What is spot color?
‘Spot’ color is when a single color (sometimes more than just one, but usually a single color in newspapers) is used on a page – often to match a company’s logo color. This is usually used on inside pages of the newspaper and is less expensive than a 4-color (CMYK or ‘process’) ad. These pages are printed with a color made from a *single, premixed* ink, rather than color created by successive inks laid over one another. ‘Spot’ color offers a few advantages over process (for advertising use) besides just expense. Colored text, for example, doesn’t suffer legibility problems due to irregular press registration (that blurry effect caused by inks that didn’t line up just right on the press). Spot color can also be ‘matched’ using a system of printing standards that allow the press crew to know *exactly* what the color should look like. One example of these standards is called Pantone, but there are others. If you know *exactly* what your color should look like, please make sure we do too.
