The graphic designers guide to black
Posted January 19th, 2009.
You might think that using black couldn’t be simpler. After all, black is black right? Wrong. Depending on what printing/ink system is being used their are literally dozens of choices when it comes to choosing a black, each with distinct differences.
Fellow designer Andrew Kelsall recently posted a designers guide to using black, over at his U.K. based graphic design blog.
The aim of this article is to document every conceivable type of black that is destined for print and web.
It is my aim that if you are a designer, you can find some information here that you didn’t know―and if you are learning about design, I hope you can educate yourself from this post.
Andrew goes on to list both the mix, provide examples of and suggest the best uses for over a dozen possible black selections including, process mixes, flat black, pantone, warm, cool and even Hexachrome black mixes.
Check it out.
Whether your a greenhorn or a seasoned designer, Andrews comprehensive write up will be a great reference for your future projects.
Thanks for the the review, Andrew. This has proved to be one of my most popular articles to date. I want to write more like it, time permitting that is.
BTW, I only just got a pingback from this article – and I see this is from Jan 2009. Pingback a year late? That’s strange???
Andrew Kelsall´s last blog ..The Ultimate List of Gradient Resources
Andrew,
No problem, It’s a resource worth sharing.
Regarding the pinkback, I was having some indexing problems with Google from not noindexing my category archives. I had about 40 pages not being indexed as a result.
Excerpts of pages in my archives were getting indexed instead of the full post, I’ve fixed this now and over the last few weeks 2 weeks 15 or so old posts have been indexed by Google, I’m expecting the another 20 or so to do the same thing over the next few weeks.
I guess this why? I’ll probably have some out of sequence posts appear for RSS subscribers and pingbacks for the next few weeks.