| Silkscreen Printing
Design - Less Than 100% Solid Colour
This is a brief tutorial
to help you get started with your graphic design for
Silkscreen Printing your CD or DVD discs. The information
provided here is based an assumption that you have a
reasonable working knowledge of graphic design terminology
as well as Adobe Illustrator or similar professional graphic
design programs.
When Silkscreen Printing,
anything less than 100% solid colour will not have the
solid, consistent and smooth appearance that you see on your
computer monitor. This occurs in transparencies,
drop-shadows, gradients and other similar effects.
"Example 1" shown below
provides a side-by-side comparison of what is viewed on the
computer monitor (shown on the left) against the actual
Silkscreen Printed product (shown on the right). The imagery
you are viewing was designed and printed based on two
colours only (black in printed on top of a solid white
back-print). The 'grey' that is visible is not actually grey
ink at all... it's a gradient created within the black
print.
"Example 2" shown below
provides a closer look at what is viewed on the computer
monitor (shown on the left) against the actual Silkscreen
Printed product (shown on the right). While the gradient in
the design has a solid, smooth and consistent visual
appearance when viewed on the computer monitor it will
actually print as tightly packed series of 'dots'.
Why Does The
Final Print Look Different Than What I See On My Computer
Monitor?
To put it simply, the
process of Silkscreen Printing is to push ink through a
stencil that's imaged onto a fabric mesh... so it's going to
have its limitations... and the 'dot pattern' relates to the
limitations in the technology for imaging the design onto
the printing Screens. Silkscreen Printing is definitely an
'old school' form of printing but when you understand both
the strengths and limitations of this type of printing you
can create extremely powerful designs that other printing
technologies can't easily duplicate.
So, What If
You Really Want Solid, Smooth and Consistent Print?
The answer is quite
simple: Only design using 100% solid colours. Create a new
colour separation for each individual colour in your design
(to a maximum of 6 including the white backprint) and make
sure the values are set to print at 100% solid colour. If
you want to put emphasis on effects such as transparencies,
drop-shadows, etc., perhaps it would be best to avoid
Silkscreen Printing and, instead, design using CMYK values
for our Offset CMYK Printer.
Here's how
the 'dot pattern' works:
Let's say you want to
create a shade of grey that is 50% of black (instead of
printing grey on its own screen in 100% solid colour). This
is called "half-tone". The only way for this to work is to
create an illusion of the desired grey colour by printing
the black ink in small dots which are spaced far enough
apart as to allow the white background to be visible between
the dots. This mix of black and white gives the illusion of
the desired grey colour. If you wanted a darker shade of
grey (such as 70% of black) the dots would be spaced closer
together to let less white show through. If you wanted a
lighter shade of grey (such as 30% of black) the dots would
be spaced further apart to let more white show through.
If you do want to create
your design in this manner you don't have to create the dots
yourself. Simply set the percentage of black (or whatever
colour you want to use) to your desired percentage value and
then our film-ripping process will take care of the rest
automatically.
Remember: As
stated in our graphic design specifications, the printable
tonal range for anything printing at less than 100% solid
colour is between 15% and 85%. If you use colours outside of
that range the colours may not reproduce properly.
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