design practice: Design Production: Design for Print

CMYK

CMYK
referred to as subjective colour and process colours
To get a pure black you have to add as CMY doesn't give a pure black
Transparant colours
Each colour is applied in a different place and overlaid to mix in a certain way to create an image

ILLUSTRATOR

CMYK - print

RGB - web/screen eg. animation

Medium/neutral grey is the best colour to work with when doing colour specific work it doesn't influence them

Different ways to get colour in illustrator

The colour picker:

Swatch Palette:

Swatch Palette

Swatch palette is the best way to get consistent colour in your designing
Can create your own swatch palette to work with by deleting all previous colours and creating own
The drop down menu allows you to select what colours you have not used and empty the palette

Used in commercial work and you will always find it as well as the registration colour for CMYK, this exists on every printer.

Create a new swatch:

Appears in swatch palette

You can see the different colour codes
Registration appears as black instead of cross fire so be careful not to use it instead of the colour

Adding the colours used in your work:

Changing a swatch:

Double click on the swatch to alter the percentages this then changes the colour of the work which was that colour swatch

Global box is checked - this is what the corner mark on the swatch palette means
If you click on the swatch then it highlights the artwork with the colour applied to it
Non global swatches you can change without a link to the artwork changing
Global swatches are very good to use especially in complex artwork as you don't have to select parts to change, you can just alter the swatch until your happy

Global tints:

Global swatch

Non global swatch

Once you've created the new tint of a global swatch is appears in the palette and shows the percentage next to it

Using tints:

SPOT COLOURS

Process colours are a mixture of CMYK but spot colours is just a colour
Its not made up of CMYK, its a ready made colour
Printer would have a ready made colour mixed up
Its cheaper - only one printing plate instead of 4
We would use this because it gives you consistency in colour no matter where its printed
Branding in particular is when spot colours are appropriate as you need to keep the same colours across all products eg. Sainsburys orange
Pantone is the reference book for colours in this country/europe
Speak to the printer prior to designing and ask what spot colour system to use and stock available and you want to use
You can also print colours that aren't possible print in CMYK eg. bright colours/metallic colours

Spot swatch palettes:

Pantone + Solid Uncoated

Different view:

If you have chosen or your client has specified then you can search for your specific reference
Double click the colour and it will be automatically added to your swatch library

There is a spot in the corner of the colour and in the grey box, this means its a spot colour
Don't change the name otherwise the printer won't no what the colour is
You can create tints of the spot colour