Looking for a way to put some personality and flair on your product designs? Embossing your products may be the best way to go.
Embossing is a unique and old printmaking form dating back to the 15th century. Although, it had become more of an art form in the past few centuries.
In simpler terms, embossing raises the surface of your design to give it more definition. It’s a process that can level up your design in ways that simple printing can’t do.
But what goes into the embossing process? Find out the product development lifecycle of embossing in this article.
Embossing Process: How It’s Done
Embossing is the process of pressing a sheet of paper into a design-engraved female die. Often, there’s a male die located underneath. This placement helps transfer your design into the stationery in-between the dies.
This printmaking technique also makes use of heat, powder, and stylus.
While a usual embossed product has its design raised to the surface, it can also give a depressed design. We call this process debossing. In debossing, the two dies get switched, giving the product an engraved look.
You can emboss on your own if you have the appropriate embossing materials. These materials include embossing powder, heat gun, stencils, and embossing ink. To many scrapbooking hobbyists, embossing helps them incorporate more designs into their stationery.
But in businesses, making use of an industrial press for the embossing process is much better. By doing this, you can use other ways like foil stamping to make your product more high-end.
Dies are also essential materials for the embossing process. These metal plates are the ones that hold the design you want to emboss. It’s the material that dictates what kind of emboss you’ll get.
You can learn more about this embossing material with Universal Engraving. The awareness of the different kinds of embossing die is necessary for designers. Dies for marketing products may not work for packaging ones.
The Product Design Process in Embossing
Like its process, an embossed product goes through a product design process. The creation of a design you’ll need for embossing is specific.
Emboss designers should always create vector artwork for their designs. Vector-based software like Adobe Illustrator and InDesign are some apps you can use in making a pattern.
Once you finish it and the emboss die gets created, you get yourself a film. The film is the one you need to photo-etch metal. Unlike raster art, the lines of vector art remain clean and have an independent resolution.
Designers must also remember that the larger the embossed area, the deeper it will become. Foils also look better if they’re embossed.
Aside from that, large areas of embossing should not have a detailed design. Fine details only need a short time to etch, unlike large emboss. When you etch it too long, it will begin to eat away your whole design.
Understanding How the Embossing Process Works
The price of a beautiful, embossed product is from a detailed embossing process. While it may look easy, you need to put a lot of consideration from designing to its production. Knowing what materials and the method you’ll use is also crucial for a good outcome.
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