A few days ago, I took at look at some print work I did for one of my regular clients, Next Plc, a leading word-wide clothing giant. The prints were for some of their notice-boards in the Dearne Valley Distribution Warehouse, England. The designs were nothing ground-breaking design-wise, but what this article is about is an amazingly dark CMYK Black that was achieved through the use of professional digital print. I have tried to do the black justice in the above photo — which shows a dark, almost-sparkly silk finish (although, I haven’t fully exposed its density in a mere photo).

This black was achieved using a Xeikon 5000 Digital Press (shown above), aftr sending the files to RCS Printers, located in Retford (UK). Now, there’s a lot of contention in the print-design world about the perfect values to attain a Rich Black. I’ve used Cool Black myself on a variety of occasions using 40% Cyan and 100% Black (key), but for this design, I wanted to achieve the ultimate black.

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