Individuals or companies are identified not just by their names but also by a certain attitude they possess, which some marketing inclined people might refer to as ‘brand’. There are a lot of factors that go into constructing this brand – the logo, smart advertising, savvy spokespersons, etc. are just some of them. A key component that contributes significantly but most often taken for granted is the printed collateral belonging to a company. These would comprise everything from the simple letterhead and visiting cards, corporate brochures, pamphlets to the board put up outside the office.

The process involved in the making of these printed collaterals combines the art of creativity with the science of method and technology. Among the clutter of carious neo and conventional methods of printing, ‘screen printing’ and ‘offset printing’ are the two most used methods of printing. The deciding factors between these two methods are cost, quality and design. Allow me to elaborate on two of these printing methods one by one.

Screen-printing also known in some places as ‘silkscreen printing’ is done manually and is one of the earliest methods of printing. Here is how one goes about getting a screen-printing job done. The company prepares a design or gets its agency to prepare one, which goes through the formal process of approval and changes before being finalized. Once the design is finalized, it is sent for positives. A positive is made of film material, pretty similar to the negative made to develop your photographs and it is the medium through which ink will be printed on paper. Since a positive cannot be directly used for printing it goes through a procedure as follows. The positive is stuck on to a screen and exposed. Then the screen is dried for some time. Now the screen is ready for print. The dry screen is then mounted on to the printing table.

Once the screen is ready then its time for colour mixing. The different colour inks are mixed in certain ratios to get a particular colour used in the design. For example if the design has a maroon colour in it, then red is mixed with black in the right proportion to get the maroon shade. Impression is the mantra in printing. Each colour is taken as one impression is screen-printing (no more need to blink next time around when your printer says cost per impression). Let us assume that the design has three colours in it then there are three impressions for printing too. Once the colours are matched we move onto the final stage.

The screen is like a small open box. Through the open side of the box the colour is poured, the lower outer surface of the screen has the positive that comes in touch with the paper. To help you visualize this process lets assume that a Visiting Card is being printed and lets say that the text matter in it is printed in black colour and the logo is printed in blue. It is to be decided which colour has to be printed first. If it’s the blue, then the area in the screen where black appears is covered with tape to avoid the flow of blue ink. This tape is stuck in the inside area of the screen and not on the outside area of the positive that comes in touch with the paper. The paper on which the matter has to be printed is now placed below the screen. Now the colour is poured onto the screen and with the help of a brush it is rubbed across the screen. This is one impression of blue and the colour is printed on the paper. If the alignment and placing is correct, then printing continues on all the copies. Immediately after printing one colour the paper is kept for drying, and after it dries it is taken for the next colour, that is black in this case.

Now the area where blue appears is covered and black is printed. Once this colour has dried your visiting cards are ready. This method of printing has a few limitations.

1 The design that has to be printed cannot have combination of colours mixing into each other or colour gradations.

2 Since the colour mixing is done manually, there will, in most cases be a 5% difference in expected colour output to the one we get. Colour proofing is always advised.

3 Huge quantities to print might prove expensive in screen-printing because the effort to print each unit remains the same, irrespective of quantity. Therefore when it comes to printing quantities in excess of a thousand or two, then offset printing is the recommended cost saving options.

Offset printing, the next method of printing is definitely the most common method of printing and works mainly with four colours that generate the various colour combinations given in a particular design. The four basic colours are Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK. In printing parlance this is known as CMYK. Offset printing is mostly automated, the old offset printing machines were single colour machines but today we have four-colour offset printing machines. In a single colour machine CMYK colours have to fed one at a time i.e. the impression of cyan happens first then the paper is taken for drying then magenta is printed, again drying of paper happens then yellow is printed and then black. But in a four-colour machine, C M Y and K are printed simultaneously. This saves a lot of time and facilitates printing of huge quantities.

Like screen-printing, let me describe the procedure for offset printing; Here again the process of briefing, designs and approvals are gone through and an artwork is made of the final design. The artwork used to be made manually upto a few years ago. Today it is created digitally on the numerous publishing software available – the most popular ones being PageMaker and CorelDraw. The design that is created on the computer has to be in 300 dots per inch (dpi) resolution. This assures good quality in print. All images used in the design should also be 300 dpi or they will definitely appear pixilated after printing. High resolution scanning of visuals (photographs and other pictures) will ensure this. Low resolution JPEG’s from the net cannot be used for printing.

Once the digital artwork is ready, it is taken to create positives to prepress. A prepress, as the name suggest, is the place where all final touches are done before it goes to print at the printing press. Unlike in screen-printing where one single black positive is taken, offset printing requires four positives to be made. One for each colour C, M, Y and K.

The positives are then taken to the press, where the positives are exposed and stuck on to a metallic plate. The plates are loaded on to the machine and printing begins. Once the printing is finished the paper is taken for cutting and the final output is ready. It’s most likely that the magazine you’re reading this article from has gone through just the same procedure.

Well so much for printing. While we wait enthusiastically for more exciting methods of printing to appear in the future, with the technology (and budgets) available today, you would have just learnt what exactly to do when you want that next company brochure of yours printed. Finally before I end this article, understanding the production process is tangibly beneficial as ignorance can often be advantageously used by some vendors to unrealistically mark-up the prices. Another added advantage is that it helps you appreciate the work put in by the service provider and also avoid common pitfalls like wrong positives or unrealistic delivery expectations.

(The author, Sriram Nair is Partner at Origami – an advertising and creative agency. Questions on the article could be mailed to: This e-mail address is being protected from spam bots, you need JavaScript enabled to view it )

Related Items:

---

Be first to comment this article

Only registered users can write comments.
Please login or register.