Embellishment - Transform your printing with digital varnish technology

Create sensory experiences with your text. You won't regret it.

'Haptic technology' lets you simulate touch in a digital environment, and today's most successful commercial printers are already enhancing their services by using the technology to offer a more appealing and creative experience. With MGI's groundbreaking new take on haptic, 'digital varnish technology', this more tactile approach to potential customers makes complete commercial sense.

Countless print providers nowadays – both offset and digital – offer "just printing" as a standard service. But the visionary players in the market are looking to diversify and enhance their product by creating a new, more appealing printing process. It has always been possible to create special effects such as spot gloss, three-dimensional printing and a metallic, shiny look. With conventional production methods, however, this was often inefficient and time-consuming – ruling it out as a service, especially for short-run jobs subject to tight deadlines. Now, with new digital varnish technology from renowned French company and strategic partner MGI, Konica Minolta is revolutionising the industry for providers wishing to offer both direct customers and end-users something very special indeed (and maximise their profits while doing so).

The new technology

The new technology lets you spot coat prints, highlight defined areas and add 3D effects for your customers – creating a completely different, tactile experience and vivid print product that's sure to make your company's name and reputation stand out from the run-of-the-mill printing crowd. MGI digital technology turns printed jobs into spectacular and irresistible products that will grab and hold your customers' attention – and that of their customers in turn.

Digital varnish technology is perfectly suited to a wide range of different applications – from books to exclusive business cards, high-end invitations, packaging, POS materials and more. It offers an unrivalled set of features including a full-page scanner, high productivity with single-pass printing, ease of use and more, making the whole commercial experience a more enjoyable one for your immediate customers. (And one they will be prepared to pay over-the-odds for.)

The printing market is evolving at speed. There is no longer much profit to be made from "me-too products". That's why the visionary players in the market are currently investing in digital varnish technology, a new print embellishment technique that is unleashing new levels of creativity, differentiating products and enabling customers to offer a more attractive and memorable product – and making the printing process profitable for all involved.

MGI JETVARNISH 3D TECHNOLOGY helps you attract new prospects and realise lucrative market opportunities by providing customers with ultra-precise spot coatings, letting you handle digital or offset originals in long or short runs, and even varying the thickness of your coatings for attractive prints with tangible depth to increase communications impact. This new and exciting technology is interesting for any print provider operating toner, offset or print systems, and lets the user add a creative touch to a wide range of applications.

What exactly are print embellishment techniques – and how will they benefit my company?

Print may be just ink on paper, a product or label, but embellishment transforms it into an experience with a sensory haptic– i.e. tactile – edge over the competition. When customers 'feel' raised wording on packaging, they are far more likely to touch it, and even more likely to buy it. Embellishments can be added inline on select digital production presses, and offline using dedicated print enhancement solutions.

Print embellishment – a finishing touch you, your customers and their customers will all feel good about

Against this backdrop, print providers and marketers are increasingly looking to add these spectacular effects to differentiate their products from other brands and add 'touchable' value to the printed piece. Commoditisation processes also affect many products, and embellishments help any product not only stand out and differentiate, but also fight price erosion. In the past, embellishments tended only to be found in premium products; today, the effects are turning up in personal and hair care, food and confectionery, cosmetics products and a host of other industries.

Tactile Sensations

Touching a product has been found to increase attitudes and purchase intentions towards the product and to increase the confidence in the evaluation of these products, say Joann Peck & Jennifer Wiggins.

"Tactile elements of packaging contribute to the overall brand image"

Taking this into consideration, new print technologies are being introduced that provide tactile effects, which encourages consumers to touch.
Some evidence suggests that tactile elements of product packaging can even contribute to the overall brand image of a product. According to recent research, it is evident that the longer individuals focus on an item, the more likely they are to choose that item and give it a higher liking rating. If products attract visual attention, consumers are more likely to touch as well; and if they touch them, they are even more likely to purchase them.

"Distinctive packaging used to attract the customer's attention"

Given today's variety of products in retail stores, brand owners need to make sure that their products stand out against competing goods. Consequently, packaging has to first attract the customer's attention. According to Joann Peck and Jennifer Wiggins a product package that is interesting to touch may increase sales of the product even if the opportunity to touch does not provide additional product attribute information.

(Source: Joann Peck & Jennifer Wiggins; It Just Feels Good: Customers' Affective Response to Touch and Its Influence on Persuation; Aradhna Krishna, Luca Cian, Nilüfer Z. Aydınoglu ; "Sensory Aspects of package design"; 2017)

Once a customer physically experiences and touches effects such as raised spot UV coatings, it would seem, they are immediately sold on it. And that's good news for everyone.

Tactile sensations increase impulse purchases

Another survey, "The Effect of Mere Touch on Perceived Ownership", carried out by Peck and Suzanne B. Shu in 2013, showed that vision and touch increased psychological ownership and valuation over vision alone by 22% and 24% respectively. A 2017 study, meanwhile, "Sensory Aspect of Package Design", by Aradhna Krishna, Luca Cian and Nilüfer Z. Aydinoglu, found that foil-enhanced packaging increased the rate of attraction by up to 2.5 times.

The knock-on benefits of print embellishment techniques to you as a print service provider

The new embellishment techniques and digital varnish technologies, such as spot coating digital prints, highlighting defined areas and adding 3D effects, also let PSPs take their creativity to a new level – and subsequently charge a premium for doing so. Add 3-dimensional varnish and foil to a printed piece, and you turn a standard print into a premium product.

Print customers appreciate the innovative approach for this, moreover, and will willingly pay extra for it. The 2016 study "Beyond CMYK: The Use of Special Effects in Digital Printing, Keypoint Intelligence", asked print service providers the question: "Compared with digital CMYK, only printing, how much of a premium or percentage increase can you charge for print enhancement?" European print buyers indicated they were willing to pay a premium of up to 89% over CMYK alone for digital print enhancements. Print buyers said they would accept the highest premiums, meanwhile, for the textured (up by 89%), foiled (82%), and metallic effects (51%) that can be created using the technology. Speciality colours (28%), foils (28%), and textured finishes (27%) showed the highest percentages of respondents stating that they charged premiums of 50% or higher.

From grabbing attention at the POS to charging premium rates to the companies behind the marketing of products, therefore, embellishment is a win-win development for the print industry.

MGI has made print embellishment more affordable for all since entering the industry, and not just high-end jobs. The MGI JETvarnish 3D series offers dynamic enrichment of digital and offset, printed output via unique inkjet applications of dimensional varnish and foil textures. Print was used in appealing and eye-catching applications such as interior design, product catalogues and brochures in the tourism and travel sector, menu cards and daily offers in gastronomy, luxury boxes in consumer goods, mailshots and advertisements in marketing campaigns, and many other sectors.

So if you want to be at the cutting edge in the print industry, you need digital varnish technology. And where does it go next, you may well be wondering? Which of our senses will technology conquer next? Will new printing methods somehow recreate the sound of waves gently lapping against the shore in a tourism brochure, perhaps, or the smell of a delicious meal on a menu? Sounds impossible, sure – but that's what they used to say about tactile printing..

Do you think you might want to talk to one of our experts about how MGI's digital varnish technology could make your company more profitable?

MGI offers a wide range of varnishing options that will give you all the benefits of embellishment overnight and increase your profit margins at a stroke. So if you want to find out more about investing in the future of printing with our revolutionary embellishment techniques – and maybe test-drive some of our hardware while you're about it – just click on Contact Us, and we'll be in touch directly!

Mix creativity with functionality and profitability