Had to repost because I somehow forgot to include the actual text. Sorry 😅
Haven’t posted in a while. Besides working on custom cards I usually can’t share, I spent the last months completely obsessed with figuring out texture.
Of course I know this can already be done in offset with screen printing or anilox rollers, but the whole point for me was achieving it in digital print, with the ability to make short runs or even single cards.
I figured out white underprint, trained an AI model to generate print masks, and tested basically every texture solution I could find. UV print, Scodix, JetVarnish, drip-off, all of it.
Every method had compromises. Usually poor precision, rough texture, or effects that killed the holo. I wanted all of it at once: smooth micro textures, strong holo, and digital flexibility.
What kept bothering me was this: AliExpress is full of cards with insanely accurate textures, so there had to be another way.
Turns out the answer was sitting right next to me the whole time.
The machine I use has 7 color stations and technically it can be reconfigured to print transparent layers instead of one of the extra inks. The problem is that reconfiguring a giant industrial press like that is insanely time consuming and expensive, so nobody really runs it this way permanently because it simply isn’t profitable. From a business perspective, it makes way more sense to just have a separate Scodix station.
To confirm my theory, I designed a masked white underprint to simulate texture.
And… it works.
It still sacrifices some holo effect, but for the first time I got the precision and smoothness I was chasing in fully digital print.
Honestly, this whole thing lived in my head for so long that it started killing my motivation for new projects. Constant FOMO, constantly feeling like I was missing some magical solution.
Now that I finally understand how this stuff actually works, and why some things simply can’t really be done reasonably without absurd costs, I can finally go back to designing without that constant FOMO in the back of my head.
Hopefully I’ll post more often now :)