Hand painted crests and lettering.

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Still celebrating our 50th year in packaging print, finishing and mockups, we thought we’d describe the technique we used to produce raised gold crests for tobacco packaging in the early 70s.

After enlarging or reducing the original image, it was traced onto the substrate and coated with a fine layer of pounce powder. The base was then painted with a mix of yellow ochre and emulsion and the image raised by building it up with 3 or 4 layers of barbola paste before a final layer of Treasure Gold gilding wax paste was painted on the top. Every layer was applied by hand with a fine brush and every coat needed to dry before the next stage was started. The whole process for a standard crest would take about 4 hours although this demonstration sample took 2-3 days. Look closely and you may be able to see the brush marks.

Fortunately our studios now are equipped with the latest technology alongside traditional machinery making the process far less labour intensive. We can produce similar effects by embossing, hot and cold foiling and even digital printing but our craftsmanship and attention to detail remain the same.    

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2

Hand painted crest with treasure gold gilding

Embossing

/ Dagwood Associates/

EMBOSSING is the technique that we use to impress an image onto a label or package. It can provide a tactile, premium finish for your packaging mockups.

We press a metal die into the back of the material to raise the image off the surface. The 3D effect brings emphasis to the area that has been embossed.

We can emboss on its own ( blind emboss ) but most of the time we combine it with print and hot foil to create a premium finish to your logo or image.

We can even micro-emboss to add even finer detail to the packaging project to give textures, micro textures and security features.

Dagwood have specialised in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging for over 50 years. We are ready for your next project: dagwood.co.uk/

detailed embossing and foil blocking

Remember Letraset?

/ Dagwood Associates/

Dagwood are celebrating our 50th year producing packaging print and mockups and are continuing our look back at some of the essential pre digital tools when each letter had to be literally positioned and transferred by hand!

Letraset was the brand name for the original dry-transfer lettering product and was used extensively in our studio during the 70s and early 80s. It consisted of an alphabet of letters screen printed onto a translucent, adhesive film. By carefully rubbing on the front of the sheet with something blunt you could ‘transfer’ the letter onto your chosen surface. Sheets of letters in different typefaces or fonts, sizes and even colours were carefully stored in a special cabinet in the corner of our studio.

Positioning and centring letters and words is now just a couple of clicks of the mouse but in the days of Letraset it involved stressful calculations, working copy out from the centre, accounting how much wider an ‘a’ was than an ‘i’ and hoping you didn’t run out of letters before the end of the project!

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’re ready for your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2

Letraset sheet

Digital Mock-Up Packaging within your budget!

/ Dagwood Associates/

Diminishing Budgets in Packaging Design?

As anyone who works in the packaging design industry knows, project briefs are becoming more demanding while budgets are being reduced.   

We are always being asked to deliver more for less.  But, HOW?

At Dagwood, we have been involved in print, finishing and mock-up packaging for almost half a century now. We started as a small artwork company and quickly grew to become a leader and innovator in this field.   

Our clients are design agencies and brand owners who really want to get a good look and feel of their new designs at a sensible price before entering into production.  

The traditional, hand-crafted production of wet proof mock-up often comes with a premium price but with the budgetary constraints that our clients sometimes face, we can also offer a real value for money alternative by producing high quality digital mock-ups that can break down cost barriers.

Our extensive digital proofing facilities mean we can print onto any chosen stock or the actual substrate you are planning for production, whether metallised board, plain board or cellophane. It doesn’t even have to be Indigo-approved stock and we can even enhance it with embossing and foiling. 

Budget Breaking

A digital mock-up is an inexpensive and fast way to obtain that all-important concept approval or client sign-off without wet proofing.  So, if you want to have a focused discussion that isn’t held up by a lengthy budget approval process and are serious about getting your projects moving along quickly, we can help.

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please call 020 7580 9508, email info@dagwood.co.uk or get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2

alpro printed cartons

Does anyone remember Cow Gum?

/ Dagwood Associates/
Cow gum image

For designers and artworkers of a certain age, the name, branding and distinctive smell of Cow gum will bring back some vivid memories.

Dagwood are celebrating our 50th year producing packaging artwork, print and mock-ups and thought we’d look back and describe some of the tools of the trade when artwork had to be literally cut up, positioned and pasted onto board by hand.

Cow gum was the glue of choice, it came in a distinctive red and white tin and had the consistency of very thick wallpaper paste. Artwork was cut with a scalpel and after an application of the gum with a spreader or a piece of card, pasted into place. Cow gum was ideal for paste-up work because it didn’t damage surfaces and could be peeled or rubbed off reasonably easily if anything needed to be moved. Of course, 50% of Cow gum went where you didn’t want it but that could be removed by rubbing the area with a ball of dried up cow gum that each time built up like a snowball. Once stuck down, however, the only way to get it off would be lighter fuel.

Some of you may have some interesting cow gum stories and some of you may not have heard of it but next time you are sitting at your MAC and ‘cut & paste’ just remember that it wasn’t always that easy!

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2

Perfect shrink sleeves every time!

/ Dagwood Associates/

Ever wondered how we manage to fit our shrink sleeves so professionally over even the trickiest of shapes? Well sleeves are applied by experts in our professional shrink cabinet at Dagwood’s London studio.

Your designs are reverse printed onto a special substrate and if desired, we can then apply satin or matt treatments to the front facing surface.

After carrying out pre-print distortion tests and checking bar-codes, we use a solvent based glue along with our sleeve maker to ensure that the final seams are of a production standard.

The process ensures that we always get consistent results, especially with trickier shapes and higher volumes.

For our clients, shrink sleeves are a clever and cost effective method of mocking up your designs onto cans, aerosols, bottles, tubes, containers and tins for photography, trade samples or market research.

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2

Meantime printed beer bottle label and shrink sleeve can

Does anyone remember the grant enlarger?

/ Dagwood Associates/

Dagwood are celebrating our 50th year producing packaging artwork, print and mock-ups and thought we’d look back at one of the pieces of studio equipment we used in the 70s. 

Grant machines could reduce or enlarge artwork images by projecting them onto a glass plate from which a tracing could be made. Users would stand on a step so they could reach across the entire plate and could then control the enlarging, reducing and focus by turning the handles on the front. 

It was an essential piece of kit in every design studio. We replaced ours in the 80s with a PMT machine (that needed a darkroom) and then in the 90s we moved everything onto Macs.

It is hard to imagine that what was once such a laborious process can now be achieved with just a few clicks of a mouse!  

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2


Grant enlarger

HAPPY 50th Birthday DAGWOOD!

/ Dagwood Associates/

This year, Dagwood is celebrating a half century of high quality packaging development.

Our skilled and experienced team are immensely proud of everything we have achieved since 1969 and incredibly excited about the future.

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2

The Dagwood Team of Packaging Artwork, Print, Finishing and Mockup experts.

Why create a digital packaging mock-up?

/ Dagwood Associates/
Celebrations printed box mockup

Sometimes a product doesn’t feel real until you can hold it in your hands. Wouldn’t it be ideal to have an actual physical prototype of your new packaging, early in the design process and way before commercial printers are involved, so that if something doesn’t look right, tweaks and changes can be made? Makes sense doesn't it?

At Dagwood, our specialist digital print and mockup services will give you exactly that - an accurate representation of how your finished product will look and feel but without breaking the bank. We print on a wide range of substrates: shrink wrap, clear self adhesive, carton board and lots lots more. Our digital printers add orange and green to standard CMYK to give a great match to Pantone colours and also print a fantastic silver and white.

So whether you’re an entrepreneur developing a new concept or a design agency on a tight budget, a digital mock-up will be the most cost effective way of getting your packaging design right before the product hits the shelves.

Dagwood specialise in the printing and creation of low volume, production standard mockup packaging. We’d love to discuss your next project so please get in touch here: https://lnkd.in/epKDHu2