Silkscreen Printed CDs - Tutorial Number Three

Silkscreen Print Design 101 - Printing Without A White Flood

It's possible to use the shiny aluminum/silver disc surface colour in your design. Doing so can be very effective but it's important to understand how much room you actually have to work with. Regardless of whether you are creating a design with 'positive' print (solid lettering and/or graphics printing on the silver background) or a 'negative' print (printing a solid colour that utilizes the disc's surface as the colour for your lettering and/or graphics) be aware that there are actually three different parts of the disc that can be printed onto:

(A) The largest area is the aluminum/silver coloured area that holds the disc data/content.

(B) Closer to the middle there is the "mirror band" which is a very shiny/reflect silver colour.

(C) Surrounding the center hole there is an area which will either be clear plastic (as is generally the case with a CD disc) or additional shiny/reflective silver (which is generally the case with a DVD disc).

A replicated compact disc (CD) was used in the example shown above. In the left-hand column the example illustrates the process of printing a disc using a white flood (aka: white 'backprint') prior to printing the graphics. Most designers utilize the white flood print as it provides a clean white/neutral background for the graphics to be printed on as well as actually enhancing the colour of the printed graphics. This is much the same principle as painting the walls in your house... applying paint onto a white coloured wall provides a much better result than trying to apply paint to a dark coloured wall.

The example in the right-hand column shows what can happen if you create a design that utilizes the disc's surface as an element of your design (ie: no white flood) but not factoring in the three different components that make up the disc's surface. As you can see, the change in the background colour negatively affects the visual appeal and legibility of the design.

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Avoiding The "Danger Area" In Your Disc Design

As noted above, there are actually three different parts of the disc that can be printed onto. If you'd like to utilize the aluminum/silver colour of the disc's surface in your design but avoid the hazards of any unsightly overlaps onto the mirror band and/or center section of the disc, the 'danger area' is within a 36mm diameter (18mm radius) of the center of the disc.

Important: By saying "center of the disc" it means measuring outward from the center of the center-hole in the middle of the disc... it does NOT mean measuring outward from the edge of the center-hole.

If you're creating a 'negative' print (printing a solid colour that utilizes the disc's surface as the colour for your lettering and/or graphics) the solid colour can still overlap the mirror band and center section of the disc... it's only the areas that knock-through to show the disc colouration that should be kept outside the 36mm diameter 'danger area'.

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Getting The Best Of Both Worlds - Using A 'Custom' White Flood

It's possible to create a 'custom' white flood which allows you to be selective about what parts of your 'negative' print knock through to the silver of the disc and what parts knock through to the white flood. As shown in the example below, it doesn't matter that the "ABC123" lettering is inside the 'danger zone' because there's a white flood behind it, but the "@" symbol is well outside the danger zone so it can be knocked through to silver.

Depending on how many colours are in your design, your quoted price may not include a custom white flood should you require one. Please contact us to confirm.

Important: There are limitations to what can be effectively printed using a custom white flood. Small text/graphics, fine text/graphics, and very tight registration can pose problems and may not be printable. Additionally, when supplying your artwork that includes a custom white flood you must design the custom white as a distinctly separate colour (learn more about colour separations) and include a notation on your Order Forms that a custom white flood is required.





















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Additional design tutorials are also available on our website:

• Silkscreen print colour separations
• Silkscreen print design using less than 100% solid colour
• Colour accuracy

CDwest.ca provides factory-direct CD manufacturing and CD duplication services plus a wide range of the most popular print and eco-packaging alternatives on the market. Of particular interest are our eco-friendly CD Sleeves and CD Digipak.
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Silkscreen Printed CDs - Tutorial Number Two

We've gotten some pretty good feedback on our initial Tutorial for Silkscreen Printed discs on how to create colour separations, so we have followed up with Tutorial Number Two: Using Less Than 100% Solid Colour.

We find a lot of todays do-it-yourself designers (as well as a good number of professional designers) that we come into contact with aren't experienced in designing for commercial print, and don't realize that designing for multimedia or the internet has a whole different set of rules than commercial print.

For those designers, Silkscreen printing must seem like some sinister plot to drive them mad.

One of the greatest things about designing for computer-screen viewing is "what you see is what you get" (aka: WYSIWYG) ... you get to proof your designs on the very same display device that the finished design will be viewed on (we will conveniently ignore the fact that the colours may look different when viewed on other monitors).

With commercial print, what you see on your monitor may very well NOT be what you get and Silkscreen printing could be the biggest offender. Proof-in-point is when you use less than 100% solid colours in your design but, rather than re-hash it all here in this post, it's better to check out the tutorial which shows images of the difference between what you see on your monitor and what will actually print.

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Graphic Design Tutorial - Silkscreen Printing CDs

CD manufacturing, print and packaging involves a lot of technology and complicated equipment, so it does seem kind of unusual that such an ‘old school’ method like Silkscreen Printing is still so viable for CD printing.

At CDwest.ca we offer both CMYK Offset Printing and Silkscreen Printing for our CDs, and there’s no doubt that Silkscreen Printing is still the best choice for *some* types of CD designs. Unfortunately there is an inherent difficulty with using such an old school style of print, in the fact that so very few graphic designers are experienced with it and know (A) what the limitations of Silkscreen Printing CDs are, and (B) how to properly set-up their design files for Silkscreen Printing CDs.

The largest single issue we experience is colour separations… or lack thereof… so we have created a very simple tutorial to get your graphic design started in the right direction.

Additional aspects of graphic design for Silkscreen Printing CDs will be covered in later installments, which will include the use of bitmap images, designing using colours that are less than 100% solid, and specifying the correct colour values for Silkscreen Printing on CDs.

As always, before beginning the graphic design for your CD duplication or CD replication project, follow our artwork specifications and use our design templates - that on its own will help you avoid the most commonly made mistakes!

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