When deciding on printing of your logo/artwork on promotional products, it’s best to know the basic differences between spot colour print vs full colour print.
Spot colour printing is a process where each colour is printed in its own single color ink. If there is just one color to be printed, there will be a single run. If there are two colors, there will be two runs, and so on. By using a single ink for each colour, it is possible to achieve good matching to both existing printing and future print runs and to colours from the Pantone spot colour swatches. For example, if you must match a colour in your corporate logo, spot colours should be used. Because of its good colour matching ability, spot colour printing also produces prints with extreme clarity and crispness. Since spot colour printing uses single inks, this method is typically cheaper and used for jobs which require no full color logos/artwork, such as for one colour printing on t shirts and mugs. However, it becomes rather expensive for more than 3 color prints on promotional products. With spot printing, you also have a smaller colour range to choose from.
4 color printing, also known as full colour printing or process printing, involves the use of four colour inks: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Keyline (Black). When these four colours are mixed, you can get a wide variety of colours for printing of your full colour logo on promotional products. Full colour printing is usually more expensive than spot printing as it requires four different colours to be printed. Unlike, spot printing, it’s harder to match the colours in full colour printing so full colour process printing will not be as clear and crisp looking as spot colour printing.
Whether you decide to use single print colours with spot printing or full colour printing will depend on what you see as most important ie. colour matching of your logo, cost or achieving full colour print.
