Open Your Eyes To Screen Printing Color Opportunities
We creative types have all been there. You’re super excited to start designing the most beautiful wine label the world has ever. seen.
And then you feel it’s eyes on you, your blank canvas in the form of a bare glass bottle.
You’ve also made the savvy choice to go with screen printing but realize you’re working within a certain number of spot colors. Genius printing decision but is all this making you feel design or color inhibited?
Fear not, you already have your solution- and it’s in that inspiring glass bottle staring back at you.
The Glass
We creative types have all been there. You’re super excited to start designing the most beautiful wine label the world has ever. seen.
And then you feel it’s eyes on you, your blank canvas in the form of a bare glass bottle.
You’ve also made the savvy choice to go with screen printing but realize you’re working within a certain number of spot colors. Genius printing decision but is all this making you feel design or color inhibited?
Fear not, you already have your solution- and it’s in that inspiring glass bottle staring back at you.
Antique Green
Dead Leaf Green
The Wine
Red, white, even orange, we love it. Wine is color . It comes in so many of them it opens up countless color opportunities. It’s the hue created from the wine inside the bottle that can affect your design in a bunch of cool ways. Try screen printing a halftone of 50% cream colored paint on top of a Rosé and you have a lovely warm peach tone. Reduce the paint down to 25% cream and the Rosé shows through more intensely, giving you an even darker nectarine-like hue. You’ve gained two new colors using just one spot color and gradient halftones. Nice work!
A dark Cabernet inside an Antique Green glass bottle looks dark and rich, nearly black. Use this dramatic black bottle for countless options: create your design with paints from the pastel palette, or even a glow paint, and they will jump off this dark bottle. Use the black as a backdrop for halftones, allowing more or less glass to show itself through the paint.
Why not halftone a light blue color onto this black surface? It will reveal increasingly darker hues of blue as the amount of paint over the bottle decreases and reveals more glass. In doing this you’ve created several colors using only one spot color blue.
Same thing for black and white or gray-scale design. Go for it! Half toning a design over the bottle, using white at 0% thru to 100% will give you the gradients you’re after.
Rose with Cream Halftones
Antique Green Glass with Blue Halftones
Antique Green Glass with GreyScale Halftones
The Coating
Now let’s imagine we want to take that Antique Green bottle and give it a cold, après ski look. Also, technically known as a frosted or etched look. No problem! Utilizing a color coating, we can make the bottle frosty, and beyond.
Coatings range from the semi-transparent frosted look all the way up to dark moody colors, like opaque slate and metallic pewter. Lightly coated bottles will allow the product or glass to show through, creating unique colors like beach glass. Now that we’re all excited about coatings, let’s also be mindful of the color contrast of the bottle / the wine with our overprinted screen print design. Enter The Window.
The Window
A window is created by developing design elements intended to be “knocked out” from the coating, creating a window to the bottle color underneath. For example, our frosty, après ski bottle could have a window, say of a skier, and where the glass shows through would just be a darker version of where the frost is. Almost like the frost has been wiped off in the shape of a skier. The bottle could then be overprinted with blue, yellow or any other spot color(s).
The contrast of a window against the frost can have a subtle impact, but why not try a bolder version and design for a Chardonnay in a clear bottle? Have it lightly coated with a pink color and incorporate a window into the design. Maybe in a pineapple shape? The mix of pink and the gold colored wine will make the bottle appear peachy – except where the pineapple window is. Because there it looks golden yellow, like the wine.
Just like that, you’ve introduced an additional peach color without using up your spot colors-and a fruity and delicious tropical theme is born!
Simply put, use one or all of these ways to allow the glass or wine color to show through your next screen-printed design.
And congratulations, you have just won the staring contest!
Frosted look bottle with skier shaped window
Chardonnay with a light coating of pink and a pineapple window
~Steve Pelkey