Production: Practical Realisations

Stock choices and print finishes

The initial intensions was to foil onto the paper where the cover image would be, and to then emboss on top of that. This was to mirror the physical feel and recognisable smoothness of when you brush your hand over the Apple logo on a mac. 

The metallic card was a lot more shiny than expected when ordered, however it was important to try it out to see if it could achieve this effect, despite it not having the matte qualities initially hoped for. 

The process started by printing onto basic a4 paper, where the logo was to be cut out and stack onto the card for foiling. However the lines appeared to be too fine for scalping out the design, causing ripping and many inaccuracies. Accordingly, the design itself was printed strait onto the glossy card. Here, it was easier to cut out without ripping the card. Subsequently the design gained the piece to be used for embossing, as well as the marking for the foiling to appear.

A border was also cut out so that measuring the square area could be easier in the finishing process (embossing and foiling areas) - as the card is A4 and the area necessary is demy 16mo (143x111mm)

Embossing: 

The card was placed in water for 1-2 minutes, this caused the edges to curve up and the shiny part started to peel away from the base card. This was an issue but could be solved by wetting the whole sheet rather than the smaller selected area, as the edges would be removed. 

The paper was then placed in between a stack of watercolour paper and rolled with a pin as to dry it for pressing. 

I started by trying to emboss the section with the logo already printed on, to see how easy it would be to do this after the foiling. It proved very difficult to measure up the piece with the design seeing as the square needs excess edges that would be cut off after. This meant the emboss was off centre to the printed design.  

As a result, I conducted a few more experiments onto plain areas of the stock to see how the embossing finish actually looked, and if it could work alone or in another way (e.g. cut out paper after).

The end result was OK. The logo design did not come out as clean as hoped, with the stencil being pretty rough and suseptible to wear and tear. 

Foiling:

The process then turned to foiling, to see if it would work on the selected stock. The toner on the required areas was very light, and despite selecting the card stock on printer settings, this problem couldn't be overcome. The metallic paper turned out to be highly adhesive. The white gloss foil was chosen for the finish, and when attempted to foil (160° for 12 seconds for foiling) the whole area stack. This unsuccessful practical development meant either not foiling or changing the stock choice for the front cover. 

Following on from the unsuccessful outcome with the previous paper stock, I decided to try invert the technique, printing black onto white card, and foiling this area with 'pewter'. This meant that the book could still have an interesting finish as a feature, and may resemble the laptop more for the target audience - this idea of an urban underground scene. 

As such I printed two trials of the front and back as to be safe with the outcome and foiled the cover. 

Unexpectedly the final production had lots of chips and scratches, however this was explained to be unavoidable. I then presented all the options for the cover to a select amount of people asking which one they preferred - the embossed, metallic silver card with black ink, or the final pewter foiled design. It was a unanimous agreement that the pewter foil looked the best, with an idea that this went with the personalised laptop idea, as well as appealing to the aesthetics of an alternative youthful target consumer of the publication. 

The bottom try had a more solid finish, and thus was selected for the back cover page

First attempt not as successful (too many scratches takes away from the logo)

Final outcome; visible logo, and textured aesthetic that actually works well in making the publication stand out

I also wanted to see how the negatives of the foiling would look layered over the original metallic card. This gave a similar effect to what was intended initially, however the fully foiled variation has less shine, making it less like a mirror and more like the intended laptop surface.