Offset Printing

Offset Printing is great for:

• business cards
• letterhead
• catalogues
• books/booklets
• business forms
• flyers
• brochures
• calendars
• invitations, etc.

It is the highest quality printing process in the industry. Offset process produces prints with rich, smooth solids without the streaking found in the least quality prints. The look and/or feel of any offset product comes across as the most professional printing.

How it works

This type of printing is commonly used printing technique where an inked image is transferred from a plate to a rubber blanket, then to paper. The offset printing is also known as lithographic process. Taking an example of a brochure, it would be broken down into primary printing colours (CMYK). The images is broken down into these four colours and four separate plates are made. 

A plate is made up of areas that are receptive to grease and areas that are receptive to water. The areas receptive to grease hold onto the ink while the other areas attract water and repel the ink. The next process will be that these plates will be put onto a press. The press pulls in the ink and puts it onto the plate. The press applies great pressure to the plate and the ink imprints the image  from the plate onto a rubber blanket. The image is then pressed onto the paper off the blanket to make a print. When these four colours are printed onto each other the image comes back together and looks the way it did in the initial PDF. The process happens really fast and many impressions can be made from one set of plates. It is very efficient process and borrows itself very well to long runs over a long period of time.

The process of Offset printing

The-printer.net. (2016). Offset Printing : The Printer | Quality Offset & Digital Printing | 530.753.2519 | Davis CA. [online] Available at: http://the-printer.net/offset-printing [Accessed 17 Oct. 2016].