Lightning Labels Blog

Low Resolution Gets Thumbs Up for Halloween Costume, Thumbs Down for Digital Printing

KindaCarsick's blogger dressed up as "Low Resolution Lady" for Halloween this year. Her costume is pure genius; it's been a long time since I have seen a costume this creative!

When it comes to digital printing, however, low resolution is nothing to be admired. A low resolution image that is sharp and clear on your computer screen will likely be pixelated in print ... compromising the aesthetic appeal of your labels, and sometimes the legibility of text images as well. Along with image color mode, having the correct image resolution for any digital files to be printed is EXTREMELY important to ensuring your labels are printed with the correct colors and clarity.

The good news is, preventing your labels from turning out like Low Resolution Lady's face isn't a guessing game. To ensure that your label designs look as beautiful in print as they do on your computer screen, I recommend that you review our art specifications before sending us any design files to be printed.

Here at Lightning Labels, we require all raster (image-based) files to have a resolution of 300 d.p.i. at actual size. And in case you are wondering about our image mode requirements, we only print in CMYK. If you happen to send us a file in RGB mode, we will convert it ... and that might not produce the exact colors you had in mind. And if there is any doubt about how your labels will look in print, you might consider taking advantage of our free press proof offer, which lets you preview exactly what your labels will look like before placing your final order.

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Serialization Coming to Pharmaceutical Labels

There was a great article last week in Packaging Digest that described the slow move to serialization in the pharmaceutical industry. California, under their ePedigree law, has mandated that all drugs must carry a unique identifier for every bottle that is sold by 2015. In Europe this mandate is happening much sooner - in Turkey it begins next year and in France in 2011.

What this means is that all pharmaceutical labels will soon be have to be printed digitally. Digital label printing is the only way you can print a unique code on every label. These codes are going to be very complex in order to stop counterfeiting. They will most likely be what is called a 2D barcode that can contain a great deal of coded information in a very small space.

I expect as digital printing technology advances and as consumers demand more traceability with the products they buy that we will see serialization move beyond pharmaceuticals into other products. By the end of this coming decade I expect most products on the supermarket shelf to have some kind of unique identifier on the labels. But the pharmaceutical industry is leading the way and providing much of the technology that will eventually flow into other products.

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Photo by Alex Dodd.

Personalize Your National Geographic Magazine Cover

National Geographic magazine is renowned for showcasing some of best photography on the planet. Regular readers will know the "Your Shot" section where people send in their own digital photos and the editors choose some of the best photos to be published each issue.

Recently National Geographic created a special collectors edition featuring an entire magazine of photos submitted for the Your Shot section. Best of all they have allowed people to upload their own photo to be on the cover. You will see in the picture above a photo I just uploaded of myself and my partner Steve in front of one of our wonderful HP-Indigo digital label presses. Speaking of HP-Indigo, National Geographic chose to print these covers on an HP-Indigo press, so you know the quality will be exceptional.

While this has nothing directly to do with labels, I like to showcase some examples of personalization using digital printing. Any personalization that is done on a commercial printing press can also be done on a digital label press. The commercial print world has been taking advantage of the full capabilities of digital printing for many years, but image personalization like this is rarely used with labels.

With the holiday season just a few months away, why not allow your customers to upload a photo and include it as a special holiday product label for your product. You can charge a premium for this service and at the same time enhance your brand in the eyes of your customers. You don't need a full blown web site like National Geographic has, you could create a simple customization page on your existing web site quite inexpensively. All the technology is in place to do this, and of course here at Lightning Labels we would be happy to print your personalized labels.

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The Opportunity of Variable Data Labels

Variable Data Parking Stickers for The Brickyard

The Indianapolis Motor Speedway (also known as the Brickyard) is the largest capacity sporting facility in the world with seating for up to 400,000 people. It is famous for hosting the Indy 500 race every year, but as all NASCAR fans know, it also hosts a big NASCAR race - the Allstate 400 at the Brickyard. This big race is next Sunday and here at Lightning Labels we are delighted to be a small part of this event.

If you turn up at the Brickyard next Sunday and pay to park your car you will likely receive a parking sticker printed by Lightning Labels. We recently printed many thousands of these stickers, each with a unique serial number. The bright orange color came out beautifully on our digital label press. So, enjoy the race next Sunday and if you receive a parking sticker you now know where it came from.

Proctor & Gamble Focusing on Digital Printing

At the recent Digital Label Summit in Barcelona, global consumer products giant Proctor & Gamble (P&G) affirmed their commitment to using digital printing technology to create innovative and personalized packaging. In this article from Packaging News, P&G's global head of printing innovation stated very fast turn printing and creating personalized packaging as major reasons they are committed to digital printing.

Proctor & Gamble owns such well known brands as Gillette, Pampers, Tide, Duracell and Pringles. These are all brand leaders in their category with millions of people buying these products every day. P&G plans on using digital printing technology to create more innovative packaging for some of these brands. I wrote about the personalized Pringles can last year and I am looking forward to discovering what else they have planned. If it is new, innovative and relates to digitally printed labels or packaging you can be sure it will be written about here.

Printing Large Variable Data Jobs

We have a job in-house right now that calls for 800,000 sequentially numbered labels. We love these kinds of jobs, because they are challenging and they show off the capabilities of our digital label printing. In fact there are only a couple of different digital label presses in the world that could handle a job of this magnitude. With the HP-Indigo WS4500 press this large variable job was printed in less than 3 hours.

Of course, you can use the variable capabilities of a digital label press for far more than just sequentially numbered labels. Did you know that our press can handle variable image printing? This is where we print a different image (such as a photo) on every label. In our latest newsletter I wrote an article titled The Opportunity of Variable Data Labels where I give some ideas on how to take advantage of variable data for your product labels.

Article on Variable Data Label Printing

The current issue of Package Design Magazine has an article I wrote on variable data label printing. I provide some examples of companies that are effectively using this technology today as well as five ideas that anyone can adopt to leverage the power of variable data label printing.

Digital Label Printing Creates Less Waste

One of the biggest advantages of digital label printing over traditional flexographic label printing is that less waste is created during a print run. This aspect is rarely considered by label end users, most people focus on just three things - quality, turnaround time and price. But if you are looking for label printing that is environmentally friendly then you really need to consider digital for the small amount of waste that is created.

Allow me to illustrate with an example of a typical job we print here. We receive an order for five different labels, a quantity of 500 each, and a size of 2" x 6". We print on material that is 12" wide, so we can print 5 labels across the roll which means for a total of 2,500 labels, allowing for a small 1/8" gap between labels the total material needed for this job is around 260 feet. We would produce 30-40 feet of waste to setup the press, so the total job would require less than 300 feet of material.

Now, let's assume this job is run on a traditional flexographic printing press. With an experienced operator you are looking at around 200 feet of waste to get the first label setup. Then probably around 100 feet of waste between jobs for a total of around 600 feet of waste. And that is with a good operator. It wouldn't be unusual for a job like this to create waste in excess of 1000 feet of material. This waste material typically goes straight to the landfill.

So, for a job that actually requires 260 feet of material, a best case scenario for flexographic printing is waste of 600 feet. Less than a third of the material is actually used productively. If the consumer knew how much waste was being created by traditional label printing, they would demand these customers switch to digital.

For very long runs of tens of thousands of feet of material, traditional label printing can make sense. But how can we justify using a printing process where the majority of the material used goes to waste. If you don't have a large label order and you are concerned about the environment, there is only one responsible choice: digital label printing.

A Unique Case of Red Wine

At first glance the photo above is nothing unusual - a picture of a dozen bottles of red wine. But if you look at the labels you will see that each label has a slightly different design. These labels are the brainchild of Jeffrey Caldeway, a leading wine label designer in Napa, CA, who created these unique labels for St. Francis Winery's new wine called simply "RED".

RED is a reasonably priced wine aimed at the younger market, so Caldewey decided to do something completely different in order to catch their attention. He created 12 different red paint spatter pattern images for each of the 12 bottles in the case. So on the shelf in the liquor store customers will see different patterns on each bottle. To ensure that there were always 12 different labels in a case these labels had to be printed sequentially and then repeated down the roll so they could be applied to the bottles with their label applicator.

The only way to do this was through digital label printing. Now, to be clear Lightning Labels did not print these labels, but it is such an interesting use of variable image printing that I wanted to mention it here. It is a great example of leveraging digital label printing to enhance a brand. The overall design stays consistent, just one component of the label changes to give each label a unique look. When RED was launched it was ground breaking for the wine industry - no one had done anything like it before.

This is just one idea that you can use to create a truly unique label for your products. In the last issue of our newsletter, the Lightning Flash, I wrote about five product label ideas that can help you break through the clutter at the retail store. With digital label printing there are so many new opportunities for label and packaging designers that simply were not available a decade ago. Forward thinking companies like St. Francis Winery can really differentiate themselves by being one the first companies to leverage this new technology.

Video Profile of Lightning Labels

A few weeks ago HP came by our offices to do some filming in order to produce a short video featuring Lightning Labels and our digital label printing presses, the HP-Indigo WS4500. After six hours of filming the result is this five minute video below. Even though the intention here for HP is definitely to promote its presses, the resulting video is more informational than promotional. Hope you like it as much as we do.