A Colorful Way to Low Budget Printed Designs

For some, one factor that makes a design costly is the need to use too many colors. Indeed, spot color designs are exciting enough as process design. Extras are needed, though to have your designs stand out among others. Now, here are several useful tricks that can be easily applied…If you have not yet encountered ideas of making one or two colors look like many colors, then this list of tricks is for you! Dig in and learn.

Get into the spirit of it, here are ingenious ideas on how to save money and still maximize the color on your designs:

1.Overprinting colors to create a third color – have you discovered this tactic yet? Once a color prints over another, a third color is created. It’s like the principle of mixing colors on canvass. Many colors are created as they are mixed together. Just have the right understanding of how colors work – basically you might consider looking up into a color wheel. Then, coordinate your printer well for the desired overprinting results.
2.Your paper’s color as a third color – technology has brought interesting innovation in paper production. We owe the many colored and designed papers to this technology. Take advantage of them, then! You may save a lot just by having your needed color already in the paper you are using. Solid papers with a slightly different color than those with traditional white or cream can bring outstanding results for your print-out designs.
3.Tinting your colors – you may take advantage of this by using a variety of tints on one or two colors you are using. Tinting creates an effect that you’re using many colors since a 10% of a certain color is different than 80% of it. You can have about 20 different colors already just by experimenting on color tints.
4.Duotones can be useful - duotone is a photograph printed in two colors. If you experiment enough with duotones, you might come up with subtle effects akin to sepia tones to colorful posterized photos
5.White text on solid or tinted boxes – instead of using another color for text that’s inside a solid or tinted box, try white as your font color. This way, you will also be able to use reverse text sparingly.
6.Rubber stamping can be money-saving, though time-consuming – try getting creative in using rubber stamps especially if you’re on a scrap-booking project.
7.Laser foil for your laser printer – there are manufacturers out there that produce and sell foils which could go along very well with your laser printer. There are also those that you can master copy. On your inkjet, copy the foil and use it with a copier. It may be time consuming, though.
8.Stickers and/or colored or foil labels – there are many various colored stickers and foil labels on market which you can use to enhance your printed design output. You can even print the text you want onto colored or foil labels and then stick them in your printed pieces.
9.Creative scissors and punches to the rescue – scissors and paper punch with unusual edges can be very useful in your low-budget pursuits. The scissors may prove to be a money-saving alternative to costly die cuts.