PRINTING

Printing comes in all forms.  It could be postcards, brochures, invitations to a party, letterhead, newsletters, or business cards.  It could also include banners, posters, and yard signs.

Our design team can take your ideas and put them to paper.  When working with Promotions By Mail, we ask What are you trying to do?  We believe in “Printing with a Purpose” and make sure you get what you need.

What’s the difference between RGB and CMYK?

TVs, monitors, and phones use light to make all of the colors you see by energizing a Red, Green, or Blue (RGB) element.  Printing in 4 process color will use Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Black (CMYK) to generate the colors on your printed piece.  While documents created in RGB can be printed, there is a conversion to a CMYK value.  Sometimes, the conversion does not go as planned and the document needs to be adjusted to get the color you want to be printed.

A good rule of thumb is use RGB for web pages or anything that will be viewed on a screen and use CMYK when you plan to print the document.  Keep in mind, many programs like Microsoft Word or Publisher default to RGB.  Programs like Photoshop or Illustrator allow you to pick the color mode when setting up your document.

Explaining all of those numbers on a quote:

• 4/4 – The document is full color on both sides.  The 4 refers to printing using CMYK.
• 4/1 – The Document is full color one side and black on the other side.
• 4/0 – The document is single-sided in full color.
• 1/0 – The document is black on one side.

Choosing a color:

Your company brand is important and part of your branding is consistency.  One of the ways to be consistent is to use specific colors for your logo and to make it easier, you can use a Pantone color.  You may ask what is Pantone?  Pantone is an organization that developed a propriety color space called the Pantone Matching System or PMS for short.  Using this system, if you state your logo is PMS 2347C, you will have the same color as Staples and when your document is printed here or in California, your logo will look identical.

Working with your graphic designer, you can pick the perfect colors for your business.  Don’t be intimidated by using PMS colors, each color has a CMYK and RGB equivalent that you can use in programs that don’t have PMS colors built in to their color selectors.