Studio Time: Rich Black is the New Black

When it comes to banners, black is a fairly commonplace colour. Whether it’s bright text on a black background, or black text on a bright background, black is used all the time. It’s also often used in company logos.

For anyone that’s creating banner artwork, you’d expect creating a solid black object or shape to be pretty simple—simply fill it with 100% black, right? Well, yes, you’d get a black object, but it could be better.

It’s black. Or is it?

Unfortunately, printed solid black objects can often appear ‘washed out’, and like a very dark grey once printed. However, this can be resolved. A reliable way to ensure that you get a nice deep, rich black is to add other colours to the mix.

The black CMYK values we normally use:

• Cyan: 50
• Magenta: 50
• Yellow: 50
• Black: 100

Swatches

Most design software will have some kind of swatch feature, or colour presets. As with creating an additional swatch when you’re working with a corporate colour can be helpful, so too can creating one for rich black. InDesign already has a pure black (C: 0, M: 0, Y: 0, K: 100) swatch by default, and it’s easy to add another. Simply create any old object, fill it with the desired colour values (C: 50, M: 50, Y: 50, K: 100), click the drop-down menu in the colour palette, then click ‘Add to Swatches’. You’ll now have a new swatch that you can re-use wherever and whenever you need.

I find it best to create this swatch with no documents open. This way, the swatch will be included with every new document created from that point on.

Is this rich black I see before me?

Quite unhelpfully, many desktop publishing software packages display a simple black onscreen as a rich black. This can give you the false impression that you will get a deep colour when it’s later reproduced. More helpfully though, Adobe InDesign does give you the option of changing this behaviour, in Edit > Preferences > Appearance of Black.

Whether you prefer to see pure black or rich black on-screen is a matter of preference. What does matter though, is what is sent to print. With the help of our friends, Cyan, Magenta and Yellow, we can give you a fully rich colour that will serve your banner well.