Hexachrome Printing

[balou]

As a designer, do I need to do anything special to design for Hexachrome Printing? I'm doing some package designs in Illustrator and the sales rep for the printer asked me if I can handle Hexachrome printing as they may offer that as an option instead of CMYK plus spot colors. I said I'd check into it!! Yikes! I'm just starting to investigate this and wondered if anyone had some tips on this.

Is it strictly a prepress conversion or do I need to do something to the color assignments when I'm designing the graphics?

Thanks.

[Silence04]

hmm.. i've never really tried that before. but from all of the Hex Prints i've seen, it looks like it would be something they might handle/sep out on their end...
but i'm sure someone on here knows more about it than i do...

also, is this a label printing company? if so, who are they?
i'd like to try some Hex printing on some of our packaging.

[balou]

It's a carton printer in Minneapolis. They do a lot of food carton printing. I've got a couple of pages of Google search to read through yet.

One of the big label printers up here is Lofton Label. I'm not positive but I would assume they can do hex printing.

[rockem]

Are you getting it done at Southwestern Graphic Systems??

[balou]

They do the prepress.

Edit: I think that's the name of the company anyways - I'm checking.

Edit 2: It's Southern Graphics that does their prepress. Close!

I'm not sharing the printer name.

[rockem]

They do the prepress.

Edit: I think that's the name of the company anyways - I'm checking.

Edit 2: It's Southern Graphics that does their prepress. Close!

I'm not sharing the printer name.

Yah I know that place south southwestern couldnt remember, they do alot of prepress work for target food, alot of packaging design prepress

[balou]

I may give them a call and try to set up a meeting to educate me a bit.

I know the prepress folks would probably like more designers to do this - figure it out before the designing starts!

[rockem]

They probably have something about specs right on the internet or their intranet

[balou]

Good idea - I'll check it out. Thanks.

[Just Satch]

I'm not sharing the printer name.

Can we still try to guess?

not that I am an expert in the carton printing in Minneapolis, but I have nothing else to do - until my boss drops another hot job on me.

[balou]

PM me your guess Satchel if you really want. It's just they are good supplier of business for me and I don't want to comprimise my professional relationship with them.

[Just Satch]

PM me your guess Satchel if you really want. It's just they are good supplier of business for me and I don't want to comprimise my professional relationship with them.

I've moved passed it - I am like that, I think I have A.D.D. but thanks for the offer!

[paulkaye]

Balou,

Please help me! I have spent all day looking for a place in Minnesota that prints cartons and I stumbled upon this post after Googling "carton printing minnesota"! I saw you are not keen to share the name of your printer publicly and you are not allowing email messages so I'm really stuck! I am on the other side of the world and am having real difficulty. I would be really grateful if you could message me the name of the printer so I can continue with this project!

Many thanks in advance,

Paul Kaye

[printmonger]

balou,
This is a very good article describing the Hexachrome print process from Pantone [Hexachrome Print Process (http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idArticle=799&idSubArea=0&idArea=6)].

Also, the article "intro to Hexachrome - Six Color Basics (http://www.pantone.com/products/products.asp?idArticle=473&idArea=6&idSubArea=0)" describes why package designers/printers are in wide use of Hexachrome.

Additionally, HexWare does support Adobe CS, but it's a chunk of change at $700+. (http://froogle.google.com/froogle?q=colorsuite&hl=en&btnG=Search+Froogle&lmode=online&scoring=p) I will say the output is absolutely amazing!

L8'r

[balou]

Excellent! Thanks printmonger!