Gravure printing for flexible packaging

Hokusai's Great Wave as another printing system lays it down: a random screen with no ruling and no angle, dots with soft edges, tone running heavy, ink short of full strength
Other printing methods
The same wave printed by gravure: round dots on a four-angle screen, edges sharp, every separation landing in register
Gravure printing

Below: the same artwork on both presses. Drag the divider.

Ten stations, ten cylinders, one image

  1. Ink BlackEvery outline in the picture: the claws of foam at the crest, the rim of Mount Fuji, the title cartouche. It goes down before anything else.
  2. Prussian BlueThe great wave's own colour, the darks inside the trough it is falling into, and the dark flank of the mountain.
  3. Wave BlueThe middle of the water, where the wave turns over.
  4. Foam BlueThe hairline where the deep blue meets the foam, and the snow line on Fuji. Under one percent of the pack, and it still costs a cylinder of its own.
  5. Stone GreyThe band of mist between the wave and Fuji.
  6. Warm BeigeThe horizon where the mist meets the sky, and the aged paper the whole print stands on.
  7. Sea GreenThe pale green that only shows inside the small foam curls. Six percent of the pack.
  8. Sky OchreThe sky. The largest single station on this print — two thirds of the pack arrives here.
  9. Opaque WhiteThe solid backing. This is the station where the print itself arrives — a foil pouch without it prints into the dark.
  10. Varnish · MattThe outermost surface. Not an ink: gloss, matt, or a spot varnish over one part of the pack.
  • The press lays one colour at a time.
  • This pouch ran 10 stations: a keyline, 7 colours, opaque white and varnish.
  • Each station has its own engraved cylinder, so more colours means more tooling.
  • Gravure prints in reverse: the image sits on the inner face of the film, read through it like lettering behind shop glass.
  • White goes down ninth. Until then, only light sits behind the ink.

Every shade, measured on the film you will print on

Cyan × MagentaCyan × YellowMagenta × YellowCyan × BlackMagenta × BlackYellow × BlackSingle-ink ramps
  1. Cyan × MagentaEvery blue and violet the two of them reach between them.
  2. Cyan × YellowThe greens — the widest range either ink has a hand in.
  3. Magenta × YellowReds, oranges and the warm end of the sheet.
  4. Cyan × BlackHow far a blue goes before black takes it.
  5. Magenta × BlackThe same question asked of the reds.
  6. Yellow × BlackYellow into olive into black, five per cent at a time.
  7. Single-ink rampsEach ink on its own, 0 to 100, over the same substrate.

  1. 01

    Spot colour: one ink, one cylinder, the same colour next lot

    A spot colour is a single pre-mixed ink printed as its own unit, so it holds one exact colour run after run, unlike four-colour process dots.

    The same water at four times life size: on the left the blue is a rosette of cyan and magenta dots with paper showing between them, on the right it is one solid ink

    CMYK · four units

    Spot · one unit

    • A brand colour built from CMYK depends on all four stations at once — if one drifts, the colour moves.
    • Some brand colours are out of CMYK's reach entirely: a deep blue, a hot orange.
    • Mixed as a single ink and given its own station, it depends on one.
    • Pantone publishes 2,390 spot colours, each a formula by weight, mixed the same anywhere in the world.
    • Quote the suffix as well — 485 C, U and M are three different colours.
    • We hold brand colours to ΔE2000 of 1–2, against 2–3 for general print.

  2. 02

    Metal: three ways to put it on, and the one we actually use

    Metal on a pouch comes from metallic ink, hot or cold foil, or film that already carries the metal before the press ever touches it.

    One print twice: on the left the sky is cream paper, on the right the same sky is the mirror surface of the film, showing through where no white was laid

    Printed on white

    Printed on metallised film

    • Metallic ink carries real metal powder and prints like any other ink: fine detail, no die, but the shine lives in the ink and dulls with age.
    • Hot foil is the brightest and the only one you can feel — it needs a die, cannot gradate, and puts heat on thin film.
    • Cold foil takes process colour over it in the same pass, so metallics can be coloured and graduated.
    • Most pouches use none of the three.
    • We print on metallised film: leave the white off and it reads as a mirror, put white behind it and it holds your colour.

  3. 03

    Opaque white: the station that decides whether anything else shows

    Opaque white is the ink layer laid down before colour on clear or metallised film, so the artwork reads instead of disappearing into it.

    The same ink twice: on the left it is printed on dark film and every colour sinks into it, on the right the opaque white went down first and the picture arrives

    Nothing behind the ink

    White laid down first

    • Clear film and foil give a colour nothing to sit on, the way marker pen on a window is there but barely visible.
    • So white goes down first — station 09 on this pouch — and every colour above it sits on that.
    • It is the same fence the metal depends on: no white, mirror.
    • Titanium dioxide does the work, scattering light the way fog scatters a headlight.
    • The industry asks for 80% opacity and up, and about half of everything a flexible-packaging plant spends on ink is spent on the white alone.

  4. 04

    Varnish: on film, ours takes the gloss away

    Varnish is a clear top coat, gloss, satin or matt, applied over printed film to change how light reflects and how the surface feels.

    One print, two surfaces: on the left the film's own gloss, deep colour and a raking reflection across it; on the right the same print under a spot matt, flat and holding no reflection at all

    The film as it comes · gloss

    Spot matt over it

    • The film arrives glossy, so the untouched half here is the substrate's own surface.
    • Gloss deepens the colour and catches every light in the shop.
    • On paper the move is a spot gloss on a matt sheet.
    • Matt hands some of that saturation back and returns a surface that holds no reflection and no fingerprints — which is what a pack that gets handled actually wants.
    • On film it runs the other way: a spot matt on a gloss ground.
    • The contrast is the whole effect, so the varnish has to be whatever the film is not.

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