How Ink is Made

We’re big fans here at Jag of what Sara calls “field trips” — that is, visiting the plants, vendors & factories where the materials we produce for our clients — that’s you guys — are made. We’ve seen giant rolls of paper spinning through warehouse-sized printers, and watched giant “cookie cutters” cut out stacks of unfolded envelopes in a single press.

But one aspect of what we do that is often considered as just a small part in a big picture is the ink used to print your materials.

Whether it’s being printed onto paper, or onto apparel or a promotional item, ink is used in some way on almost every single item we produce.

This video provides a sort of virtual field trip showing just how that ink is made! This company focuses on ink for traditional printing (on paper, that is) — and the video primarily features production of process color. In the video, you’ll hear them talk about these process colors as cyan, magenta, yellow, and black — otherwise known as CMYK. This is what we use when we print your materials on a digital press. In this situation, these four colors — CMYK — are blended together to create a full-color imprint. If you open up your home color printer, you’ll notice the same four ink colors are being used!

Towards the end, the video also discusses Pantone (or PMS) colors. This is when we print using a specific ink color — it’s not a blend of other colors. It’s an ink specifically mixed to match the Pantone formula for that specific color. It’s a pure, solid color. (That said, for certain jobs, digital printing is often more economical & using technology, we can recreate a Pantone color using a CMYK blend. It’s not as perfect & pure as using a Pantone ink, but it’s often the more affordable option.)

We hope you find this video as fascinating as we did! Enjoy: