Wet Black Greyboard

Wet Black Greyboard
September 18, 2009 Calverts

BMurray 001

Hot off the press and very very wet, these are simple cards for Jess Tully at Studioilse, to market their ‘furniture that brings people together’.

We’re literally watching the printed stack every five minutes, to see how fast the ink sets. Although we’re using special oxidising-only foil inks (vegetable oil based), printing on a material like this – 500 micron rough greyboard – is quite tricky.

It may seem counterintuitive, but litho ink sets much faster on coated paper than it does on uncoated. That’s because the solvent and oil in the inks is sucked up quickly by a china clay based coating, whereas paper fibre barely absorbs them at all. Sometimes we have to wait several days before the work is dry enough to finish (creasing, cutting, binding). Sometimes we even have to wait days between printing one side and printing the reverse.

Such are the perils of life as a printer. It doesn’t mean the clients won’t want their printing today, and in this case it really is today. Doesn’t help that we use printing inks with a very low level of additives such as cobalt compounds, which are conventionally added to catalyse oxidation and have nasty environmental impacts.

  • Co-op Fortnight 2020 and inspirational stories of co‑operation

  • The Print Futures Awards were launched in 2003 to help people fund any costs associated with a relevant training course…

    Print Futures Award

  • Client: Co-operatives UK Project: Greener Together logo The Greener Together project harnessed the power of the co-operative movement to collectively…

    Greener Together

  • Calverts and Thomas Matthews have been working with The Green Card Company… …to produce a range of striking greeting card…

    Green Cards

0 Comments

Leave a reply

Your email address will not be published.

Processing...
Thank you! Your subscription has been confirmed. You'll hear from us soon.
ErrorHere