It’s a hard choice to make—more than 40 flavors. Which one should I pick? As we stand in line at the local Häagen-Dazs store, all these wonderful ice cream flavors scream at us to be tasted. Crème brûlée, English toffee, pineapple coconut. …

But for 9-year-old Emily, the choice is clear: “Vanilla.” No other flavor ever makes the cut. Every time we come into the store, vanilla it is. With that same certainty, Emily could also successfully predict the paper choice of most designers: White.

More than 80 percent of jobs printed in North America are printed on some form of white paper. But they don’t look boring. Not one bit. We flood the sheets with color—bleeding on all four sides. We spend hours simulating textures with printing processes. Double and triple hit colors. But no matter how much ink we use, we never truly achieve the saturated feel of a hued, textured paper.

There are times when only a color sheet can lift your design that extra notch from good to outstanding. So what is it that stops us from printing on these wonderful sheets? Is it the fear of venturing into uncharted territory?

I’ve got nothing against vanilla. The flavor goes with just about every dessert offering under the sun. It’s “nice,” and it’s safe.

Many designers shy away from a new choice, but with a little planning, color papers can open up a new realm of design. Remember when you excitedly “oohed” and “aahed” over the latest swatchbooks and the amazing colors and textures being offered? Let’s just take some of them for a spin and see what remarkable effects we can create and explore how to achieve them.

MORE THAN A ONE-COLOR JOB
Much more than a neutral background, color stocks can play an intricate part in the creative mix of your design. Beyond just supplying a second color to your piece, the texture of the paper you choose easily adds another dimension to your design.

Instead of simply “beige,” your paper now speaks “suede.” Instead of slick, your black sheet now has a rubberlike feel to it. From embossed finishes—such as felt and linen—to distinctive and unusual surfaces, there is a variety of paper options now available. Try to achieve this effect with a coated sheet. …

In the case of a lighter to medium-color sheet, a single or double hit of the color of your choice will be sufficient. If your project includes single- or full-color images on a medium to dark stock, underprinting an opaque ink will help you keep the colors vibrant. White inks, as well as all metallic inks, are by nature opaque and allow offset inks to sit on top of them—literally. Two hits of white or silver ink give you the best support for your images.

“Designers should keep in mind there are several techniques that are effective when printing or decorating dark-color stocks, including foil stamping and printing with metallic inks, as well as silk screening and engraving,” says Phyllis Custer, product marketing manager at FiberMark. “Printing a spot UV gloss varnish on an uncoated or matte-coated dark sheet can also achieve a distinctive, dramatic effect.”

Commemorating the bicentennial of the legendary expedition, Eddie Bauer not only presented the National Geographic movie Lewis & Clark: Great Journey West, but also supplied an accompanying family-activity guide. Reflecting the colors and textures of the West, the cover was printed with a double hit of brown on FiberMark’s SuedeTex Sand.

MIX AND MATCH
Color papers are often used in annual reports or corporate capability material, and it seems to be a natural fit. Text and cover papers suggest an understated company image and add warmth to what can appear to be impersonal printed matter.

For Kelly Kubisiak, marketing communications manager at Wausau Paper, the choice is clear: “A simple cover of a color, textured paper can look elegant without being flashy or over the top. It says quality in an understated way.” Color papers can be warmer, more human and easily complement the high gloss of four-color process work on coated paper.

“The key is to make the color and texture part of the original concept and tie it in to existing colors used by the company,” says Kubisiak. The most popular way to keep your colors true is foil stamping. Because the process can create a completely opaque image, foil stamping is often used to apply a lightcolor image against a dark-color paper. Perfect.

This above suggested opacity and crispness cannot be accomplished on an offset press. But there are limits to consider when foil stamping. A foil-stamped letterhead, for example, meets a terrible fate in a laser printer, because the printer’s intense heat will cause the foil to discolor, pit and even lift off the page. Some foil manufacturers are developing heat-resistant foils that can survive a laser printer, but we’re not there yet.

Ministry Health Care trusted Indigo Design in Green Bay, Wis., to design its physician- recruitment brochure. Showcasing an amazing diversity of paper and printing techniques, the brochure features Wausau Paper’s Royal Compliments Midnight Blue, Tuscan Sun and Burgundy color sheets, as well as Royal Metallics Chalice Silver mixed in with Utopia’s One X for the full-color inside spreads.

SUBTLE YET DISTINCT
I cannot count the number of times I’ve worked in studios where we used a double hit of black to achieve a rich black, and toned down certain areas to 90 percent to achieve a watermarked effect. You can reach an even classier look with less ink and paper waste simply by spot-glossing an image onto a medium or dark paper.

Alternatively, you can achieve the same effect by foil stamping the image onto the cover with a clear foil. There are more than 200 foils—from trusted opaques and pearlized foils to holographic, matte and glossy clear foils.

For Jean Rarick, regional sales manager for the specialty mill Gruppo Cordenons, a color sheet is an easy way to enhance your design. “A color stock will most certainly amplify [presence], particularly in direct mail. Since you don’t necessarily need to print four-color, it can also expand the possibilities for other processes. A gorgeous color sheet printed with a single color or foil stamp is quite elegant,” says Rarick.

Another subtle option that has become increasingly popular is printing an image just one or two tones darker than the actual paper color. By printing the same image and color on different-color stock, you can literally create a series of pieces that each look different.

Remembering your color training: You know the same ink printed on varying color stocks will look quite different, and create the illusion that you have slaved for hours and exhausted several print runs to find just the right color combinations. Not.

You can create a subtle look by printing offset, even foil stamping, but my personal favorite is running a design on a letterpress. Not only does it give you the perceived color variation, it also gives the slight deboss letterpress-look that makes your design even more outstanding.

Considering the digital world we are surrounded by every day, the resurgence of letterpress is no surprise. The slight indent of the printed areas, combined with vivid colors, literally screams handcrafted, and this is exactly what we are craving.

This leaf invitation beautifully displays the typical, slightly embossed feel of letterpress printing. Designed by A Day in May and printed by Full Circle Press in Nevada City, Calif., the same print run imprinted the leaf on Curious Gold Leaf and Stardream and found just the right symmetry of contrast and color balance.

Often rated as Milan’s most luxurious hotel, the Bulgari Hotel lives up to its reputation by selecting Cordenons’ Malmero paper in black for exclusive bar menus. The hotel’s trademark leaf was subtly imprinted with a clear foil stamp on the front cover.

INSTANT COLOR COMBINATIONS
Be bold in your color choices and don’t even worry about dry back after the press run. Color sheets keep their colors—and finishes.

Combine a shiny metallic cover with a matte vellum or textured wraparound. Instant success. “Paper textures and colors make people actually feel the piece—it draws them to the design and involves them in it,” says Judith Berliner, owner of Full Circle Press.

No double hits, dry backs or color variations on press. No smudging. You can create stunning effects with one press run of one color. To achieve the same look on a coated sheet, you would need to—let’s see—double hit the metallic blue, double hit the brown and put a protective coating on the piece. Wait, make that two coatings—one gloss, one matte. You do the math.

For one design of A Day in May’s Signature Collection of wedding invitations, Full Circle Press used Domtar’s Feltweave Natural to feature the contrasting, pale color of the pinecones. Printing the invitations letterpress also created dimension by smoothing out the felt finish. Another of the invitations—printed on Reich Paper’s Shine Sky Blue—shows that metallic papers prove to be highly compatible with letterpress printing.

FULL-ON COLOR
We have talked a lot about printing limited colors on color stock, but this does not mean that you can’t go all the way and print full-color pieces as well. If your project includes full-color images on a medium to dark stock, underprinting a white opaque ink will help you keep the colors vibrant.

For a subtle look, run the opaque inks in line with your CMYK. Be aware that wet-trapping, as this process is called, is really subtle and will not give you vibrancy in the colors if that’s what you are looking for. Dry-trapping, on the other hand—waiting for the opaque inks to dry before running the CMYK inks—allows for maximum “pop” or contrast in your images and is preferred by printers.

If underprinting is not an option, and you are printing on a light or medium color stock, add a small percentage of silver ink to one of your colors. It will enhance the opacity of this specific color and give your images more hold.

Play with the colors. Enhance certain hues by substituting one of the CM or Ys with a metallic ink. Swap process yellow for chrome yellow, for example. Or choose fluorescent ink instead. This will create a vibrant look—instantly.

Many mills offer printed sample sheets of their color stock. This will give you a great idea of the effect various printing processes have on this specific sheet and color—from embossing to engraving and CMYK to duotones. The information is available; you just have to ask for it.

“The key, as with any print job, is to get your vision of the project in line with what is possible with prepress and on press,” says Allen Strohmeier, a senior account executive at Cenveo Anderson Lithograph in San Francisco. “Choose a printer that has experience with the kind of effect you want to achieve, and that believes in your project as much as you do.”

From halftones to foil stamping, and from embossing to engraving, these sample sheets—Periwinkle, Light Blue or Sunflower—from Mohawk’s Via line show it all. What better way to get a feel for what you can expect when printing on color stock?

SIDEBARS:

Know what to expect
There is an element of the unexpected when printing offset on a color sheet.

Involve your printer early on in the design process. A paper’s finish, texture, weight and color are critical factors and will ultimately determine how the film is prepared and the job is actually printed.

One way to get a first impression of what you are likely to see on press is to use a color copier or even your ink-jet printer to simulate color on the actual stock. Of course, this is not exact and is only meant for a first impression.

The key is to be prepared. To get the most accurate feel for your project on press, use drawdowns or piggyback.

Drawdowns
“A drawdown is a great way to see how inks look on a specific stock,” says Allen Strohmeier from Cenveo Anderson Lithograph in San Francisco. “Larger printers offer this service in-house, a smaller print shop can get samples from an ink supplier.”

In a drawdown, a thin film (by a blade or a bar) of coating or ink is applied to a piece of paper. Drawdowns are great ways to judge solids, but they don’t allow you to judge how a full-color image or any screened image, for that matter, will look on the sheet.

Piggyback
If it’s a CMYK job on a light color stock, ask your printer to run a few sheets of your chosen paper at the end of another print run—to piggyback onto this job, so to speak.

When going this route, keep in mind that it takes 50-100 sheets of the stock in question to give you a good evaluation.

Most importantly, the images of the original press run naturally have not been adjusted to allow for your paper’s hue; therefore printing on a cream or ivory color sheet will give your CMY and K a warmer tint. To allow skin tones to appear as natural as possible, yellow should be subtracted from the image’s midtones to compensate for the stock color.

And don’t forget timing. Allow a few extra days until your printer actually runs a similar job with the same sheet size as yours to give you an educated or fair evaluation.

The founder of PaperSpecsan independent and comprehensive online paper databaseand PaperTalks, a weekly e-newsletter, Sabine Lenz has worked on design projects ranging from corporate identities to major road shows and product launches. Additionally, she is a speaker on paper issues and educational topics related to the paper industry.