Think of all the commercial printing materials you come across in a single day. Direct mailers, billboards, company brochures, business cards, etc., all paper sizes, paper thickness, colors, and marketing creative materials. Now think about how these elements come to life. How they evolve from an idea to a design and a final impression.

Commercial printing is the process of taking a piece of art and transferring it to 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 wraps around a plate cylinder that allows the ink to fill the cutout shape of the aluminum plate. Ink is poured into 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 recover the correct level of ink. Finally, the printing cylinder is the roller that pushes the paper at 10,000 sheets per hour to absorb the proper level of ink. There are four presses, each one for the individual colors. The paper moves through each press, retrieving one color at a time, and finally ends up in an area of ​​inferred heat to dry the paper for reverse side printing.

Commercial printing includes the proper level of water and ink. The aluminum plate allows the paper to absorb the correct level of ink and the rollers press the image onto the paper, one at a time.

Commercial printing has many advantages that create outstanding, professional end products for the enjoyment of many. There are many companies that practice this form of professional printing. The key is to ask the right questions and understand the printing process, as CMYK offset printing techniques are the best method for printing amazing marketing materials.