Cold foils look hot
By Canadian Packaging Staff
Design & Innovation Bottling cold foil diffractive foils holographic foils Kurz Group Luxoro Tipografia ValdostanaThe application of cold foils to packaging creates an artistic performance of light.
Fürth, Germany—Cold foils from Kurz Group make a glittering appearance in the new design box of the Italian printing and publishing house Tipografia Valdostana.
The Kurz Group is a global leader in hot stamping and coating technology, developing and manufacturing decorative and functional layers applied to carrier foils for a large variety of applications.
The range includes metallized, pigmented and holographic stamping foils for packaging or print products, surface finishes for electronic devices or automotive parts, protective and decorative lacquers for furniture or household appliances, authenticity features for brand name items, metallic applications for textiles, and different types of coatings for many other applications.
As in the previous year, the Tipografia Valdostana printing shop will be presenting its customers with a new and comprehensive collection of cold foil applications.
The new box contains sample packaging, foil-finished notepads as well as brochures with color tables, application tips and numerous examples of sophisticated cold foil designs. The collection is supplemented by striking compositions, including holographic designs that Luxoro, the Italian agency of Kurz, utilized for an ad campaign.
In this application, card stock was first partially covered with silver-colored diffractive cold foil from Kurz’s Light Line product range. This was then overprinted with spectral colors of different transparencies.
The diffractive foils cause a refraction that creates constantly changing light reflections and glittering prismatic colors. Due to the different transparencies of the overprinted inks, these holographic effects vary in intensity. The combination of spectral colored inks and holographic cold foil results in a fascinating interplay of static and dynamic color effects.
This demonstrates a particular strength of cold foil finishing. Because the color printing step can be combined with metallic and holographic designs in a multitude of ways, this finishing technique offers a tremendous amount of creative freedom.
A further example of the special effects that can be achieved using holographic cold foil is the chess game motif (see image above).
One of the color-printed glass chess pieces has been underlaid with cold foil. The holographic design of this Light Line Laser foil produces a large-area rainbow color play. This creates for the viewer the illusion of a light refraction caused by actual glass.
With 4,200 employees in eleven production plants in Europe, Asia and the U.S., 23 international subsidiaries and a global network of agencies and sales offices, the KURZ Group manufactures and sells a comprehensive range of products for surface finishing, decoration, marking and counterfeit protection, rounded off by an extensive range of stamping machines and stamping tools.
KURZ also continuously invests in new technologies, and is developing innovative solutions for printed electronics and related applications, such as RFID (radio-frequency identification), organic photovoltaics and touchscreens.
To learn more about the exciting graphic design possibilities that holographic and metallized foils offer, you can request sample applications from Kurz. For full details on the cold foil transfer technology visit www.coldfoils.com.
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