil blocking

We are leading experts when it comes to our foiling services. Foil is a great way to add an outstanding touch to your products. With our help you can choose a wonderful design and really stand out from the competition.

Foil blocking is a method that can help your products look amazing. We have a lot of experience with it, ensuring we can offer top results.

What Is It?

This is a method that is, in a way, like potato printing. However, it is more advanced and uses a metal die. This is like a stamp and has your design for the area with foil etched on. After heating the die, it uses pressure to stamp the foil of your choice on to your item.

As a result of the process, your product receives a beautiful touch with a finish of your choice. There is a wide colour palette available beyond gold and silver. It actually surprises people how any options there are, such as mirrored and printed products. Foil blocking can offer a lot of detail, including results that are better than what you would get with metallic inks.

Tips For Use

The Right Design

You should only be using clear line art for foil blocking. A design with a detailed pattern and spacing that is tight can look great on smooth and coated paper stocks. The problem though is that fine detail does not always print clearly on paper stocks that are heavily textured because it will ‘fill in’.

Another thing to avoid is making foil extend over the edge of the page because it can chip when guillotined. This can ruin the finish and lead to peeling.

Allow For Mis-Registration

Foil print registration can vary by ±1mm so you should allow for this in your planning. The foil should overlap by 1mm if you want to cover a design element.

foiling servicesFoil blocking is not great for aligning with fine detail. You should avoid positive lines which are thinner than 0.5mm as well as reversed-out lines which are thinner than 2mm. You should not use a pre-printed area to match the foil with. Instead, use it as an individual design.

You can always count on the leading work completed by Foiling Services. Take a look at what we do through our site and contact us if you are interested in learning more.