Spotlight: swissQprint
If you’ve ever set foot in an antique shop, you’ve heard the words “If you break it, you buy it.”
Here’s another time-tested retail truism: “If you touch it, you’ll buy it.”
For more than 20 years, study after study has underscored one simple fact: If a product provides consumers with an interesting tactile experience, they will probably purchase it.
But how do you even begin to introduce “touchability” into your packaging, book covers and more without adding extra time and crippling expense to your project?
Two words: “Textured printing.”
And nothing provides it better, faster, or with more versatility, than swissQprint’s line of high-speed inkjet digital printers.
From Clever to Mind-Blowing
The smooth beauty of black marble walls?
The rise and fall of textures and colors mimicking stained glass?
The slate-like look and feel of a restaurant’s walls on a menu cover?
If you can imagine it, swissQprint printers can bring it to life, and make it literally burst off the paper.
Or metal.
Or wood.
Or acrylic.
In fact, you can add this extra tactile quality to any substrate that you’d normally use for a digital printing project, up to 2 inches thick.
Coated, uncoated, C1S, E-flute corrugated paperboard – the choice is yours.
How Does it Work?
Magic?
In a manner of speaking…yes.
Think of the swissQprint printer as an enormous version of your own desktop inkjet. Only this printer uses digital UV ink, which is unusually thick and cures immediately after printing.
This means that you can actually layer ink on top of ink in pre-specified areas of the sheet, raising the height in just those areas of your design – from .1 mm high (100% texture) to .9 mm high (900% texture). The more ink you lay down, the higher the effect.
If you’re about to say “embossing,” that’s essentially what we’re talking about here.
Except rather than warping the shape of the substrate, you’re merely adding layers of ink to it. Among other benefits: The opposite side of the sheet remains completely unbruised.
Another plus?
Unlike embossing, which requires the time and expense of making special dies for each change in a design, the digital printer can easily alter the height and areas being “embossed” with a few taps of the printer control screen.
What Makes swissQprint Printers Unique?
Perhaps the most obvious benefit is the “flatbed” nature of the equipment. This means that you can easily produce multiple copies of your work on one sheet, making for a speedier turnaround time.
Want to include a different textured message or image on each piece in a print run? Done.
Also speeding up the production process are the 4 print heads the swissQprint equipment uses, which lay down UV ink all at once, covering a larger chunk of the sheet in one pass. And their latest Generation 5 printers work even faster still.
Going Beyond CMYK
Texture on its own is lovely, but to get consumers to pick up your packaging/book/brochure in the first place, you need a strong visual hook.
And it doesn’t get much stronger than your own appealing design paired with extended-gamut printing.
By adding a Bright Orange ink to the usual Cyan-Magenta-Yellow-Black (CMYK) mix, swissQprint printers not only match nearly every Pantone color, but they allow you to achieve a stunning visual depth to your work, too.
Additionally, since the texturizing UV ink is White, you don’t have to go back to add a White layer on top of the texture before you overprint it.
Pictures Are Nice, But I Need to “See” With My Hands
Couldn’t agree more.
Why not start with this stunning “coffee bean” sheet?
Created from an original scan that was turned into a repeating “bean” pattern, the sheet was set-up in the design file as 6 different spot layers of White ink before being produced on the new swissQprint Nyala 5.
Enter to win 1 of 100 “Coffee Bean” sheets right now! Hurry, this contest ends April 10, 2025. (North American entries only, please.)
[SAMPLE REQUESTS ARE NOW CLOSED]
As a reminder, if you are a PRO member, you can get your copy for free in the PRO portal (click the button below). Not a PRO Member yet? Explore PRO Membership
PRO MEMBERS: GET YOUR COPY HERE!
