Foil Stamping impacts a striking, shiny area of foil onto to your package. It is absolutely eye-catching and unmistakable. 

Foil is frequently used on lettering of titles, sometimes on images. Usually the foil stamping is on a small area. If you have a huge amount of foil coverage, stamping might not the best approach. For continuous coverage, foiling paper which is like gift wrapping paper, might be a better option for you. 

There is quite a variety of colors to choose from. Especially Gold (there are like 12 varieties of just gold, who knew?).  We can show you a swatch to see what color is closest or you can give us a PMS color and we’ll try to find the closest match of foil material. We can’t make or mix up a foil color, it’s a material we purchase. There are other colors too though, so don’t worry. We can probably accommodate those pinks and teals. 
Most popular choices: Gold and Silver, followed by copper, red, blue, green, and pink. 

A beautiful shiny effect, foil can be stamped in large or small areas. Because foil stamping is priced by coverage, the art design will probably be needed to estimate cost. Be warned, it is expensive. Gold and Silver are the most popular colors. 

There is one draw back to foil stamping, and that is the expense.  Foil is priced by coverage on packaging panels, and if the panels are contiguous. We’ll either need to see your artwork or guesstimate the cost based on your description. You can tell us things like “front, back, and spine, coverage is less than 2/3 of the panel” and that will work for the estimate. 

If you are looking for a matte, non-shiny effect, foil is not the effect you want. You might consider a metallic ink if you want a matte, non-shiny look. Our clients have described silver metallic ink packaging as “older Apple style” and “space age”.  Foil Stamping = Shiny, Metallic Ink = Not Shiny. 

It is possible to combine foil with embossing but registration (getting the two effects to line up perfectly) can be very challenging, even for us. And we’re good. 

Let’s say you are creating a hardbound book with gold foil on the front and you want the disc to be the same gold color. The difficulty is that foil stamping works on paper but not discs. You have different media to work with here. Your best best is emulate the foil color with a pms color for the disc. It may take several experiments to get it right. Talk to us about proofing. 

Can you do foil stamping on non-paper materials like linen or leather? Yes! In fact this is one of the best ways to “print” these materials….and it is very striking! The more contrast you have in the media, the better.  On paper items, foil works beautifully with a matte lamination contrast. 

Foil is set up on a separate layer in the artwork and designated with a special color you choose. Cyan is the go-to for special inks, but you can use any color to designate where the foil goes. Be sure to keep it on its own separate layer!

You guessed it, proofing is expensive for foil. Seems like the more expensive effects are, the more expensive the proofing is (just like car parts and services, ever notice?). PDF Softproofs won’t do foil justice, and standard matchprint digital prints show just the color layer you set up. Foil requires films to be made and an actual press proof with foil stamping.