What is Spot UV?
Technically, spot UV is not a printing process but a finishing process. A layer of clear polymer is applied to the stock over selected areas and then cured under a UV light to achieve a glossy seal. As well as creating a unique visual effect, a spot UV coating makes the print interesting to touch, too! You’ll often find people running their fingers over the spot UV elements of a design to feel the embossed, polished texture.
The name ‘spot UV’ comes from the fact that it is applied much like a spot colour and that is why you must be careful when setting up your artwork. Spot colours are premixed inks that cannot be sent to print like normal because the printer will attempt to create that colour using its CMYK inks. Instead, these colours must be applied unmixed and only to the specific areas of the design where the colour is present.
Just like with spot colours, spot UV artwork must signal to the printer that certain elements of the design are not created using the CMYK inks. Our studio team will do a lot of this for you but, in order to let them know what you want, there are a few things you need to do for us first.
How to Create and Submit Your Artwork
You can provide one combined PDF or two separate PDFs – one for your general artwork and another for your spot UV design elements. This approach ensures that our studio team knows exactly what you want to include in the spot UV design.
Setting Up Your Artwork
Like we mentioned earlier, our studio team will take care of the more complicated aspects of sending your artwork to print. First though, you need to make sure that your spot UV elements are perfectly aligned with the rest of your artwork.
1) Create your design as normal.
2) Duplicate your original design and delete any elements you do NOT want Spot UV on.
3) Recolour the remaining elements with a solid fill colour – use the same colour for everything you want Spot UV applied to.
4) Create any additional Spot UV elements that don’t depend on the design beneath (use the same fill colour from before). If the artwork does have all the page together, then they need to be saved in PDF in following order:
a. P1 – Printed Page 1
b. P2 – Printed Page 2
c. P3 – UV to be laid on Page 1
d. P4 – UV to be lad over Page 2 (if it’s double sided)
5) The ordering of the pages is important to make sure it can be proofed online.
Please note, for Foiled jobs, the process will be the same as listed above, but the safety area for the foil is 3mm, while Spot UV can extend to the edge of the design.
Uploading Your Artwork
After buying a product with spot UV on, you need to head to your account area. This is where you upload artwork for all of your orders.
For Spot UV jobs, you have the option to upload separate PDF files for your artwork and Spot UV pages. For example, if you ordered a double-sided flyer with Spot UV on the front and back, you can upload separate files. One file for the front artwork, one file for the back artwork, one file for the front’s Spot UV elements, and one file for the back’s Sport UV elements
You’ll then receive a proof of your order. Your proof will include 3 pages for each printed page with spot UV on; your basic artwork, just your spot UV elements, and the two combined so that you can see if they’re lined up accurately.
Additional Tips:
– For the UV part of your files, set up the artwork as vector with outlined fonts (NOT A JPEG)
– Limit the UV coverage to no more than 25% of the page.
– For foil, ensure there is 3mm clear space from the trim edge to prevent cracking or peeling.
– Text intended for UV or foil should be no smaller than 8pt and use a font that is not overly thin.
– Strokes intended to UV or foil should be no thinner than 1pt.
– To view proofs, download the file and open it in Adobe or Reader. Use the Output Preview to see a breakdown of colours, and to hide UV and see the underlying design (helpful for UV or foil on a dark background).