Plastic card designers and printers Placard is reporting that it is going from strength to strength on the back of a number of innovations it says it has implemented into the printing of its clients work. Utilising a combination of offset and screen printing techniques, the company says it has been able to make good on its increasingly daring design ideas.
Tony Yallop, Placard art director, says "We have presented design possibilities using pearl metallics, fluorescent and white tritones over foils and many more. This approach stems from a strong understanding of print parameters during the design development stage. We are offering print techniques using pearl lustre finishes subtle fluorescent and black quadtones, watermark image metallics and many more. We are seen as design and print innovators in our field. We utilise all the possibilities of offset and screen printing when developing design concepts. We spend alot of time on ink R&D, which give us some exciting print combinations that the card market has not seen before."
According to Yallop, the company puts a strong emphasis on breaking down boundaries it says have been created by others in the field over the years. Plastic card design has been limited by card manufacturers offering a fairly narrow set of production parameters for designers to work within. This has created alot of conservative design in the market. Placard has chosen to explore all print possibilities and present them to the market and to advertising agencies." says Yallop.

Placard says that a big part of its success is its ability to guarantee that its design proposals are truly printable, because every presentation is absolutely colour accurate and has been created with the manufacturing process in mind. This colour calibration extends across its computers and scanning equipment, through to its printing presses.
All artwork is transferred to film in house to ensure optimum control and remove the need for costly adjustments or alterations before going to press. Placard is fully accredited by Visa, MasterCard, American Express and Diners Club, among others, and understands the design parameters for their respective schemes.