Designing for Flexo

Flexographic printing has come a long way, baby! It’s not your father’s printing process anymore (not even your older sister’s).

Flexography has made huge technological gains in many areas, resulting in print quality improvements that have allowed it to rival the benchmark standards established by gravure and offset printing. These improvements, combined with some of its cost advantages, have allowed flexo printing to become a major force in the package-printing arena.

“The flexo print process has made great strides in the last decade,” says Darko Martinovic, managing director, SGS Evolution Designworks. “Advances such as hybrid screening, photopolymer plates, direct-to-plate technology, and gearless presses have all combined to improve the ability of flexo to compete with gravure and offset.”

It wasn’t too long ago that gravure printing leveraged its high-quality, high-volume capabilities to provide cost-effective printed products. “Initially, gravure was the powerhouse of print formats in the packaging industry, providing an extremely high degree of control in consistency of color, image, and ink lay over very large, high-volume commercial print runs,” says Kris Sexton, president of Directions, a design and consulting agency. “The expense of gravure printing was offset by the print integrity maintained over a long run. It required fewer change-ups, and cylinders lasted longer due to their construction.”

Clearly, however, the days of leveraging high-volume runs to reduce per-unit costs have fallen by the wayside. Marketing strategies trending toward regional marketing and promotions, along with cost-driven needs to reduce working capital inventories, have significantly altered the landscape and reduced the viability of long print runs.

This has dealt flexography a good hand. “Initially, flexo was an attractive alternative to gravure, because it provided quicker setup and handled short runs effectively, with good or acceptable image definition,” relates Sexton. “Flexographic printing is a simple, less expensive form of commercial printing and can be utilized for a broad variety of applications and on a wide range of substrates, with a good quality result.”

Design considerations

Although many of the recent improvements in flexo printing have broadened its capabilities, specific factors need to be understood when designing graphics for this process. ­According to Terri McConnell, director of brand strategy for Gravity, a subsidiary of Phototype, flexo has a several important limitations that must be considered. These include:

• Dot gain is a problem, especially when creating drop shadows and soft gradients, blends, and vignettes;

• Minimum line weights and type sizes are more difficult and traps are often heavier, making small type areas and more elegant, fine-line aesthetics challenging;

• Registration limitations dictate the use of outlines around reverse copy and graphics on backgrounds made from more than one color;

• Having to run separate plates for tone/screen and solids of the same color can significantly impact the number of ink stations available for design, notes McConnell.

“There’s no question that designing for flexo requires special consideration and forethought,” observes Rick Murphy, creative director for Gravity. “Just as an artist has to understand the unique characteristics of watercolors versus oils, package designers must understand the differences between the flexo and offset or gravure mediums in order to conceptualize a winning package that won’t disappoint when it comes off the press onto the shelf.”

Linda Jenschke, graphics manager at Directions, has similar concerns when working with flexographic designs. “Flexographic printing has more limitations with regard to achieving contrast within continuous tone images,” she notes. “Its requirement for a minimum dot means the highlights cannot be as light or bright as preferred, which creates a flatter image.

Although these concerns still exist, it is precisely in these areas that flexo developments have made the most progress, showing that the flexo community is addressing the right issues. According to Alan Just, art director at Directions, “The key improvements [for flexo] are increased detail resolution, providing thinner line weight, greater halftone DPI, and increased legibility at smaller sizes.”

Not all the improvements have been technological. ­McConnell notes the contributions from printers and prepress shops. “There’s no question the technology has improved across the board, but the expertise of separators and printers has contributed even more to flexo’s suitability and dominance in the marketplace,” she observes. “Their diligence and finesse in fingerprinting and measuring and controlling the process has given us a reliable and greatly expanded color gamut and allowed us to explore design options previously off-limits to flexo.”

Flexo strong

Beyond the progress that has been made addressing its weaknesses, flexographic printing has a number of strengths that designers can use to their advantage, one of which is its ability to be used with a broad range of substrates. Because of this, “It is more able to respond to the contemporary trends in design and package applications, as well as new technologies in structural packaging,” observes Sexton.

Martinovic also believes flexo has some additional strengths that can be useful for packaging designs. “Flexo is capable of reproducing large areas of exceptionally bright color, a major advantage when designing for the confectionary and snack food markets,” he says.

The ability to produce bright colors is a strong point for applications in flexible packaging, says McConnell. “For flexible packaging particularly, flexo gives us great coverage for creating bold, impactful graphics that really ‘pop’ on shelf,” she says.

The advent of UV flexo has also given designers more leeway in their graphic designs. “The key benefits of UV inks are in the areas of color density and image quality—the areas where gravure previously had the direct advantage,” says Sexton. “From a designer’s standpoint, UV flexographic printing can remain truer to color standards, and images are cleaner, sharper, and more defined.”

Beyond the specific capabilities of flexo printing (and any of the printing processes for that matter), Gary Bibler, president of Trinity Design Group, says a designer needs to know the cost expectations of the project. “The critical thing is to understand the budget allowed for the whole package,” he says. “This does not only mean the costs related to design, but further down the line, how much the package is going to cost.”

Moving forward

Technological developments in the flexo arena have occurred at an impressive rate and are sure to continue moving the technology forward. However, the rate of change can also be a source of potential concern for designers, notes Martinovic. “Unfortunately, flexo technology has advanced so quickly, relative to the gravure and offset industries, that there is a large inventory of older equipment still in use that is not capable of achieving reproduction at today’s levels,” he says.

This concern is shared by Murphy. “There is still a marked disparity between presses and printers in terms of capabilities—some can achieve a print quality that is virtually indistinguishable from offset or gravure; some can’t even approach it.”

What this means is that communications and collaboration are critical to successful implementations. “We cannot overstate the importance of strong designer/separator/printer collaboration in the packaging design development process,” emphasizes Murphy. “Our most successful and rewarding projects have been the result of early and clear communication between the players and continuous education around each other’s requirements and desires.”

With all the improvements that have occurred during the last several years, Martinovic sees firsthand what they have accomplished. “Designs that would have been impossible to reproduce by anything other than gravure or offset have become the norm for the flexo process,” he says. “Flexo has become easier to design for and the lower costs associated with the process have encouraged consumer packaged goods (CPG) companies to raise the bar on their design expectations, as well as expand their in-store presence.” pP