Elopak products
Pure-Pak® in Flexo
Pure-Pak® cartons, with their emotional benefits, functionality and food safety give products a premium appeal for stand out on shelf. The board color is off-white (triplex) and yields a smooth feeling and an excellent printing result.
Designs suitable for our flexographic process should feature vector graphics, larger text and solid color areas.
Converting colors
Please note that a maximum of 4 Pantone spot colors is allowed to be used in the artwork. In all cases, our pre press specialists will convert the delivered colors into EloChrome color build-ups. At the same time, we pay special attention to matching the delivered targets as closely as possible. Some spot colors, however, can be difficult to match using a standardized extended gamut system such as EloChrome (e.g. pastels, fluorescents and metallics).
We encourage you to contact our repro specialists if considering the use of such inks.
Pantone Guide is used for color matching. The target spot color needs to be available in the Solid Coated Pantone Plus Series Formula Guide.
Process-specific requirements and challenges
Registration deviation
Flexo printing is a high-speed web-based print process where some print-to-print registration variance may occur. Consequently, it is of paramount importance that the guidelines for text size and line thickness are strictly followed.
Trapping
Trapping or cutback is applied in order to prevent visible color-to-color register deviation and unsightly white lines in printing. The term trapping relates to instances where two colors meet. The lighter color is slightly expanded into the darker to create an overlap. This yields a darker outline.
Designers are not required to make allowances for trapping in the supplied artwork. Elopak will ensure that the correct process-specific trapping is applied where necessary. Depending on design complexity, trapping or cutback may vary from 0,05 mm up to 0,25 mm.
Adherence to print specification allows Elopak prepress specialists to correctly apply trapping and avoid the side-effects of print-to-print registration variance.
Minimum dot
Halftone dot
on a plate
Dot gain is a phenomenon that causes printed material to look darker than intended and is inherent in the process.
This happens because the diameter of halftone dots increases during printing.
If objects in your design have gradients of color in them (e.g. vignettes, shadows, backgrounds), they cannot simply fade to white. They must at least contain the minimum allowable amount (1%) of the color you are using for that particular gradient.
In order to minimize the dot gain effect, our prepress specialists will apply a compensation curve. However, you should still be aware that the tonal value of 1% in the artwork will result in approximately 13% on the printed carton.
Tonal
value of
1%
On printed
carton
~13%
Soft Shadows, gradients and fade-outs
Since halftone dots cannot simply fade to zero due to the minimum dot requirement, soft drop-shadows and highlights will have a different visual effect to the digital file. It is therefore best to either reduce the use of drop shadows or use controlled endings instead.
The example below best illustrates the adverse effect soft shadows will have in flexographic printing.
Text requirements
Text can either be set in a single pure EloChrome color (safest choice for small text) or as a composite color build-up (maximum 2 colors).
For single color positive text we require a minimum of 5 pt sans-serif font (stroke width min. 0,15 mm). Negative and multi-color text requires a minimum of 7 pt bold sans-serif font (stroke width min. 0,35 mm). We recommend having the text as large as possible to secure optimal readability.
Font
min size
Line
min thickness
Single color positive text
Aa
5pt
sans-serif
0.15mm
Negative and multi-color text
AaAa
7pt
bold sans-serif
0.35mm
All text in the supplied artwork must be converted to paths or outlines. For contingency, please include all used fonts in the delivered artwork package, in case of text corrections at a later stage.
Show & Tell
The mockups below will guide you through common design elements and help you to better understand Elopak process requirements.
Please pay attention that these requirements are somewhat different for white boards and Natural brown board. Always consider the printed material first before starting the design process.
Summary table
Screen ruling: 141 lpi (54 l/cm)
Requirements
Notes
Accepted file types
Print files PDF
Open files Adobe Illustrator, Adobe InDesign, ArtPro
Always package links and fonts.
Outline all text.
Document/image color mode
4 PMS colors
No Color conversion.
Don’t include color profiles.
Illustrator PDF compatible file
Yes
PDF compatibility
Acrobat 6, PDF 1.5
Minimum line thickness
Single pure ink 0,15 mm
Composite color build-up 0,35 mm
Reversed lines 0,35 mm
Maximum 2 inks allowed in a composite color build-up.
Minimum text size
Single pure ink 5 pt sans-serif (stroke width 0,15 mm)
Composite color build-up 7 pt bold sans-serif (stroke width 0,35 mm)
Negative text 7 pt bold sans-serif (stroke width 0,35 mm)
Maximum 2 inks allowed in a composite color build-up.
Minimum bar code size
Recommended 120% magnification
EAN-13 37.29 x 26.26 mm
EAN-8 26.73 x 21.64 mm
UPC-A 25.93 x 37.29 mm
Elopak will ensure that all bar codes are in accordance with UPC/EAN certification.
Printing of Pantone colors
Not available.
All colors are converted to EloChrome by the Elopak Repro Department.