Maeda's SIMPLICITY

Letters

Josh Hallett from Florida writes:

"My friend told a story about an item being sold many years ago. I forgot what it was, but the hosts did the standard introduction and began to describe the product. It was black, they said it 'was black' but the host eventually said it 'was a beautiful shade of black'. Well for some reason that lit up the switchboards. So they continued to say it was 'a beautiful shade of black' rather then just black.

As for white, each company I have ever run I always had the stationary printed on the most brilliant white, smooth paper available. I usually go for a heavier stock as well (my printer loves me). That subtle difference in paper quality always makes my presentations and other correspondence stand out from the rest."

If you've ever gotten into the habit of wearing black, you will realize that it is hard to match blacks. They come in so many subtle shades that you're better off wearing a black top with a pink bottom instead of a black bottom that is in an unmatching shade. Don't quote me on that.

Josh makes two important points in the second paragraph: weight and expense. In the Internet age we don't have digital paper with varying weights; we also don't have digital paper with varying expense as related to quality (aside from the cosmetic difference between lcd/plasma/crt). I see a business opportunity for Adobe ...

Jay Zipursky from Burnaby, Canada writes:

"I just read your blog entry 'The Color of Black.' I currently work for a commercial print industry supplier and have not heard of any printer that does double-hits (at least in my 10 years in this industry). However, I’m not an expert and will ask some of my colleagues if they’ve seen this.

What is common, though, is printing 'rich blacks' where 'bump colors' are printed with the black ink. In other words, some mix of cyan and magenta are printed under the black and the result is a very black black. There are other tricks too, such as using certain screening or halftoning patterns that allow the pressman to increase the ink densities."

In Japan it was once a common "elite/luxury" practice to do double- and even triple-hits (a true maniac). But nowadays with digital printing it's going away, and fewer people are using the technique. I spoke at last year's International Design Conference in Aspen where the collateral was printed in double-hit fluorescent ink, so I know the practice to be alive and active in the States as well.

When there are sufficient and relevant comments from readers, I have decided to post them in this format from time to time. Figuring out the timing will be a work in progress.

Posted by maeda at January 6, 2005 08:19 AM