All of Bloomin's cardstock is printed on high-quality, digital printers in 4-color process (CMYK). When the quantities and design call for it, these may be offset-printed.
Bloomin employ a proprietary printing system to produce excellent reproduction fidelity while preserving their high germination standards. Maintaining these standards can influence your options when designing for seed paper (please see Art Guidelines). Printing on Bloomin seed paper employs a proprietary inkjetsystem. By "spraying" the ink onto the seed paper, they achieve the highest print quality and preserve their high germination standards. For these same reasons, they require that your custom design has light ink coverage (no large solid areas, background images, etc.)although your art can include full-color graphics, logos, and text. When in doubt, please submit your art for approval or guidance. Often a few little changes can make a big difference.
Second-side inkjet printing: Because of the handmade nature of our seed paper, it is difficult to have perfect registration from front to back. Typically,minor adjustments to the art can make any registration shortcoming less noticeable.
Bloomin operate several vintage letterpress machines that stamp, or deboss, your design into the seed paper. Letterpress can be debossed only, or debossed and printed with up to two colors. This process does not significantly decrease germination rates.Letterpress is a wonderful complement to their colorful and richly-textured seed paper.
In addition to printing cardstock with offset printers, Bloomin can print seed paper using this method as a last option. They have lab-tested paper printed with this method, determining that the heavy pressure of the press crushes many of the seeds andrenders them sterile. They prefer to only produce printed seed paper products thatmeet their high germination standards. Offset-printed seed paper will not grow when planted, but can still communicate your green message if your project is high-volume, fast-turn, or low-budget. Bloominwill always disclose the harmful effects ofoffset printing and let you decide.
