OK, so I have been charged with placing some print advertising for my organization.
I’ve come up with an ad that I think is pretty eye-catching and so on and go to the media kit for the publication we’re looking to place it in.
Everything’s pretty self-explanatory until I get to the “color charges” section, and that leads to my question:
What is the difference between Standard Color, Matched Color, and 3 or 4 Color? There’s a fairly significant price difference between 3 and 4 Color and the others.
I’m sure this is a standard thing for people who do this for a living, as there is no description of what each type is. Likewise, I did a Google search and got nothing but the ad rates for a couple thousand publications.
If you want a bit of spot (i.e. not a color photo, just some elements in a single color), we printers keep vats of Spartan Red and Regal Blue on hand for the very purpose. If you want to save money, we’ll run it in pure Magenta or pure Cyan, but I wouldn’t recommend it; Magenta, the purest red that’s used in color builds, looks a little lifeless (Spartan Red has a healthy dose of yellow mixed in) and Cyan, pure blue, looks like a Blue Cross logo (Regal has a splash of magenta to give it a bold, purplish tinge).
You have some specific tone of color you want to use insetad? We can use a 4-color build; olive green is about 70% cyan, 80% yellow and 15% red. We’ll make the match for you, no problem. Of course, we’ll charge you up the wazoo for it, since it has to run through all four color rollers (Color photos are builds of cyan, magenta, yellow and black) and you’re paying a hefty rate for that little splash of color, as much as if you’d put a big 4-color photo on the ad. Plus, registration is always a problem and it can look blurry.
Or, we can pre-mix pigments in a little trough to match whatever color you want and put it on a single color roller on the press. Brilliant! Of course, once we mix our inks to match your specific tone of Puce or Desert Peach, we still have gallons of the stuff left over after we print your ad. It won’t keep, we can’t use it for anything else, and ink is really expensive to throw away. Guess who we pass the cost along to?
Our recommended solution is that you take a 4-color build on a flat that already has four-color build on it, or use one of the pre-mixed standard colors we already keep around in bulk. We make it financially worth your while to do this by charging you less.
Standard color is the ink the publication has on hand, e.g. “red.”
Matched color is the exact color you request, e.g. Pantone 451.
The more colors you have in your ad, the more they have to run the ad through the presses, so the more you get charged.
Do you have a photo or artwork that needs to be in the exact color, or do you just want to print some words in a different color?
You may want to call the advertising department of the publication, and tell a rep you want to advertise with them. They’ll be happy to give you a thorough explanation when there’s a commission riding on it.