We strive for a rapid turnaround and superior customer service on all our orders. Lead-time for production runs varies between one and four weeks depending on several factors, including printing machine required, time of year, and run size. Your sales representative can provide you with an approximate lead time once they have gathered the necessary information regarding your project. Please note that lead times are longer for the first-time runs due to the necessity of printing production samples before the actual print run. Custom color ink formulations and special orders can increase lead times.

Yes, we strongly recommend all new clients invest in a production sample before the full print run. A production sample is the best way to ensure satisfaction with the chosen ink colors and art placement and alignment. For one color artwork, a production sample is not always necessary. Your sales representative will advise you regarding this.

Our wide range of printing equipment allows us to print on bottles and jars ranging from 5 ml to 3L depending on the artwork. We can accommodate cylindrical, oval, and square bottles. We can print on spray-coated glass with UV inks and the lids of jars using pad printing.

Our equipment can print up to ten colors. The number of colors printed for any given piece of artwork will depend on the design itself and the chosen bottle size and style. Most customers print their artwork in 1-4 colors. It is unnecessary to use as many colors as you might typically find in a paper label to achieve an impactful design when screen printing. Even one and two-color printed designs can look stunning and offer great visual appeal.

All finished and decorated glass ships out from our production facility in Richmond, California. Once your ware is ready to ship, you have the option of arranging a will-call pick up, or we can book the freight for you. All decorated glass must ship out within five business days of the agreed-upon ship date when the order is first submitted.

4 color process is the term used for printing with Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black, where the combination of these colors blend to make other colors and tones. Each color is printed in a screen tint that is composed of tiny dots at different linear angles. The color separations are transferred to four printing plates, one for each color, and run on a printing press, registering the colors printing over each other. The composite image results in a photo-like print. This process is typically used when printing from a computer printer.

Screen printing with spot colors uses a premixed blend to achieve the desired color using one screen per color rather than four. Every color in the artwork design requires its own individual screen to print. Unlike 4 color process printing, the resulting composite image is consistently the same color regardless of the registration of the screen tints.

More and more brands are moving away from plastic to glass packaging, which is easily recyclable. Screen printed labels are a perfect accompaniment to glass packaging. Moreover, the use of UV light to cure UV labels is energy-efficient and makes them extremely eco-friendly.

Registration is the alignment of one color of the artwork with another color. Multiple colors in the artwork require the colors to line up correctly in relation to one another while printing.

There are degrees of tolerance during the decoration process, i.e., movement. Machine movement means that screens can shift and cause slight variations in print position, making it more challenging to retain tight registration. While it is possible to print tightly registered artwork with our printing equipment, it will print at a slower pace, affecting the print price.

You can design artwork to account for this variation by avoiding precisely placed adjacent colors. Please consult with us directly if you want to determine the registration difficulty for your artwork and options for adjusting it.

Ceramic inks fuse with the glass bottle or jar during the firing process, and screen-printed labels are therefore more durable and not susceptible to the stains, scuffs, and tears you see on paper labels. With the labels already printed on the bottles, you will improve the efficiency of your bottling line. Filling lines can run quicker and will be easier to manage.

The most significant advantage is the branding impact and the appeal of a screen-printed label. The high-quality look engages the consumer and showcases your brand. It also allows you to employ design techniques that you can’t use or would be too expensive with paper labels.

It is essential to assemble a packaging team. At a minimum, this team should consist of a professional and experienced label designer, the decorator, and the bottle supplier. The team will work together to make sure the label to be designed can be decorated on the desired bottle and printed within a predetermined budget.

Before you dive too far into the design process, make sure that your team understands your budget, timeframe, and the bottle choices that you are considering. Collaboration in the early stages can prevent disappointment and lost time/resources later on.

Our in-house Art and Pre Press Department works with the most up-to-date version of Adobe’s Creative Cloud applications. Preferred and acceptable Adobe Illustrator formats: .ai, .svg, .eps, or .pdf. Please package the artwork file with all required fonts or provide artwork with all fonts outlined. Image links will need to be embedded or sent with the artwork file.

Acceptable Adobe Photoshop formats: .psd, .jpg, .eps, or .pdf. If possible, please provide image files with a native resolution of 300 dpi or higher (600 dpi max).

Preferred maximum total file size is 100Mb.

Stroke or lines in artwork should be no thinner than 0.5 pt. This minimum is required to burn the image into the screens for printing. Artwork knockouts or thin lines will be adjusted for printing as needed.

Most fonts are legible at 6 pt. We recommend you print your artwork/text at actual size to determine if it is readable. When using a thin style font, the thinnest parts of the letters should not be less than 0.5pt.

With most bottles, the main printable area is the flat surface or cylindrical part of the bottle’s body, and so it will vary by bottle and jar. For wine bottles, as an example, the artwork should start at least a minimum of 20mm from the bottom of the bottle. Please consult with us for the exact printable areas of your chosen bottle or jar.

The primary focus of our Art and Pre Press Department is to help you prepare your artwork for printing. Our product development team will assess all new artwork, and any changes or modifications required are made by either the original designer and/or our Art Department.

The main differences are durability, color selection, and the curing process.

Ceramic inks fuse with the glass during a lehr firing cycle. They are very durable and are scratch resistant, and water stable. However, some colors, especially very bright colors such as pinks, are challenging to achieve with ceramic inks.

UV inks offer a much broader color pallet and are very vibrant. Instead of passing through a lehr oven, these inks cure using UV light. As a result, they are not as durable as ceramic inks, but their production is more energy efficient.

We offer precious metal gold, silver, and copper inks. These inks offer a high luster and shine and are suitable for premium packages. They can be printed alone or in conjunction with ceramic inks. Because these inks contain actual precious metals, they are more expensive, and there is a surcharge for their use. The price estimate depends on the amount of ink laydown the artwork requires and the current spot pricing for the precious metal ink chosen.

The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is a color system of thousands of numbered swatches. These swatches convey colors by referencing the actual Pantone book listing colors as numbers.

We require you to provide us with PMS colors to communicate the colors you are looking for for your artwork. Once you have selected your specific Pantone colors (i.e., PMS 187 C), please submit them with your artwork as a callout. If you want us to match a previously printed color or item, e.g., an existing paper label or a capsule, you will need to send us the physical sample for a color match process. It is essential to understand that the same color can look slightly different when printed on various substrates, e.g., paper versus antique green glass.

Yes, we can ship you color samples/swatches from our extensive color library to help you select the perfect colors for your artwork. As the same color appears different on different colored glass, we will print the color swatch on your chosen glass color, e.g., antique green, flint, etc.

If you can’t find the perfect color in our library, we can create custom colors and match them to other substrates, e.g., foil capsules. Please note that color matching can be a lengthy process and extend your lead time. A perfect match can not be guaranteed, especially when working with ceramic inks. Stocking fees will apply.