Foiling
Obviously when the business cards are made professionally, they will be foil blocked. This will give the foiled design a much sharper and better finish. However, in the mean time I will be produced mockups using foil and a laminate machine.
I had many issues with the foiling, and it set me back quite a lot.
Below you can see the stock I wanted to foil onto. It is textured, which unfortunately gave a bad finish to the foil, as the toner ink does not stick to it well, therefore there is less ink for the foil to stick to:
There was only one successful attempt out of 20, which can be seen below. The design was made slightly bigger, as maybe if the details were bigger, the foil would pick up the toner easier:
These attempts at the swing tag look good at a distance, but closer up were nowhere near as sharp as I wanted to achieve:
Although the foil is difficult to see below, it's actually on the paper. With the stock being coated, the toner, and therefore foil, stuck really well.
Further attempts on another uncoated stock proved slightly more promising, but still not perfect:
A third paper stock was tried, this was certainly unsuccessful:
At one stage, I even contemplated photographing the black cards and photoshopping details on. However I really want something to show at Welsh & Jefferies, so this would be the last resort:
A fourth unsuccessful attempt, this stock also being a far too dark green, appearing black in photos:
A selection of all failed attempts can be seen below:
Result!
With an attempt on a fifth stock, I have finally achieved the results I was after. The stock is coated and certainly not rifle green. This is a better compromise for now, as I can Photoshop the stock to look darker, much easier than trying to make foil look sharper.
When it comes to meeting up with James at Welsh & Jefferies again, I will explain my issues, and explain that a compromise on stock will not have to be made when the cards are foil blocked.
Punching
I needed a away of attaching the eyelets to the swing tags, as well as a way of producing a neat hole. I use the below tool to create a hole, but my other tool for squashing the eyelets does not produce a neat result, which I have learnt from a previous project.
Below I attempted to carefully squash the eyelet to a clamp, which did not work as the eyelet got stuck inside the clamp.
The safest way to make the eyelets work was to just glue them in, giving a one sided tag for photographing. Obviously with actual industry production, the eyelets would be clamped better and neater.
Folding
Envelopes were ordered from the internet, pre-cut. They needed folding and assembly, which can be seen below:
