Producing credit cards for American Express and other card-issuing companies brought particular challenges not encountered with other print or digital projects to create cards that have the depth, detail, and richness of color to surpass what is available with conventional CMYK printing.
Every project brought unique complexities of printing spot varnishes, multiple passes of custom inks printed in silkscreen and lithography, all on metallic base inks on plastic. This required a seat-of-the-pants approach to techniques not natively supported in Photoshop. The resulting files that were sent to the manufacturer may include up to 15 color separations with optional plates to assure successful prototyping. Detailed, illustrated printing notes were created for each mechanical file with instructions for each color separation, including ink specifications, and printing order of each separation including optional plates.