For many years, single-colour manual silk screen printing or pad printing were the only available ways of adding solid-colour graphics and text to a surface. The process was slow and required a lot of setup time to achieve acceptable results. Creativity and corporate identity requirements were limited, and although several colours could be printed, drying time between colours was needed, and the target piece needed to be precisely aligned in a jig to ensure that the additional colours were printed in the correct place.
For the majority of applications, screen printing was adequate for added legends to front panels and other flat surfaces to indicate the functionality of various switches and controls. Screen and pad printing still have their place for relatively simple applications, but the development of UV-curing digital printing allows industrial designers to create graphics on curved and flat plastic and metal surfaces as if they were in a printed document.
Read the full article in DPA's March 2026 issue