Help with printing on black background please

Question

Hi I designed a safety poster for my employer that I need to print numerous in 24x36 and smaller sizes. I’ve attached a link at bottom to a generic version without our details for sharing purposes. The snip is of the AI file on my screen. The pdf is the press quality of the same file. And there’s a 300dpi jpg. All cmyk.

The hex shaped “torch” is a feather brush and the “sparks” are a scatter brush with hundreds of tiny shapes. You can see on the AI snip the sparks are exaggerated so they’ll show up on the pdf. I also subtracted slightly larger of all the same scatter brush shapes from the rich black background and put an orange bg behind all of it.

So how do I know, by looking at my files, how well all of this (including all the text) will print since it’s on a black background? My printer does not do test prints and I can’t have my employer waste money on posters that don’t print well.

Thank you so much to anyone offering input....

Illustrator

Bobby Henderson · Accepted Answer

I would consider printing a reduced size copy of the graphic just to see how the color and black background would look when printed. Normally I use some sort of "rich black" formula to make sure the black really prints black rather than a dark gray (which is what tends to happen when using only 100% black ink for black).

For banners, if you have a printer (or access to one) that can print directly onto roll banner material then it doesn't matter how complicated the artwork may be. If the graphics would be printed onto vinyl, contour cut and then manually applied to banners you would need to create a simple cut line outside of the edges of your design. The banners would have to already be black like the background in your artwork. The scatter brush effects are pretty complicated. It's one thing for a plotter blade to cut such detail. But then the vinyl has to be manually weeded by hand, which could be a real chore.

Bobby Henderson · Answer

If the artwork is being printed onto black material the printer would need to be able to print passes of white ink and then color for the graphics to be visible. It takes a large format printer with special capabilities to do this. What kind of printer is being used? A standard printer would need to print both the black background color and the graphics onto white material. Printing on white vinyl and contour cutting it (for application onto the black material) does not look like an option since the edges of the artwork appear too complex.

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