Designing for Print
With the proliferation of the Internet it seems as though an entire generation of designers has started their careers designing for the Web. And while we consider ourselves to be a huge fan of the Web, it inevitably means that some designers are not being educated on the technical side of creating printed communications.
Color management is a major challenge facing anyone trying to get what is on a computer screen to actually come off the end of a press. When you flip through the pages of your favorite glossy magazine, the photos you are seeing have been printed using the 4-color process, also known as CMYK. That means that every color on that page has been created using four inks: cyan, magenta, yellow and black.
Computer screens display images using the RGB color space. That means red, green and blue light combine to create the millions of colors your monitor can produce. Herein lies the problem, the disconnect between RGB and CMYK.
Computers are pretty miraculous machines that will convert RGB images to an approximation of CMYK. This is truly misleading when it comes to color management. Although this conversion will give you a slightly more accurate preview of what the printed piece will look like, it will not perfectly emulate your results on press. Some colors will not translate from the screen to print easily, especially when you are dealing with large, even fields of solid color. That’s where our friends at Pantone come in. To learn more about the PANTONE® color matching systems, please visit them at www.pantone.com. Their website is filled with useful tips and tricks to help you achieve the flawless printing you are looking for.
This is just another great reason to make friends with your printer early in the design process. They will be able to look at your design and spot any areas that might give you color matching trouble later on. Printers are a great resource and are more than willing to work as your partner to ensure your creative vision is realized on paper.
PANTONE®and other Pantone, Inc. trademarks are the property of Pantone, Inc.