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.
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.
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.
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.
Earlier today, Steve Smith and I watched the webcast from Israel as HP announced some new digital printing presses they will be releasing soon. Of most interest to us was their new digital label printing press which will be called the HP Indigo WS6000. It will run at around 100 feet a minute, twice the speed of the current WS4500 which will mean larger jobs will now be able to be printed digitally.
Worldwide the label market is growing at 4% a year, but according to HP digital label printing is growing at around 45% per year. When this new press becomes available that number will only increase as now it is estimated that 80% of all label print jobs will be most profitably run on their digital label press.
Here at Lightning Labels we are excited to be working with a company like HP that continues to innovate and invest in research and development. I expect the WS6000 to quickly become the best selling digital label press, but I will go further here. I actually expect that it will become the best selling label press (of any kind) ever. Traditional label printers will simply not be able to ignore digital any longer. It is an exciting time right now in the world of digital label printing.
Last week the DSCOOP conference was held in San Diego and it was the largest gathering of HP-Indigo digital press owners ever. Around 1200 people attended this year's conference an increase of over 60% from the 2007 conference.
Apart from the golf day, the highlights of the conference for me were:
You can get a more complete rundown of the conference on the official DSCOOP Conference blog.
Where would we be without the humble PDF format? Created by Adobe way back in 1993 the PDF (Portable Document Format) is the standard file format for viewing files online. Most design software can create a PDF and we use them here every day to send email proofs to customers.
However, it is certainly not a foolproof system. We had a customer call up today complaining that his PDF looked strange when he was viewing it on the screen - some of the type was appearing incorrectly as bold. We took a look at it on the screen ourselves and we could see the same problem. However, when we printed the PDF the text all looked fine.
This brings up one of the dangers of PDF proofing. The monitor where you view the PDF is always low resolution when compared with a laser or inkjet printer, so for very small type (which was the case in this job) a monitor can have some problems. If you want to be sure you receive what you are expecting then you should always request a hard copy proof. PDF's are only ever an approximation (for both type and color), which is why we offer free hard copy proofs for every job. With a hard copy proof you can be confident that there will be no surprises when you receive your custom labels.
Stormhoek, the South African vineyard that has taken the world by storm with its unique blogging and marketing campaigns, is pushing the envelope again. This week Stormhoek sponsored the British Comedy Awards by providing the wine for all the tables of celebrities. But rather than just giving away their wine and letting that be the end of it, they created some special wine labels just for the occasion.
Seeing that the event was a comedy awards they decided to create new wine labels with cartoons from Hugh MacLeod of the GapingVoid (Stormhoek has worked with MacLeod as a consultant before and he has been responsible for some of their award winning marketing campaigns). But they didn't just do one cartoon, they produced 30 different cartoons, like the one featured above, on the wine labels. The whole idea was to get the celebrities swapping wine bottles and talking about the wine.
This is another great example of the innovative use of digital label printing. There is no need for every label to be the same - if Stormhoek had done that their wine would have had much less impact. You can make every label different and start getting people talking about your product.
I never really discussed here the ink we use in printing our labels. As you probably know we have two HP-Indigo WS4500 presses - the leading digital label printing press in the world. These presses use a very different ink from any other printing press. It is called ElectroInk, HP's patented liquid ink technology. This process uses electrical charges to control the location of the ink and it can print particles as small as one micron, smaller than competing digital printing technologies.
Anyway, last month HP announced that they have improved the manufacturing process involved in the production of this ink. They have designed new equipment to manufacture the inks that reduces the amount of energy needed by around 40%. This comes at a good time because the demand for digital printing is increasing rapidly. Here at Lightning Labels we are using almost double the amount of ink that we used just one year ago. HP is committed to reducing its energy use by 20% by 2010, so this announcement will certainly help that goal.
Yesterday our new HP-Indigo WS4500 press arrived. It came on a big 18-wheeler in about 20 boxes and took the better part of the morning to unload from the truck into our warehouse. We are trading in our old WS2000 on this new press, so now we will have two new state-of-the-art digital label printing presses.
The WS4500 is simply the best digital label press that money can buy and we are delighted to be the first US company to own two of them. It will effectively double our printing capacity and allow us to grow while still maintaining one of the fastest standard turnarounds in the industry.
We should be up an running by Thursday and ready for full production shortly after that.
