The full color foil process has a few different names flying around the web. Luice Design refers to the process as Full Color Foil because you can have a full color image printed on foil! Cold Foil Process is the technique used by the press department so either one really works for us.

This sample photo of this full color foil business card show's how you can create a hologram like effect using the foil properly and photoshop properly. Katie… our head designer only used the Full Color Foil on the motorcycle rider and the product image. The background was slightly blurred to help POP the two foreground images. Call us anytime to discuss this graphic design technique or just to talk about anything creative.

Good morning all.. Here's Monday's eye candy. First we start with the 5 x7 Greeting Card printed full color with a score for easy folding. The greeting card also has a UV coating on the outside to give it some extra Holiday Cheer! The inside of the greeting card was left uncoated so we could on sign it.

Moving on to the thickest paper business card we print… 16pt Matte Finish with full bleed and full color. As you can see it's for another design group as that is who we do a lot of our printing for. Graphic Designers trust us with their projects because we can understand what they want…. awesomeness! This photo was directed to show you the nice matte finish and the thickness of the paper stock.

Wrapping up today's blog we wanted to show you a close-up of the Full Color Foil Process business card. What makes this process so cool is you can pick the areas you want to be foil just like you would pick the areas to have a Spot UV or Spot Varnish. All of our Full Color Foil business cards get printed on a nice and thick 14pt coated stock and then get UV coated to protect the cold foil process. CMYKF the F is for FOIL!

Happy Friday all… Just a quick post here. This cold foil process business card is going to press today! The red tribal pattern in the skull will be red foil process on a semi gloss finish. Can't wait to post the photos of this one! Thanks Canada! Keep those orders coming in!

We wanted to do a before and after blog posting on the cold foil business card process to give our readers some tips on how to set up there files. This is a new printing process, which a lot of you graphic designers haven't work with before…it works like this. Design your full color business card like you normally would in Photoshop. Next, create a new channel to indicate where you want the silver foil to go down on the card by highlighting those areas in Red (100% magenta and 100% yellow). You can have the entire card covered in foil or just certain areas for extreme highlight effects This is pretty much the same set up as Spot UV business card except the silver foil gets printed first.

When the cold foil business card file gets to the printing press department the printers lay down the silver foil first and then print the CMYK over the card stock and the silver foil. The ink is transparent enough to allow the silver to show through creating a full color foil effect. We also have a Metallics Unlimited business card process which isn't as shiny as the foil but shares the same file set up.

Some tips on designing a full color, cold foil process business card: Don't use thin fonts in your layout if you are going to have foil in that area. Registration is not as exact with this process and the thin fonts might have a small haze when printed. Screens or watermarks don't exactly work the same on the silver foil as they do on traditional coated paper stock. Most traditional screens or watermarks are around 20%. To achieve that effect on the cold foil process business card you would have to bump that screen up to 50%. Always add an extra 30% to all of your screen effect and you should be in good shape.

Front of Cold Foil Process Business Card Proof

The client wanted this card to have a matte black finish with shinny foil highlights in the tribal design and logo. The Photoshop file is set up with an additional channel named "Foil" and has those areas in sold RED.

Back of Cold Foil Process Business Card Proof

The back of this card is to have the green tribal bands and all the text and logo in foil with the black being in a matte finish. We will not UV coat this card in order to maintain the uncoated finish. Once we get these business cards photographed we will add them to this blog so our clients (Professional Creatives and Graphic Designers) can see the difference between the electronic proof and the actual printed piece.

The matte finished business card took a back seat to the super high gloss of UV coating in the early 2000's. It's back in style now! These classic styled full color business cards are printed on a high quality 14 point matte/dull coated card stock. The smooth matte finished stock allows the ink to soak into the card stock causing a reduction in smudges and finger prints, but not limiting the sharpness of the reproduction. This card will make your first impression a memorable one.