Wintry Digital Jewelry

Wintry Press has produced many offset and digital jobs. And, I know that I’ve mentioned before how impressed I am, and the Wintry clients are with the results on uncoated paper. Wintry recently produced a job for a high end jewelry company. The piece was a card that printed 4 color on 1 side, and black on the back. The quantity was small, and so it made sense to run digitally. However, the specified paper was an uncoated cover stock with the eggshell finish. This particular paper is not available with the surfacing for digital printing. But, this is the paper the client wanted, so we got some sample sheets and ran a test. The paper worked well, even though it was not treated for digital printing. We ran the full job on this paper, and the results were just great. As I’ve mentioned before, it would be very difficult, if not impossible, to print this well conventionally. Of course, the client was very happy, and consequently we were too. Now, we have to figure out a way to get those results, or close, when the quantities get too big for digital printing. Wintry Press being the (“we’ll figure it out”) company will…well, figure it out. We’ll keep you posted.

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press/Static Cling

Many of you probably know about this product. But, maybe you don’t know that Wintry Press is able to produce/print this product. This product is a clear piece of static plastic held against a white paper paper backing via static. The printing goes down on the plastic, and the plastic is then peeled off the backing and placed on a window (usually). It is held fast to the window with static, and is removable and can be placed in another spot whenever desired. I’ll give a brief description a job Wintry prints on this product/substrate, just in case. This is a simple 2 color job with a white background for opacity. The color goes down first, but at that point looks very  transparent, and is hard to determine what the final will look like. So, to simulate the final look, the plastic is peeled and placed on a white surface to give a decent look at what the final piece will look like in the window. The color can then be brought up or down to the desired level. Finally, after the color goes down, the opaque white is printed on the entire sheet, and the piece is finished. It is then trimmed and ready for use. There is also another product called Cling Z which will hold to sheetrock. But,
that’s another spot.

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press Ltd. Custom Envelope

When we were asked to produce an envelope with solid ink on the flap only, we along with every one else took a quick step backwards. This required, for starters, the envelope to be printed and then converted. This is not usually the most efficient method of producing printed envelopes when the print run is short. However, in this case, we had no choice. Printing the envelope was not a problem. The printing was straight forward, with one color on the flap and on the face of the envelope. At Wintry Press Ltd., we pride ourselves in our service to our clients needs. The need here was to produce an envelope in a small quantity at a reasonable price, and most importantly, with the converting process producing no, or minimal bounce. Because the color on the flap came right to the top, there really was no room for error. Any significant movement (and that means even 1/16″) would create a color line at the top of the face of the envelope, or a white line at the top on the flap-both unacceptable. Doing the converting with any of the “envelope houses” or the “envelope converters” was not a great option. They simply could not hold the register, and would bounce by at least an 1/8″. The next possibility was to print in a very controlled way-small paper, good press-and then die-cut the envelope, and put a precise score at the flap fold. This worked beautifully. It took a lot of work, watching and caring, and close collaboration with a smart designer, but it worked. I don’t know why, but Wintry Press doesn’t say it can’t be done.

Harold Chayefsky
http://www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press Posters

What amazes me these days (it shouldn’t, it’s been happening for a while), is the speed that the new presses can hang plates, get register, achieve and hold color. Though the basic technology of offset printing has not changed much for years-you know, all and water don’t mix-what has changed is the refinement of settings, and of course, the connection now between pre-press and press. This allows all the information from pre-press to be transferred to the press. When the press person gets the plates to hang (automatic plate hangers), color and register are pretty close. I say all this preliminarily to the actual subject title of this entry. The 3 posters Wintry printed recently, each had different images, and therefore different sets of plates and new makereadies for each. We had our client on press. We started the first poster at around 8:30 AM. By 10: 30 we were finished with any color maneuvering we needed to do on the third poster, and by 10:45 or so, the job was finished and we were off to the next job. True, they were short runs, but with everything connected, and automated, hanging plates, getting register and color set, took about 30 minutes. I know it’s fairly common these days (speed, speed, speed), but I’m still amazed.

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press Ltd. #1 2010

We had the opportunity to produce a job with both foil stamping and kiss-cutting. The job was printed on label stock (pressure sensitive crack & peel), in 4 color process. The images (4 of them), were of eggs. The foil stamping was designed with a filigree effect around the edges-not as fancy as a Faberge egg, but a lot of detail. The kiss-cutting was a little closer to the egg shape, but made a few unexpected curves away from your normal egg. The end result was 4 egg stickers in full color, with gold foil wrapped around them. When removed from the sheet they could be placed anywhere. A nice, fancy and not expensive way to enhance packaging.

Harold Chayefsky
http://www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press Thermography

I suppose my question to myself is this: Is thermography on the rise as a printing method for higher end uses? And, I suppose my answer is, maybe. Two recent inquiries, and one job, both from graphic designers/creative directors, as all I have to go on right now. But, when you get two in a row of something that Wintry hasn’t seen in years, you wonder where it’s going. Letterpress did this a few years back, and made a beautiful come back in the commercial high end print world. Like letterpress, thermography has been around for a long time. It has been used mainly (I say this cautiously) as an inexpensive way of producing, mass producing, business cards, wedding invitations, etc. Choose from a few styles and colors out of a book, and for really just a few dollars you have 250 or 500 business cards. By the way, this mass production of business cards, letterhead, postcards, is being done with offset printing quite effectively. But, offset printing always had it’s lower end and higher end. Thermography, unlike offset or engraving never really had both. I will report back after these jobs are printed, how the process worked. Perhaps the printing industry isn’t over it’s revolutionary stages. Perhaps there is more to come. Look to the design world.

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press Holiday Card Fold

I was thinking back to all the holiday cards and folders Wintry Press has produced during this season for both ourselves, and for clients and friends. There are quite a few, and many were quite unique. But at least one, warrants some special attention, because it shows, again, what can be done with simple straightforward design elements-no die-cutting, stamping, etc. The piece, when trimmed to size, is a square that has been printed with 2 PMS colors on 2 sides-nothing unusual there. But, then the designers figured out how to fold the piece using angled folds to end up once again with a square, but of course smaller. The angled folds needed to be folded by hand, and also needed to be die scored, but this extra work was offset by the simplicity of the printing and the straight trimming. The final folder as it opened up almost looked like origami without the 3 dimensional quality. Simple and very cool.

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Holiday Idea

For a recent holiday card, Wintry Press printed a small 5″ x 7″ card for ourselves. The nice thing about this card, as simple as it was, is that the 4 color image on the front could not have been printed conventionally with any where near the quality we were able to get on the digital press (Indigo in this instance). The color photo sat on top of the 100# Cougar Opaque Natural Vellum cover stock, giving a vibrancy and saturation that simply could not have been achieved with ink and water-too much absorption. I’m not saying that with the correct pre-press moves and good printing the results would not have been phenomenal with conventional printing, but not nearly as simple, fast or economical for only a few hundred cards. When printing on uncoated stock, digital is a great way to go to receive great results from a nice color photo. Keep in mind that type, solids and other art might not give you what you’re looking for each time. Light colored type might appear funny, because it will be made from 4 colors. Other types of art might appear streaky or blotchy. But, nice photos, and especially nature subjects will turn out nice almost every time. Give it a try, or even a test try. Wintry Press will be glad to help.

Harold Chayefsky
212-255-0800/718-392-1020
www.wintrypress.com 

Wintry Press Poster Info

I don’t know if this is real info for everybody, or anybody. But, I thought I would talk about the different poster possibilities and jobs that Wintry Press has produced over the years. I suppose the first poster is the poster we all think about. A large sheet of paper printed on one side with the message, or the image of the product as a prominent part of the design. These posters can range in size (and still be called posters), form smallish (11″ x 17″) to very large, meaning 3′, 4′ or even 5′ or 6′. Printed sheets/posters can be bigger, but I will stop there because at a certain point they become banners, and not posters. Another type of poster can be a mounted poster. This can be, and usually is, the same sheet of paper, but the poster gets mounted to some sort of heavy board. This can be 40 pr 50 point board and up, but can also include gator board and foam core board. This type of finished product will usually be produced in smaller quantities, and used for display, rather than adhered to a wall or window. The third type of poster to talk about today is the display or banner. There is such a wide variety, so I will touch on a few possibilities. There is the offset printed poster/display, which can go up to about 4′ x 7′. This is a traditionally printed piece. It is printed on an offset press (a large one to be sure), but a printing press. So, printing large quantities makes sense, because of the production speed of a traditional offset press. There is also the digitally printed poster/banner/display. This type of production is much slower, and consequently is used for small quantities. All methods, coupled with good design and good print production will yield very nice results.

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718-392-1020

Wintry Press and the Postcard

Wintry Press prints postcards-Wintry Press does not print postcards. Both are true, and the difference lies in what defines a postcard. Technically speaking (and not even too technical), a postcard is a card of any sort and size that gets mailed by the post office. But, there are different sizes of postcards. When a postcard is 4″ x 6″ it is mailed at the postcard rate, which is a rate much lower than if the postcard becomes, say, 6″ x 9″. As the size of the card being mailed gets larger, the more expensive it becomes to mail and print. These are all considered postcards. However, the true postcard size-the smaller size, is an item that can be bought from on-line sources, and you can get a reasonably good job. Your postcard is usually ganged up with other postcards, so the color can shift a bit, or a lot, depending on what is running next to or behind your postcard. This is not the Wintry Press market. However, when a postcard needs to carry a beautiful image, and the run is longer, perhaps 10,000 into the 100’s of thousands, then this becomes a job for Wintry or a company like Wintry to handle. Or perhaps the paper chosen by the designer is something not carried by the on-line companies, then the job again is for a Wintry like company. Or, the size is a special size designed specifically for a client and their product, a full commercial printing company is probably what you want. So, postcards yes!

Harold Chayefsky
www.wintrypress.com
212-255-0800/718/392-1020