Cause an Effect

By Kevin Abergel

The embellishment of printed materials to give eye-catching effects has a history that stretches back before the dawn of printing itself. Some surviving manuscripts produced in the dark ages sport hand-made embellishments that would challenge any printer to reproduce today.

Whether hand-applied, mechanized, or as today increasingly digitized, producing such effects has always been an expense on top of the basic print (or indeed, manuscript). They are time-consuming and may use more costly materials than standard pigments. But how exactly do you accurately estimate those costs in advance, so they can go into a quotation that won’t either scare off the customer or see you suffering a loss?

Here at Taktiful our goals include helping producers and specifiers of digital embellishment to understand not just the commercial and aesthetic appeal of these emerging technologies, but also the realities of production and costing. 

Digital embellishment has changed costs and therefore estimating, in other ways. Although the capital investment in an inkjet system is much higher than the letterpress-style machines used for traditional foiling and embossing, the running costs are different. Although there’s the cost of UV varnish on each sheet, there’s no need for metal dies or lengthy makeready whose upfront costs have to be recovered. So for digital, short runs are economical and, unlike traditional embellishment, digital allows variable data and personalization where every sheet can be different.

The Estimator Angle

We talked to estimators at several U.S. digital embellishment sites about how they predict and assign costs for the inkjet-based systems, then put some of their points to an MIS developer. All of the estimators interviewed work with the MGI JETvarnish system, though the workflow and costing/estimating processes would be much the same with the equivalent inkjet varnish-foil embellishers offered by Scodix, Duplo and Kurz. 

Bowen Griffitt is the lead estimator and office manager at Post Press Specialties in Kansas City, Mo. They are a specialist print finisher that offers conventional foiling and embossing/debossing embellishment alongside folder-gluing, binding and mailing services. Their digital embellishment is done on an MGI JetVarnish 3D Evolution with iFoil.

“People have a mindset that digital is like traditional embellishments, like traditional UV varnish or traditional foil, where you’re pricing by an image area or a block," Griffitt said.

Estimating for digital is different.

“The important thing is having a file before we estimate it," he said. "With traditional flat foil stamping with a copper die, you’re figuring the cost by square inch and the foil by square inch. But with digital embellishment, that’s not necessarily the case. It’s based mainly on the varnish consumption.”

Building up height by multiple layers will affect both cost and the speed, unlike traditional embossing.

Estimating at Post Print Specialties is handled using a custom FileMaker Pro database system.

“When we get an actual file from clients for digital embellishments, we use the consumption and run speed calculator that comes with the MGI," Griffitt said. "That will tell you how many impressions an hour and what varnish consumption at what micron level. We also do end-to-end proofing for this work.”

Customers’ knowledge of how to prepare artwork is variable.

“We have some clients that have bought in more than others," Griffitt said. "People who have embraced digital embellishment are more astute to what we need for accurate estimating.”

Less is More

Others are still learning the ropes.

“We still have a fair number of clients that just say, okay, we need a digital UV varnish with a 30% coverage," Griffitt said. "Well, if you understand digital embellishment, less is more. If you highlight areas with less UV coverage, you get more of a contrast. So you’re actually getting a better-looking product a lot of times while using less consumables. Teaching the designers that is, I think, one of the key things that have led to the success and the adoption of digital embellishment.”

The substrate choice also affects production and costs.

“Explaining to people that uncoated doesn’t work when they’re wanting to do an embellishment on their business cards is tough," Griffitt said, "because traditionally business cards have been uncoated forever. Convincing customers to go to a dull coated cover, where we can work with digital embellishments at a lower cost and they get more value, is a little bit tricky sometimes.”

Post Press Specialties offers personalized embellishment for its direct mail work, but estimating for this has not caught up with the capabilities.

“How do you charge for a product that didn’t exist until just very recently?" he said. "How do you charge for variable data embossed foil? To be honest, we really don’t charge any more for it. There’s a little more for file set up, but we don’t charge any more than that. We are not realizing what we could.”

Otherwise, digital embellishment is certainly worth the effort.

“We can be very profitable on our traditional embellishment side, but when people prepare correct artwork for digital embellishment, we can be very, very profitable," Griffitt said. "The key is we’ve got to get the messages out there to people, so they’re preparing things in a digital fashion, building the four-color file with the UV mask and using the less-is-more, keep-it-simple concept, so that you can actually run faster and you’re using less consumables. That’s where you really shine. We’re very profitable in situations like that.”

Filling in the Blanks

Until recently, Chelby Cota worked as an estimator at an Arizona printing company, including the last five years working with digital embellishment, again with an MGI JETvarnish system.

“The estimating for the embellishment was completely different than for a regular print job,” she said. “We had print estimating software and then used a kind of Excel worksheet with built-in calculations for embellishment pricing. You filled in the sheet size, then filled the blanks for microns for the thickness, percentage of the coverage, and the color of the foils, which varied in price. There were five estimators and only two of us handled the digital embellishment estimating, just because it was a little more complex.”

Cota worked with her production manager, Ken Huizenga, to refine the actual costs.

“I would help fine-tune those factors behind the Excel spreadsheet,” he said. “We had to take a look at what the real waste was what, what needed to be calculated and what didn’t. Often they’d try and micromanage the data that they’re putting into the spreadsheet, and I wanted to simplify it. 

“If we’re running 12- or 18-inch sheets, we know the longest foil pulls are going to be 18 inches, and foil is not a very expensive part of embellishment. You could be looking at 6 to 10 cents per sheet. So to further cut that down, because you might only need foil on half a sheet, seems sort of pointless in the big picture. My job was to make it as easy as possible and to get into a ballpark. Remember, we’re trying to estimate here, and not necessarily nail it. So I was fine-tuning it over time.”

Varnish Cost Considerations

“As far as machine rate and the labor itself, it was pretty standard compared to the other pieces of equipment we had in the shop," Huizenga said. "Where it could get a little bit more complicated was the coverage. Varnish is a big consumable. So, we often had them guess at low, medium and high coverage in the estimating department.

“Typically, if we did our job right, and sold the less-is-more approach, we were often finding ourselves using less than what we had in our spreadsheet for low coverage. Let’s say it was about 20% in the spreadsheet, and then we’d run the job and look at the calculator on the MGI and often find we were running 1% to 2% coverage on some items. So there was quite a bit of profit built into the estimate, and it still came out quite affordable for most customers.”

Matt Redbear is both a designer and MGI JetVarnish 3D operator at Blue Ocean Press in Fort Lauderdale, Fla., which handles general, commercial and large format printing. 

Estimating for embellishment is run as a module on the main Enterprise business software.

“When it comes to the digital embellishment, it’s usually considered as a completely separate line item to the total estimate," he said. "We don’t just go by coverage. It’s based on passes – how many passes it goes through, what is the sheet size, is there varnish, is there foil or no foil?”

Stock choice is also essential to runnability and times.

“There’s a job I just did on very porous stock," Redbear said. "It’s considered a digital stock, so it will go through our iGen very nicely, but when you try to put foil and varnish on top of that, it takes on the texture of the paper, which could be desirable in some ways. But if you want a smooth job like you would normally get off this machine, you’ve got to get creative. You’ve got all these variables that an estimating app wouldn’t really know. 

“Maybe it would be enough to just generalize in an estimator, so if it requires a specialty stock like that then a live proof must be done before the estimate continues forward, with feedback from the operator on how to get it to work.”

Dedicated estimating systems are evolving.

We put some of these points to Keith McMurtrie, joint managing director of the long-established UK-based MIS developer Tharstern.

“MIS products have evolved massively over the last 10 years, many of them like Tharstern, allowing configuration to cater for new processes as they emerge," he said. "Sometimes we have to create specific functionality, but often it’s more about setup and consultancy. Our customers have been quoting for these types of finishes for some time.”

Costing for inkjet embellishers has a lot in common with digital color presses, although there are also differences that estimates need to cater for.

“I think that’s the key point here,” McMurtrie said. “Many of these processes are variations on more traditional activities. From a Tharstern perspective, we would build a machine for the basic print and add further variants for the different finishes required and maybe cater for two, three or four passes.

“Adding varnishes and manipulations of percentage coverage is bread and butter to most MIS solutions. The multiple pass method can be catered for by creating different configurations of machines. However, it is fair to say that it’s manipulation of existing functionality, as opposed to a specifically-engineered solution that can automatically handle this without having to create multiple machines. 

“We have developed specific functionality for this in our new Tharstern Cloud MIS, making it even easier to quote by just specifying the raised effect requirement as part of the product specification, and the MIS knows to extend the production time to increase the number of hits, in order to create raised effects or embossing type finishes.”

Costing Other Digital Processes

Inkjet systems aren’t the only digital embellishment process in use. More and more digital toner presses offer embellishment options as a fifth color, while printing an opaque white base layer over a metallized substrate can give spectacular results at a cost. There’s the long-established but limited foil-over-toner method, which requires little more than a heater and foil applicator, and the more recent foil-over-laminate methods (sometimes called sleeking), which give foil effects over full-color print using mildly modified thermal film laminators. 

Each have their own costings and consumables as well as capital equipment, though none are as complex or expensive as the dedicated inkjets. On the other hand, the inkjets and other digital presses have their own digital front ends, which gives the benefits of predicting actual costings in advance, which can be fed to both estimating and costing systems ranging from simple spreadsheets through to full MIS/ERP systems. 

An early sign of mainstreaming?

In the early days of digital embellishments, quoting strategies were mainly aligned to traditional analog pricing. Frequently, users would keep the fact that their process was digital a secret, charging for screens and dies, simply pocketing the difference. This strategy was a successful first mover advantage in the space, taking full advantage that the market was not yet educated on these new technologies to charge the same for digital as analog. 

However, with the evolution of the various OEM players in the space, an increase in agency awareness, and a consistent marketing effort from the users, a new pricing matrix has organically evolved for digitally embellished work. 

While the resale market pricing of digital embellishments has lowered compared to traditional analog prices in the past years, users are reporting increased market demand from the brand side, an increased familiarity with the technical functionality, and increased volumes for their digital embellishment capabilities.  

Perhaps this is a sign that digital embellishment is finally going mainstream. What do you think?