Four Colour or Four Colour Process ?
This is a topic that does sometimes cause quite a bit of confusion! How on earth can you have an image on a promotional item that appears to be one colour, but is actually printed using a four colour process? Surely that’s madness???
Unfortunately, this is very common. In this post I will try to explain why:
Spot Colours - a ’spot colour’ is a completely flat colour. Usually, a design consists of no more than four spot colours (anything over this becomes impractical and expensive to print) and more often than not, only one or two. When a design uses four colours it is sometimes referred to as a ‘four colour’ design. If your design uses spot colours, each will usually have a Pantone reference (see my post on Pantone references here).
Tints and Shading - if your design has tints and shading in it, the likelihood is that these will require a full colour print. Now this is where the confusion comes in - a full colour print (used to print photographic images and other images or text that has tints and shading) is also referred to as a ‘process print’, a ‘full colour process print’ and - unfortunately - a ‘four colour process print’. This doesn’t necessarily mean your artwork has four colours in it - it is referring to the method by which the artwork will be printed. Images that have tints and shading in them (photographic images etc) are printed using a process that uses four colours - Cyan, Magenta, Yellow & Black (K) - these four colours when used together can produce nearly any colour possible (very handy when printing a photographic image!) and provide what is known as a CMYK reference.
Here is an example of this effect. A single spot is used in Freddie 1. The second example (Freddie 2) is an example of a full colour (or ‘four colour process’ print). Notice how, strangely, they are both one colour.
Hopefully, this will help clear things up a little! If you’re still not sure as to whether your logo is a one colour or a full colour, here’s a little checklist to help work it out.
Checklist
If your logo consists of:
A flat colour
One or more flat colours
Has no tints or shading in it…
…it’s a Spot Colour logo, and would be printed using perhaps a screen print process using Pantone references.
If your logo consists of:
Many colours, more than four
Colours containing tints and shading (otherwise known as ‘gradients’)
…it’s a Full colour logo, and would be printed using a four colour process procedure. Something worth noting - if your artwork has more than four spot colours, but all the colours are flat, it may just be the case that it is more economical to print it using a full colour process, as many spot colours tend to be quite costly!
And if you’re still in doubt, email your artwork to the Design Studio, where we’d be more than happy to let you know what’s what!
