Black isnt always Black

To get the best results on your business cards, you need to understand how black is achieved in the four color printing process.

In CMYK printing, there are two common types of black - Rich Black and Plain Black. This article should help you get great results with your business cards in achieving the black that you need.

On a computer monitor, there is only one way to represent black. When there is no light coming from the monitor, the screen is black. This is shown in RGB as 0,0,0. Variations in the black are too fine to see on most monitors. On a printed business card, small variations between blacks are obvious.

Rich black is made up of a combination of all the four colours. The exact make up of rich black varies but we recommend a black that is made up of Cyan 50, Magenta 50, Yellow 50 and Black 100 (50,50,50,100). This gives a deep rich black without adding too much ink to the cards. Whilst you may think you can achieve a rich black with 100,100,100,100, this causes too much ink to be printed onto the card.

Plain black is achieved by simply using only black ink and no other colours (0,0,0,100). This is still a good black and suitable for text but can lack the depth that rich black provides for large solid blocks of black.

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