Visual Design: Ninety-five things you need to know. Told in Helvetica and dingbats.

Chapter 12. Practical Matters

83 CMYK

When a designer produces a color layout or illustration that’s destined for print, chances are good that the piece will be printed by either an offset printing press or a digital inkjet printer.* Printing of either kind usually involves cyan, magenta, yellow, and black inks. These four inks are referred to as CMYK colors (the letter K is used to represent black since the black plate in offset printing is sometimes referred to as the key plate).

* Print jobs of higher quantities are usually printed using traditional offset printing presses. Shorter print runs are often handled with inkjet printers. See page 206 for more about inkjet printing.

The density of each of these colors can be varied by printing ...