Using foil to create a unique finish
July 22, 2011

Corporate Invitations for Care Cloud – Practice Management Software

Get your head ~~out of~~ into the cloud and take a good look at these invitations we recently printed for CareCloud. So what is CareCloud? The engineers and creatives behind the scenes have developed a healthcare ecosystem that provides doctors with the tools they need to build and sustain a great practice. We printed these invitations for a private event they were hosting to introduce CareCloud to physicians. Instead of letterpress, they opted for foil stamping to create a unique finish.

We foiled two pieces as part of the invitation set: the A9 invite and matching envelope. A9 seems like the perfect size for a corporate invitation with dimensions of 5 3/4″ x 8 3/4″. While A7 (5×7) is traditional for weddings, there usually is quite a bit more information for corporate invites so A9 works great. We used Rising’s Museum Board (2-ply) for the stock and WNP for the envelopes. Photos of the envelopes are first:

Practice Management Software

Here’s the CareCloud logo. You can see what it looks like printed on the envelopes in a single color.

Care Cloud Corporate Invitations

Foil stamping or any printing method for that matter is trickier on pre-converted envelopes because of the differences in thickness. We hot foil stamped the envelopes on the front and flap using a black metallic foil. The logo looks great foiled.

Letterpress printing on stock usually doesn’t create a shiny finish but with foil, creating that effect is a breeze. As these photos show, black foil looks amazing on black paper. The next piece was the invitation:

There is something elegant and classic about silver metallic foil on black paper. Besides the fact that the image just pops off the paper, the silver foil catches light at different angles just like letterpress printing. For the silver we used a foil with a shinny metallic finish.

Don’t want a shiny finish? Then a matte foil is the perfect choice. There are so many different foils it can be dizzying to flip through the sample books.

While small type isn’t best for foil stamping, if you need to use small text make sure to pick a plain clean font. Script and embellished fonts may not reproduce properly at small sizes (less than 10pts), the counters will fill in and the foil will bleed.

The design and layout that CareCloud supplied was perfect. They also took advantage of the shiny finish through the use of the bold letters in the “Cloud” Experience.

How does foil work? The process is really cool. It involves a heated base, a metal magnesium plate, and a foil pull setup on your press to advance the foil with each impression.

The plate is heated to an ideal temperature and the press closes with the foil sandwiched between the plate and paper. As the plate squeezes the foil and paper, the heat allows the foil to release from the roll like an iron-on graphic.

I want a heavy impression with my foil, will I get it? Ideally no. To get a great clean foil print you need a good mix of hard packing (in the press) and a slight impression into the stock (if its thick like this black board). Good foil stamping is about maintaining a delicate balance between impression and temperature.

Too much impression and the foil will bleed and fill in the counters of small type. Too little impression and the foil won’t print evenly especially in larger solids.