The Arrangement of Printing Sequence

It is a common topic of how to arrange the printing sequence properly for the printing workers. As we all know, printing plays an important role of representing the originals on the new products, for example, the gift boxes, packaging bags and corrugated carton boxes. And it requires high aesthetic ability and printing skills. With proper arrangement, the printing products could deliver a pleasant printing effect to strengthen the color effect or help emphasize the color layers in a natural and realistic way.

There are mainly three reasons that the printing sequence should be arranged, namely the property of the ink pigment itself, the paper quality, and the identifying ability of the human eyes. Among them, the incomplete transparent characteristics of the ink pigment itself is the most fundamental one. When the printing sequence needs to be arranged, there are some factors should be taken into consideration, such as the tone reproduction, the color reproduction, the clarity of the text, and printing uniformity, etc.

Based on above analysis, below principles have been summarized for reference.

Firstly, arrange the printing sequence according to the originals. The basic color tone should be respected and conformed to when arrange the color sequence. The outstanding color should be reinforced as the last sequence.

Secondly, arrange the printing sequence according to the paper property. For poor quality paper materials, yellow ink should be applied in the first place to help make up with its shortcomings, for example, low whiteness, poor smoothness, lose fiber  and so on.

Thirdly, arrange the printing sequence according to the ink transparency. Ink with low transparency is recommended to be printed first. For ink with high transparency, the bottom ink layer could be reflected well so that the right color effect is achieved.

Fourthly, arrange the printing sequence according to the convenience of overprinting. The strictly required overprinting paper bags or paper boxes could be arranged to be printed by the two-color machine in one time to avoid the printing issues from paper deformation.

Fifthly, arrange the printing sequence according to the cost. Generally speaking, black and cyan should be printed first and then magenta and yellow.

It is an art to arrange the printing sequence perfectly. There are so many things the printing workers should learn before they can produce the perfect printing bags and paper boxes. Continuous efforts should be made to achieve this goal.