Printing Blue

The printing process requires colours to be achieved through CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black).  It is referred to as a 4-colour printing process and can produce over 16,000 different colour combinations.  Unlike RGB (Red, Green, Blue) which is used for creating images digitally on screen, CMYK colours are subtractive.  This means the colours get darker as you mix them together.

With a focus on the colour Blue this month we are sharing some of the specific challenges of printing Blue.  Many shades of blue from across the Pantone book are relatively easy to achieve, but there are challenges to be overcome at either end of the spectrum.  Reflex Blue and Pantone 072c, which are two quite dark and very vibrant blues are difficult to convert into CMYK as the vibrancy is dulled down.  At the other end of the scale, lighter blues are affected by the paper colour.  For instance, if printing straight onto a corrugated board, the white paper can have a yellow hue which will affect the lighter blues, so they look to have a yellow tint.

Generally, at the onset of a client relationship we would agree colour tolerances to gain approval for how a brand colour appears across different substrates.  It is also possible to print onto a white paper and then mount onto board but this has additional cost implications.  It may be that it is required for a specific campaign but not necessary for all.