Digital printing is quickly becoming a popular choice for printing product labels and stickers. There are plenty of good reasons for this including reduced cost, high-quality, quick turn-around and small batch capabilities.
Digital label printing takes a digital file of your design and prints the image directly on to a selected label material on press. Unlike flexographic printing, all colours and images are produced in one step. Because of the superior printing technology of our printers, colourful product packaging labels are produced beautifully.
If you want your label to help sell your product and speak for your brand, the print quality is key. Colour consistency, image registration and colour vibrancy are all addressed with digital labels. If your label will be used for branding then chances are it’ll be a good fit for digital.
Digital printing allows for a much lower minimum than flexographic printing. If you’ll need 500-25,000 colourful labels per product then there’s a good chance digital labels are a good fit for your product. With short runs you won’t need to hold on to inventory you don’t need.
Variable data printing is a form of digital printing, including on-demand printing, in which elements such as text, graphics and images may be changed from one printed to piece to the next without stopping or slowing down the printing process. Flexo printing requires plates for each unique image and colour so variable printing on a flexographic press is impossible. Digital presses can print consecutive numbers, variable data and almost any other label-to-label difference.
Digital labels do not require a charge for a die to cut the labels and, because there are no plates, you’ll only be paying for one thing– your labels. When your labels are printed on a flexo label press, a new label die (which trims the label into a shape) may be required for unique shapes or sizes. These can cost hundreds of dollars. Flexographic presses also use metal plates, just like regular printing presses, to create the images for each colour of the design. A 6-color label will need six plates.
One of the best features of digital label printing is artwork flexibility. As your product line develops you might want to make updates to your label. Because plates aren’t required with digital, you can easily modify your design and send in revised artwork and get it printed with no additional plate charges. This is great for start up brands or series runs that have several SKUs.
