Spot finish – cleverly accentuating individual elements
Finishes add that little something to your products. Spot finish is a particularly elegant solution. This technique only accentuates individual elements or details in your design using, for example, UV coating, relief varnish, hot foil, or silver foil. You should always bear the following in mind when setting up the artwork.
Set up a separate colour swatch
- Colour type: Spot
- Colour mode: 100 % Cyan
Rename the new colour swatch according to your desired imprint process:
- Swatch name for UV coating: coating
- Swatch name for relief varnish: coating
- Swatch name for silver foil: foil
Swatch name for hot foil: foil - Swatch name for blind embossing (letterpress): letterpress
Colour the (possibly duplicated) design elements to be finished with the new colour.
Design element requirements
When setting up your design elements to be finished, please make sure that:
- line width is at least 3 pt (1.06 mm)
- font size is at least 14 pt, with the thinnest line in the type face no smaller than 1 mm
- there is at least 3 pt (1.06 mm) of empty space between the relief varnish elements
- there is at least 3 mm of distance to the final format and to any punched, grooved, and creased lines (no edge bleed)
Before you export the artwork, set all varnish or foil design elements to Overprint. Please also refer to the "Artwork information" section on the product pages in our online shop.
You need help with creating the individual design elements?
Our How to set up spot finish in my artwork files tutorial shows you how to correctly create elements and colour swatches in InDesign using the example of silver foil finished design elements.