Recently in the studio we seem to have had a run of printed projects involving large areas of black. So it was a case of Really Great Timing that Chris Pollard from Dayfold Print dropped by to show us their fantastically useful Little Black Book: A guide to printing the best Rich Blacks.

The guide is a primer on how to create a really solid black: the general wisdom is that you print 100% black (100K) an add 30-40% cyan (or magenta) to create a denser, richer black. That can create a bit of a colour cast though, and this book clearly shows that: each page features a background black printed with an increasing percentage of cyan, magenta and yellow; and has an additional panel showing comparative squares of 100K / 100K + 40C / 100K + 40M / 100K + 40Y. There are also samples of rule and type tolerances (click the shot below to see a larger version).

The book features both coated and uncoated sections, and the folks at Dayfold suggest the following: for uncoated stocks, running C50 M50 Y50 K100; and for coated stocks C60 M60 Y60 K100 (though that depends on exactly what stock you're printing onto).

Lovely stuff. Check the Dayfold blog for more.