How do I create colors in Adobe® Illustrator®?

Important
Talk to your Herff Jones representative before you decide to use color on your yearbook pages. The use of color may involve additional charges.

There are two ways to print color on your yearbook pages:
Spot Color
A spot color is an extra color ink added to the page. Choose spot colors from the Herff Jones Your Colors booklet or Pantone® formula guide to add individual colors to elements on a page. For example, a black and white page could be accented with headlines printed in a red spot color. The use of one spot color on a black-and-white spread requires an additional printing plate on the press: one to print black and another to print red.
Process color
Color photographs are reproduced on yearbook pages using process colors, which simulate the continuous tones in a color photograph by combining four hues: cyan (blue), magenta, yellow, and black. These four-color pages are more expensive than spot color pages (using one or two spot colors with black) because the press requires a separate printing plate for each process color.
Process Color Blends
If you are printing four-color photographs on a page and would like to create type or graphics for the page in color as well, use a process color blend. With a process blend, you can simulate a spot color by combining specific percentages of cyan, magenta, yellow and black. Do not choose a color based on what you see on your computer monitor. Choose process blends from the Herff Jones Your Colors booklet or Pantone® formula guide. Do not choose a color by viewing it on a computer monitor.

Process Color

• Open the Swatches panel

• Click on the Swatches panel pop-up menu.
• Select New Color Swatch.

• In the New Color Swatch dialog box:
  • Color Type: Choose Process from the pop-up menu.
  • Color Mode: Choose CMYK from the pop-up menu. 
• Choose ink percentages for the C, M, Y, K fields.
  • The color will be named with the correct percentages of the inks used.
• Click OK.

• The color is added to the Swatches panel.

Spot Color

• Go to Windows > Swatch Libraries > Color Books > Pantone Solid Coated.
  • Choose the color matching system you are using; it may not be Pantone Solid Coated.
• The spot color panel for the color system you chose opens on the page.

• To easily find a certain color, add the Find field.
• Choose Show Find Field from the panel menu.

• Type the Pantone number in the Find field and the color will be highlighted.