Introduction

Stamped Foil napkins will add a touch of sophistication to any engagement. But there are some challenges to creating great stamped foil designs in general and in particular stamped foil on napkins.

Making The Best Impressions

We want to give you some guidance and set some expectations. This will help ensure you have the best experience possible designing for and working with stamped foil. Picking an appropriate level of detail is crucial for a successful design. There are some typographical considerations you should bear in mind. First, though, we should spend a little time discussing the basics of hot press foil.

Core Concepts

Stamped foil is very different from modern printing processes, where tiny nozzles squirt very small quantities of different colored inks onto paper in order to render your design. Stamped foil is more akin to a traditional book-press operation where an etched die is pressed into the substrate to render the design.

 

A classic book press where paper is pressed into an inked plate.

 

For the foil effect, no ink is used and the plate will be heated and machine-pressed together with a thin foil film into a napkin. The heat and pressure of this contact will help to bond the foil film to the fibers of the napkin.

 

The heated plate (die) is pressed with a thin foil film into the napkin, debossing the surface of the napkin and bonding the foil only in that region.

 

The pressure is released, the napkin is extracted and then the process is repeated for as many napkins as will be produced.

Youtube Link Example: Hot Foil Stamping on Original Heidelberg Tiegel /Windmill / Platen

Since the plate needs to be heated and pressed into the napkin multiple times, the material could gradually wear down, making it harder to reproduce fine details. The larger the foil area, the bigger the die, which means more heat and pressure must be evenly applied to the delicate napkin surface. This increases the risk of tearing and other surface defects, which is why there's a limit to how much foil can be used in a design.

1: Stay Positive

Inverted and large solid-fill regions will generally have too much area and will be rejected.

The inverted design on the left would be too large an area to add foil reliably and consistently. The variation on the right will work much better.

 

Pay attention to the amount of foil you’re putting down. Maybe there is another way to achieve the intention that does not require a large solid fill.

Experimenting with photographs yielded less-than-ideal results.

2: Picture This

Photographic elements and continuous-tone images, like gradients, can be especially problematic because they tend to apply too much foil. Be cautious when using graphic elements with tonal variations. While there are ways to make it work, we recommend exercising restraint. Photograph templates, in particular, often don’t work well and are likely to be rejected.

3: Hot Hammer

Extremely fine or dense details won’t produce good results. Small elements can get lost or distract from the main design. A tiny stray pixel, which might normally go unnoticed, can become highly visible when pressed with foil into the napkin. For best results, use line or stroke weights of 0.5pt or thicker, and stick to line screen patterns with frequencies below 20 LPI (lines per inch).

A too-intricate halftone design.	Text elements are OK, but fine details show bridging and subtle nuance are obliterated with flushing and bridging. Minute pixel detail is accentuated in an unflattering way.

4: Text Considerations

As you might expect the limitations of finer detail can be a serious issue with print and typography. Bridging of letters and loss of detail, particularly in script-y typefaces is very common. We would encourage you to use larger, bolder typefaces and discourage using text with extremely narrow elements (or narrow outlines.) Dense text blocks can be especially tricky and we would encourage you to keep text to shorter phrases and sentences where possible. Smaller text often works better with a sans-serif typeface. To be safe and depending on the face, 9-10pt is considered quite small with 8pt being the lower limit. Additionally, wider tracking/kerning will generally yield better results.

In general, when it comes to foil napkins: less is more. Large areas and dense detail aren't going to work. Lighter, ornamental pieces with very fine lines and small text will likely get lost. Thicker strokes and larger, bolder types will reproduce more reliably. As an additional consideration: the more foil in your design, the less well this napkin will work as a napkin. Maximize your impact with a carefully restrained design.

 

Design Considerations and Examples

Sometimes designs may not render the way you might expect. It is perhaps instructive to see a set of designs vs. how those turned out as actual napkins.

Design	How it turned out

Conclusion

Designing for stamped foil is incredibly cool. Keep this guidance in mind and you’re sure to have an excellent time with them. You’re going to love what you can do with them and we’re super excited to see what you make!

 

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