Ever wished you had the Midas touch? Foiling might be the closest you can get – giving you the ability to turn all your print to gold, or silver, or a number of other colours with the right provider. This über indulgent finishing technique is a sure-fire way to make any print product feel like a premium item. Perfect for business cards, important invitations and extra special greetings cards.

However, this exciting finish cannot be achieved without the relevant artwork files. Keep reading to find out what we need from you in order to make your vision a reality…

What is Foiling?

As you might have guessed, foiling is about applying foil to your print. Using heat and pressure, this finishing technique fuses metallic sheet foil to specific areas of your design. This creates texture and contrast so that you can draw people’s focus to important details. Or, the added shine and glitz can simply create beautiful design accents to make your print feel more luxurious.

Foiling must be applied to matt laminated print. When building your order on our product pages, make sure you have opted for matt lamination first and then go to ‘additional finishing’ to add foiling.

How to Create and Submit Your Artwork

To keep things simple, we’d like one combined PDF from you; one page for your general artwork and another to show where you need foil to be applied but both in one combined PDF. Doing this means that our studio team know exactly what you do and don’t want in foil. In order to make sure both your files line up accurately, we recommend the following method;

1) Create your design as normal.

2) Duplicate your original design pages.

3) Create a new colour swatch. Set the colour name and the colour values to the relevant specifications;

• Spot Colour Name: Purple 
  • C:65%        M:100%      Y:30%    K:15%

• Spot Colour Name: Foil Gold 
  • C:0%        M:20%      Y:100%    K:0%
• Spot Colour Name: Foil Silver
  • C:20%      M:20%      Y:20%      K:20%
• Spot Colour Name: Foil Red
  • C:0%        M:100%    Y:100%    K:0%
• Spot Colour Name: Foil Green
  • C:100%    M:0%        Y:100%    K:50%
• Spot Colour Name: Foil Rose Gold
  • C:0%        M:40%      Y:70%      K:30%
• Spot Colour Name: Foil Holographic
  • C:0%        M:100%    Y:0%        K:50%
• Spot Colour Name: Foil Blue
  • C:100%        M:100%    Y:0%        K:0%

4) Recolour all design elements that you want foiling in the new, relevant fill colour.

5) Delete any other elements you do NOT want to be foiled.

6) Save your file as one combined PDF.

Uploading Your Artwork

After buying a product with foiling, you can upload your artwork in your account area. You’ll then receive a proof of your order which will include 3 pages for each printed page with foil on; your basic artwork, just your foiled elements, and your basic artwork overlaid with your foiled elements so that you can see if they’re lined up accurately.