Print Design TipsTips and Information About Printing

Any consideration of color is difficult to convey with mere words because color is ephemeral and there are several different forms. There are three color forms which designers consider the most important and it is useful for you, wither as someone looking at designing material for yourself or when working with a designer, to understand what is happening here.
Visual Color

Visual color is what you are seeing – your own perception of color in your brain given a certain situation. The color we see may depend upon lighting or the specific context which is applied and we then experience. Visual color is a form of the physical color, the environment and how our brains work.

Physical Color

This is the “actual” color in fact – perhaps what a physicist would term “color”. It is determined by the reflective properties of the material involved as all colors are derived from the reflected light which shines upon it. If all color was reflected from the object it would appear as white – a color is formed by some wavelengths of white light not being reflected but being absorbed by the object, and the color which results is made up of the components of the white light which are not absorbed but are reflected.

Conceptual Color

This is an abstract concept of color – it what we use when we describe a color as opposed perceiving it or having a physical sample. Examples of conceptual color may be when we use a color word, e.g. blue, or a description, e.g. dark green or even a specific color classification, e.g. the # value for a color from the Pantone system.

There are three ways of color reproduction in printing:

spot color printing;
process printing; and
digital printing.

Pantone developed spot-color printing which allocated a unique number to different colors and varying shades. Different shades and colors can be achieved by mixing colors according to a set formula using the Pantone color charts.

You can also use color swatches which will allow you to see the color being used, and many graphic programs will seek to render the colors using the Pantone scheme (be careful though as what you see on the PC or Mac screen is unlikely to be a true rendition of what you will get on the finished product – computer screens cannot represent colors in a completely true fashion). The beauty of the Pantone scheme is that once you have selected the color from a swatch, you are guaranteed that that will be the color rendered in the finished product.

Process printing uses a four color system – CMYK. CMYK uses the the three primary colors and black to create all the other colors and it stands for, Cyan – Magenta – Yellow – BlacK (K stands for black to differentiate it from blue). The printed colors are produced using a dot matrix using the CYMK colors, which when viewed as a whole, gives the different shading and colors. This is a visual trick because the eye does not see all the tiny, different colored just a completed effect. Again, if you use this system you will probably select a color from a swatch and again, this will be the exact color you get on the finished product.

Digital printing uses a 6-color system; CYMK plus light cyan and light magenta, however there is no standardized color system as with spot color and process printing. This is important to you as the customer because no two machines will produce an identical color rendition. There will be variation in shading, color, tone and hue – even the same machine will be incapable of delivering uniform color results over time because things such as temperature and humidity affect the toner which is used to print the content. There are workarounds on this, such as printing off several swatches from a digital printer and selecting the colors which best match your requirements for a print run on that day – time consuming and not 100% satisfactory.

Color impacts us in various ways – it is not only that we associate color with certain feelings or sensations, but we also associate the same colors we encounter in different ways depending on the personal situation of the viewer as well as the way in which the color is presented to the viewer.

Here’s a simple test for you to do right now – think of “cold ice” and think of a color to represent this.

Chances are you thought of a shade of blue.

Now the reverse, think of high excitement and euphoria – a real adrenaline rush – and now think of the color to represent it.

Chances are you imagined a red or bright orange color.

We have in-built into our psyches a whole spectrum of colors which are automatically assigned to certain feelings and sensations by our brains.  Ice is blue; the sun is red/orange and the sensations of hot becomes the color red and for cold it is blue – which is how we mark out tap faucets.

Think about the color red.

If you work in finance and accounting, what does the color “red” immediately bring to mind?

Losses – costs – a negative balance?  Something to be avoided.

If you are an engineer, the color “red” will mean danger or heat.

For a medical professional “red” will mean oxygenated – a good thing.

Now consider the color, “green” – for a doctor or nurse, green represents “infection” but for a motorist it means “go”.

Yellow means “substantial” or “highlighted” to a finance professional but to a medical practitioner it will mean “jaundice” and to an engineer or car driver, it will mean “caution”.

“Blue” means poison to chemists, biologists and medical personnel but to a corporate viewer it is likely to evoke stability and reliability.

Color impacts us in numerous ways which we as designers and you as a customer looking for marketing collateral which will sell, must recognize and become attuned to – it is unlikely that a brochure making heavy use of “yellow” and “green” will positively impact on an audience of medical personnel for instance – it will evoke feelings associated with jaundice and infection – hardly feelings to hope for in a reader you are trying to sell a luxury holiday to!