What is prepress in label printing?

When having labels manufactured, a word you may hear is 'prepress'. This is a term used to describe the processes and procedures that occur between the delivery of your brief/requirements and the printing of your labels. It involves collaboration between our graphic artwork team and our print machinists to ensure your labels are produced to a high standard and to your specifications. As a customer, it's a side of your labels you often won't see much of other than an artwork proof and top quality end result, so we thought we'd demystify it for you!

What Does Prepress Mean For Me?

Although you may not see much of this process, the results it has are far reaching:

• It ensures that quality and consistency are built into our processes, which produces a great result for you.
• Printing problems can be prevented (such as unreadable barcodes or text, banding, flaws in artwork, etc), streamlining and simplifying your experience working with us.
• Different label manufacturing machinery requires different approaches - Our team understands the intricacies of this, and can optimise your label artwork to ensure it will be printed the way you envision.
• Your artwork proof allows you to see to a high degree of accuracy what the final result will look like, allowing you to make adjustments or provide feedback prior to printing.

Why Is Prepress Required?

Label manufacturing is more complex than you might imagine - It's not just as simple as hitting 'print', and watching a roll of labels materialise! The machinery we use is highly technical, and achieving a top-quality result requires specialist knowledge. The prepress process is critical as it ensures your label artwork is prepared to meet the tolerances, limitations, and specifications of the label manufacturing machinery it is destined to be printed on.

What Is The Customer's Role in Prepress?

As a customer, you have an important role to play in prepress - After all, our design and print teams are working to achieve your vision, so it's vital that your expectations are clearly set. 

Prior to beginning prepress we will work with you to put together a picture of what these expectations (and your labels themselves!) look like, including:

• What conditions will your labels be exposed to? This informs the material your labels will be printed on.
• Whether your labels require a varnish coating or laminate for protection or embellishment.  
• What are your colour expectations? Is an exact colour match required?  Do you have a design guide we need to follow?
• Do you have any existing artwork graphics?
• Plus, asking any other questions that establish a clear outline of what your labels look like, what they will be required to do, and what your desired end result is.

What Does The Prepress Process Look Like?

Our graphic designers will take your brief and/or supplied images, and turn them into a print-ready artwork. This involves stipulating colour targets and process controls that will be used by the label printer, reorienting barcodes, and reformatting text as required to transform your concept into a print-ready artwork file. At this stage of the process, they will produce an artwork proof that must be approved prior to printing.  This is a digital representation of your finished product so the final colours may not match this digital proof, but all other information should be checked and approved.  Finally, in certain circumstances, and for additional cost, prepress can arrange a printed proof of your product so you can evaluate the final colour and image quality prior to printing. 

Once the artwork proof is approved, the printing process will begin.

The collaborative prepress process makes all the difference, bringing together expertise from design and print while keeping you informed to ensure a smooth process and the best outcome for your labels. 

Cohesion Labels is an Australian label manufacturer with a passion for Making Labels Easy. We believe it should be easier for Aussie businesses to do business, and to do our part we've set up our entire operation to make labels easy. By de-risking the process and guaranteeing you get the product you want when you need it, we're the strongest link in your supply chain.

Get in touch with us for a quote - We'd love to see how we could make labelling easy for you!