Think of all the commercial print materials you come across in a single day. Direct mailers, billboards, company brochures, business cards, etc., all paper sizes, paper thicknesses, colors, and creative marketing materials. Now, think about how these elements come to life. How they evolve from an idea to a design and a final print.
Commercial printing is the process of taking a piece of art and transferring it onto a sheet of paper or cardstock. Many companies use a form of offset printing to transfer four sets of colors, which are cyan, magenta, yellow, and black, or also known as CMYK.
The process is somewhat simple and hasn’t really changed in over 100 years. An aluminum plate is created from the artwork, each representing a color from the CMYK process. The plate is wrapped around a plate cylinder which allows the ink to fill the cutout shape of the aluminum plate. The ink is poured onto the cutout and transferred to a rubber roller called a blanket cylinder. The blanket cylinder is what is used to allow the paper to roll in to retrieve the correct level of ink. Finally, the impression cylinder is the roller that pushes the paper at 10,000 sheets per hour to absorb the correct level of ink. There are four presses, each for the individual colors. The paper moves through each press, recovering one color at a time, and finally ends up in an area of inferred heat to dry the paper for back printing.
Commercial printing includes the correct level of water and ink. The aluminum plate allows the paper to absorb the proper level of ink, and the rollers press the image onto the paper, one at a time.
Commercial printing has many advantages that create professional and outstanding end products for the enjoyment of many people. There are many companies that practice this form of professional printing. The key is asking the right questions and understanding the printing process, as CMYK offset printing techniques are the best method for printing amazing marketing materials.
