Packaging and graphical professionals are constantly looking for new ways to attract consumers. There is often an artistic vision and haptic feeling that the printed piece should convey. With modern printing techniques it is possible to produce various touch and feel properties, but outstanding technical characteristics are also required from the paperboard. Metsä Board, part of Metsä Group, has created a masterpiece of its own as a tool to help professionals when they are looking for inspiring special effects for their packaging or graphical works.
The new demo brochure, ‘Creating an artistic vision on paperboard’, brings together a comprehensive set of special effects from different hot foil printing techniques to highly demanding micro-embossing. It describes various methods to create metallic appearance, from more economical and simpler to more expensive and detailed ones including, hot-foil stamping with printing on top of it, gold and silver hot-foil combined with embossing and also a clear holographic hot-foil on top of printing with a multilayer embossing.
“In order to replicate an artistic view, you need a paperboard with excellent printing and converting properties. These are needed to create a realistic output. This work is visible evidence that our folding boxboards really can challenge SBS boards for graphical use,” says Marko Leiviskä, Graphic Packaging Designer at Metsä Board. “The brochure challenges traditional printing methods. A good example is the belief that you need UV colours and UV offset to print on a foil. However, if you choose the right foil you can print on it with traditional water-based offset.”
The demo brochure was produced using MetsäBoard Prime FBB Bright 355 g/m2, a lightweight and sustainable premium paperboard available with PEFC™ or FSC© certification. The brochure was offset printed by Grano and the special effects were created by Starcke, both in Finland. “Our ambition level was really high when designing and producing this tool. To demonstrate the full scope we used 26 machine runs to achieve all the effects we wanted to feature,” Marko Leiviskä concludes.