Spot Colors in the Commercial Printing World

Last article I talked about CMYK printing and what it is all about. Spot colors and how they play their role in the commercial printing world are just as important.

Spot color printing is the practice of using solid PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors to print your brochure, letterhead, or other project. This is also commonly referred to 1, 2 or 3 color printing. For example, if you have a 2 color newsletter, you would have 2 PMS colors that would make up that newsletter. Most of the time it would be black and another color. So in this example the text would be in black ink and whatever images, logos, or other highlights you wanted to use would be in another color.

When using Spot color printing you do save money over CMYK printing, but you do not get the luxury of full color images or photos. You must design your project in just the spot colors of your choice.

Now one could use 4 spot colors in their project, but at that point, 4 color process or CMYK printing can cost the same or not much more. Plus you get the design flexibility that comes along with it over using just 4 PMS colors. Sometimes a brochure can get complex enough that a printer may chose to convert one of the PMS colors in your CMYK brochure into a spot color to gain a more consistency in that particular color. Then your brochure or project turns into a 5 color job, 4 process colors (CMYK) + 1 spot color. Are you confused yet? Don’t worry, that is more advanced and we will talk about it later.

One key point that you should understand is just because your job may only be in 2 colors, it still can look very professional and be very effective. It all depends on the design and choice of paper. These 2 things alone can really make a simple job, look very sophisticated and elegant.