181: Thou shall not use more than two Pantone colors with a CMYK print job

Commentary There’s an obvious benefit to using the CMYK printing process—you can create any color you want by mixing the four inks. To have more than two Pantone colors as well would be superfluous. It may be that you are running a fluorescent or a metallic ink (or both) with the CMYK set, which is fine, although you should always make an effort to show constraint, otherwise your end design could be quite vulgar and “showy” when printed. Another reason is the cost. There are five-, six-, seven-, and even eight-color presses, although most commonly found is six. So that’s six inks: four taken up by CMYK, then two more inks or, more commonly, one special ink and a varnish to finish, allowing the print job to be done in a single pass. To add more special colors would mean running the sheets through the press again, which would be expensive and wasteful. Also, you have to ask yourself: would your design really be any better? PD