Printing white text on colour

Design Discussions general design discussion
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<Before anyone asks, no I’m not looking for white ink to print on coloured paper. Funny how much that comes up on google>

Hey guys, I’ve got a bit of a conundrum I’ve kind of shoved away and now I need to answer. I’m printing out some documents and I want to use coloured boxes with white text. Now I’ve noticed that my thin text never come out sharp because the printer is printing the negative space, where printers really ‘enjoy’ printing positive spaces.

Does anyone have any suggestions as to increase the edge sharpness of printing text on a coloured box? Would putting 1-2% of a colour (CMYK) give it some further edge definition? Any other suggestions that don’t require me to dramatically change my layouts or concept?

I’m using normal digital printing at a large chain office supply shop (actually I’m not sure if its digital printing now that I think about it. They use what appears to be a photocopier, with the photocopier part. But it doesn’t look like a 5 metre printing shop digital printer).

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You may need to use a slightly heavier weight, like if you are using the regular, you may need to go up to the demi. Or if you are printing from a PDF, you may need to adjust the file export settings under the compression tab to get a better quality PDF.

What program are you setting the type in (Indesign, Illustrator)? What typeface is it? What weight are you using (regular, demi, bold)? What color is it reversed out in? How are you outputting the file (PDF vs. native file)?

3

There may be some settings you need to tweak with the printer driver for the printer you are printing to. Look for Quality or Type settings to modify that will sharpen your image. Then try to hit it with a light stroke around the text just to give it a bit more open space.

4

Police siren noise!

NURB, I’m going to have to place you under arrest for conspiracy to commit a type crime :smiley:

Stroke around type may give you a little extra room, but can also cut into other characters altering the letter shapes.

Good call on the printer settings though, maybe just a warning is in order this time.

5

Well I’m printing from PDF but all the fonts are embedded, so I’d imagine that compression wouldn’t be so much of an issue because it is printing essentially vector.

I’ll be printing from a professional printing place… so I won’t have tremendous control over printing settings. However viewing some previous results, it seems to be a design driven limitation (printing ‘white’) and a printer/physics problem.