The Use of Spot Color Art in Stamp Printing

Stamps are very small printed materials, but the printing volume is very large. Not only do you have to arrange dozens or even hundreds of patterns on a fast printing plate, and require the color and level of each pattern to be exactly the same; and the same pattern of stamps should be repeated. There are tens of thousands of prints, and the printing cycle can sometimes be several months. In such a long time, mass production of the same product must meet the high quality requirements of philatelists and consumers. It is not only accurate for each overprint in the full-page stamp, but also guarantees the color of the face-to-face printing pattern. Reach agreement. This requires taking into account its characteristics during the design of the process prior to printing and ensuring that the printing repeatability is better. For this reason, in addition to the use of conventional yellow, magenta, cyan, and black four-color inks, the application of spot color inks is also indispensable. According to the characteristics of the manuscript, different spot color inks are used to print. The printed stamps can achieve a desirable artistic effect and a higher pass rate. Therefore, spot colors are often used in the printing of stamps. It is mainly used in the following areas.

First, the background

In the printing of stamps, there are two different manifestations of the background. One is the background often appearing on the stamp image as the background of the theme. Although it is not the subject of the picture, it is very important for the theme in the whole picture. The deterrent effect directly affects the artistic effect of the stamp picture. In order to make the stamp color of the finished product after printing in large quantities basically the same, there is no obvious color cast phenomenon, can perfectly reproduce the designer's artistic conception, this kind of background color generally adopts trapping printing. When encountering the background color of some manuscripts with a dark background or the size of stamps is relatively large (such as a small sheet), it is also necessary to design the colors to be similar to the deep and shallow two spot colors for printing. Consistent with the original color, the ink layer is thick. Flat clothing. No flowers. Impeccable. Can truly reproduce the artistic effect of the original.

Another background is the process design before printing. In order to use the print control hue and make up for the color difference between the print and the artwork, the background color of the stamp design part is also printed in spot colors. This is because the manuscripts of the stamp designs often use some Chinese paintings and gouache paintings. The drawings of the oil paintings are very exquisitely designed and the colors are very rich. The level changes vividly and uses such drawings to copy the stamps. If you simply use the three primary colors and black overlays to reproduce the pictures. The color of the stamp screen will be monotonous and thin compared with the manuscript. It often gives people a feeling of lack of color. It is not as rich as the color of the manuscript. It is thick and the changes between colors are also blunt and uncoordinated. The artistic effect of being dull and rough copying is not ideal.

On the other hand, from a printing point of view, if the postage stamps completely rely on the superposition of the three primary colors to produce color changes, it would be more difficult to make the face-to-face hues consistent in large-volume printing. In this case, in order to perfectly reproduce the artistic charm of the manuscript and lose the high-quality stamp finished product, the process design must be based on the main colors of the original picture and define one or two spot colors as the background color of the design part. , which is the complement of color, such as: dark, light gray, dark, light yellow, purple, etc., plus three primary colors. In such mass printing, the main tone of the ticket is fixed, and the ink color can be relatively uniform and the printing quality can be guaranteed. At the same time, it has greatly improved the artistic effect of the stamp screen. Make it almost the same color as the original. And it also reproduces the rendering effect of the original color better. The color is rich and soft, the color changes naturally and harmoniously, and the whole picture is smooth and delicate.

Second, the character's skin color

The skin color of the character, especially the color of the face, is an important part of the character pattern and is also the main rendering part of the art design. This is also crucial in the printing of other books and advertisements. It is even more prominent in the printing of stamps. As the area of ​​the stamp is small, the area of ​​the face complexion is even smaller. If three primary colors are used for overlay printing, it will bring certain difficulties for overprinting and ink control. After mass printing, the face color of finished stamps often appears color cast, some reddish, some yellowish, and overprinting inaccurate, facial contours will also be deformed. In particular, people's theme stamps, if the subject person's facial skin color is inconsistent, or the outline is unclear, will affect the character image, directly affect the artistic effect of the stamp, of course, has also greatly affected the quality of the stamp. Therefore, in the process design, according to the skin color hue of the original, a special color is generally used as the skin's main color, plus three primary colors set off, so that the printed color of the stamp color part is not changed, overprinting is accurate, clear facial contours, level Transitional natural. Soft.

Third, neutral grey

Neutral gray is a sign of the balance of the three primary colors in printing. Therefore, there is a certain technical difficulty in the reproduction of neutral gray, especially the light gray neutral gray, its color change is visually more sensitive, the proportion of the three primary colors is slightly different, and the hue is very different. In the high-volume mass printing of stamps, if three primary colors are used to reproduce neutral gray, the technical difficulty and labor intensity will be very high, and the final product pass rate will be very low, and the neutral gray color will be cast on the face of the ticket. If the standard of finished product quality inspection is not properly grasped, it will cause confusion to the philatelic market. In order to avoid the above phenomenon, in the process design, the neutral gray part of the ticket is generally printed with a spot color gray. In this way, the finished and post-printed stamp products will not have any difference in hue, which can greatly improve the qualification rate of the finished product, shorten the production cycle, and save raw materials.