What are Shells?

Shells can be a great option depending on your company needs!

In the printing industry, when you hear the word “shell” in reference to
“printing a shell” or “imprints on shells”, the word shell means any printed
item that has pre-printed images or text on the paper to LATER be imprinted
with information that is considered to be variable data.

For example, a company may print items such as logos, the company name, tag lines, license
numbers on an item, since these items rarely or infrequently change. The
pre-printed paper would then be held on to for future printing of variable
data such as employee names, titles, phone numbers, etc. This data would be
referred to as “imprints” on the shells and is meant to give the client more options
and fluidity in what they want to print later on. The shell is literally run
through the digital press again where the imprint art is applied.
One of the many benefits of having shells printed is to keep consistency on
the company logo (particularly with color), since these shells are printed all at
one time. The other primary benefit would be to keep printing cost down, particularly
if the logo is four color printing and the imprint art is all black. This
would allow for one run for the logo and then many additional runs which
would only be in black.