PARTY PACK ITEMS & MANUFCATURING
At children's parties, guests are often give goody bags, containing themed gifts to take home.
Many of these are products that with Graphic Design can be easily made to match a theme.
Sticker Design
Stickers are often given in these goody bags, as children can used them to decorate the bag and colouring book. You need to understand the manufacturing techniques involved with stickers.
Stickers are printed using FLEXOGRAPHY.
They are printed onto a self adhesive (sticky) back paper, with a Liner paper on the back, to be pealed away when the sticker is going to be used.
They are cut using DIE CUTTING. The type of cut made is a KISS CUT, as the metal die blades are designed to pass through the top sticky backed paper layer, but they don’t cut the bottom liner layer.
TASK 1: STICKERS
You have been asked to design a sheet of stickers to be contained in a children’s activity pack based on the theme Under-the-Sea.
Explain why Design A below has been approved by your client and Design B rejected, because of the cost implications of manufacture.
Balloon Design
Balloons are a very common item found at children’s parties and in goody bags.
They are an ENVIRONMENTALLY FRIENDLY PRODUCT, as they are made from natural latex (found in rubber trees) and is 100% biodegradable (rots away) in about 6months. They can also be printed with biodegradable inks.
Balloons are manufactured in many shapes by a process called DIP MOULDING. A shaped MOULD is dipped into the liquid latex, and then oven dried. The balloon is then removed from the mould.
The important thing that you need to know, is how they are printed onto.
Balloons are printed using SCREEN PRINTING. The balloons are inflated by 70%, then they pass through the screen printing process, then deflated, and then passed through an industrial tumbling drier, to make the balloons return to their uninflated appearance (before they were blown up for printing)
PRINTED BALLOONS are MUCH MORE EXPENSIVE than standard, unprinted latex balloons, which are reasonably cheap.
This is because:
There are many more steps in their manufacture
Printing on them requires specialist machinery to inflate them & then hold them still for printing
They take longer to manufacture
A special stencil must be made for your design to go into the screen printing frame
TASK: Balloon Design
1. What is the printing method used for printing balloons?
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2. Why are balloons often described as an environmentally friendly party decoration?
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3. Describe both the advantages and disadvantages of using personalised printed balloons for a child’s party, instead of using shop bought plain balloons.
