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Disc Design Critique:
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Elvis Costello
Rykodisc Reissue of
Get Happy
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| This disc has 3 colors: green ink printed first, black followed, and white ink printed last. The green is translucent, and the apparent color changes significantly over the clear inner hub in a way that seems to have been unintentional, since it adds nothing to the design. Printing a coat of white before laying down the green ink would have eliminated the problem - the green would appear almost even, all the way to the innermost circle. [The white undercoat cannot be a true "white flood" since we would like to preserve the Rykodisc logo on the right as is, knocking out through black to the silver surface of the disc. If the entire disc were coated with white, "Rykodisc" would knock out through black to white.]
A white undercoat would also have eliminated the other technical problem with this disc: flashlines around the edges of all type. There are several problems with the type on this disc, starting with inadequate contrast between the light green and white inks. A darker background color would have increased the contrast, making the copy considerably more legible. Also, the holes in the green plate are exactly the same size as the white letters that are supposed to drop into them: a design sin known as "one to one fit." This is unwise, because when you print two inks one after another, they NEVER line up perfectly. They will be close, but there is always an acceptable amount of slippage known as the "manufacturing tolerance." As you can see, the green and white on this disc are slightly misregistered, and silver flashlines show up along the edges where the two inks don't meet up. This impairs the legibility, in a way that the designer and/or the prepress technician presumably did not anticipate. |
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Silver flashlines, between the white and the green
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| One possible solution would have been to "spread" the white type, a trapping trick. If you print the white in bold (well, sort of - it's actually more complicated than that) and lay the white ink down first, then the type will appear to be clean even if the plates are slightly out of register, since the upper ink will form the edges of the letter.
But why would you do that, when a better solution is begging to be implemented? The white undercoat strategy kills 2 birds with one stone: print solid white, then knock out through the green to the white, and any potential problems arising from misregistration are eliminated. No fuss, no muss: a beautiful disc every time. |
Original design:
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Pass#1: PMS 382
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Pass#2: Black
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Pass#3: Opaque White
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Suggested revisions:
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Pass#1: Opaque White
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Pass#2: PMS 382
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Pass#3: Black
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