PRINTING AND FINISHING
DIGITAL MEDIA COMPOSITION I
Louis Conradie and his team approved Madison Christy's "Teacher's Pet" cider label design. The label design was sent to the Federal Alcohol Tobacco Tax and Trade Bureau (TTB) and approved. Due to the move to online instruction and the closure of the Appalachian State University campus, we were not able to produce and print the labels during Spring 2020. However, I worked with Tom Reeves, GCM Practitioner-in-Residence, who printed and produced the cider label using the Comco Cadet 4-color flexographic printer at Katherine Harper Hall during the Fall of 2020. We sourced the substrate for the cider label from Avery Dennison, who generously donated a roll of the speckled cream material that we had selected from their Wine & Spirits swatchbook. Before printing, I worked with Madison to choose 4 spot Pantone spot colors, add rounded corners for the die-cut, and resize the label to 4.25" x 6.5" so that we could fit 2-up on the roll.
Louis Conradie also approved Amanda Gaspard's The Scholar label designs. The Phoenix Challenge team printed the wine labels during Spring 2021. In addition to Amanda, the team members, Megan Pritcher, Madelyn Davis, Oliver Webb, and Jennifer Pantoja-Paredes, were led by advisor Tom Reeves. I served as the design advisor. There were 4 separate labels for various wine products, so we selected 4 Pantone spot colors along with black. Each label was printed with black plus a spot color. I selected the Fasson 60 # Frozen Orion Diamond substrate from the Avery Dennison swatchbook for the labels with a white background. The substrate has a pearlescent coating which worked well for the product. Avery Dennision donated the stock to us again, which we were very thankful for. We also used a bright white MACTAC substrate for the labels with a black background. This material had been previously donated to the GCM program. The team placed second in the National Phoenix Challenge Flexography competition.
In both press runs, we wore masks due to COVID-19 protocols. The video clips show the substrate swatchbook from Avery Dennison, how the die-cut was placed onto the press for the cider labels, as well as parts of the spot color print processes for The Scholar labels. They were all printed at Harper Hall at Appalachian State University.
Below, Madison Christy holds up the finished cider label. It won Best of in the Flexography category in the Printing Industries of the Carolinas (PICA) competition. Pictured are the final products after printing and labeling. The labels were placed onto the wine bottles by Ivory Tower and Grandfather Vineyards.
