Ink & Colour Mixing

Our pressroom is supported by our in-house Ink Lab, where technicians combine hard science and intuition to produce the ideal ink - in terms of colour, consistency and performance characteristics.

Hemlock has the distinct advantage of having an Ink Lab on its premises. This means that all custom Pantone/spot colours can be mixed in-house on an on-demand basis. In our Ink Lab, we rely on the expertise, experience and gut instincts of the finest ink technicians around.

Mike Bartlett, manager of our Ink Lab, explains the ink development process. “The first step in matching a colour request is to go to our printed colour sample books and look for something that is close to the requested colour. We then adjust the colour blend of a small sample ink batch until it is visually close to the target. Then, on a swatch of the specified paper stock, we run a draw down test — as a colour proof — using a hand-driven roller device to apply an ink sample on the paper at the same thickness it would be printed on press. We keep on adjusting until the match is perfect and then prepare a draw down sheet then goes to the client for approval.”

Hemlock can prepare custom ink mixes to match any Pantone colours specified by our clients, on both coated and uncoated stocks, resulting in a consistent corporate identification regardless of the stock being used.