4-color process printing can be full of curve-balls. If you’ve ever printed a photo from your digital camera, you know that what you see on the screen and what ends up in your hands can vary quite a bit. It’s the same on the professional end. We can calibrate our monitors, explain to the client that the final piece won’t look exactly like our toner-based laser prints, and even go over the color-correct proofs from our printer, but in the end, all of our colors in processed printing are combinations of Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black.
Those four colors can cover a good range, but there are weak points that either lie between the four or completely out of the gamut. You want a vibrant green or a juicy orange? Forget about it! You may as well be asking for a neon yellow, reflective gold or “shiny.”
What if you have a corporate color–one that designers and focus groups have whittled down to just the right shade–and it has to be exactly right for the newest batch of 50,000 company business cards?
The solution lies in spot colors. Spot colors are a pure, one-color ink, that does not vary (though you can get it in percentage tints). They don’t necessarily play nice with others, but can work well enough alongside. If you’ve ever heard of “Pantone Colors”, that’s what this is all about. You can get a great range of lush colors that encompass even neons and metallics, as well as spots of high-gloss (or no gloss) varnish. They give print-jobs a crispness that processed colors often cannot.
Most print jobs are 4-color these days and print jobs are identified by the number of inks they use on the front and back of the paper. A one sided flyer would be 4/0 (four inks on the front–zero on the back). An additional spot color would make that 5/0, which does add to the cost of the piece, but will hopefully bring some more zing for your dollars. On the saving money side, sometimes a job can be run as 2/0, with your favorite spot and black making up the front. This is common with business cards and stationary.
So the next time you’ve got a print job and you want to give it that little extra something, ask your account exec or designer if they have any catchy ways to incorporate a spot color or varnish into the piece. Not only will you end up with a little something extra, but your colors will be Spot On. - j
