The inked image is transferred from a printing plate to a rubber blanket and then the image is transferred again to the paper. Generally the printing will be done out of the standard four-colour process.

This means that the artwork is separated onto four different printing plates and each plate prints a specific single colour – cyan, magenta, yellow and black (CMYK).

Together these colours combine to create a full-colour print. Additional printing plates might also be added to print spot colours. These may be special inks such as fluorescent or metallic or a specific Pantone ink that matches a corporate colour