Designing with DayGlo

DayGlo fluorescent colors are wild by nature. Working with them should be too! This post will give you some tips and tricks to incorporating fluorescent color into your designs in an impactful and effective way.

Solids - Bold DayGlo fluorescent colors look best at full industrial strength. Screened down colors are quickly reduced to the same value as conventional colors. To get the full benefits of these powerful colors, keep their intensity high. You may even want to  hit  the color twice (a color overprinting the same color again) to make it even more vivid.

Contrast - Design in contrast. DayGlo fluorescent colors will pop the best against a contrasting color, especially black. In most cases, DayGlo fluorescent colors are light in value. A contrasting dark background will make your DayGlo fluorescent colors scream. Experiment with contrasting fluorescent colors too, try Saturn Yellow against Signal Green!

Photos - Keeping in mind that solids are ideal for showcasing DayGlo fluorescent color, go for high-contrast images. Use all of the designer s effects such as multi-colored duotones, tritones, screened backgrounds, posterization and mezzotints. Try different Photoshop filters and have fun with it!

Vector Illustrations - These are ideally suited to solid colors. Comic style illustrations will jump from the page. Wild and zany characters are just longing to be colored with DayGlo fluorescent colors. Try incorporating colorful patterns into your illustrations too.

Overprinting - One of the cool aspects about working with DayGlo fluorescent colors is that they are relatively transparent, similar to 4-color process colors. When a DayGlo fluorescent ink overprints another color, there is a lot of interplay. Two DayGlo fluorescent inks can overprint (print over each other, with various screen tints or even at full strength) to create a new color. Aurora Pink overprinting Saturn Yellow, for example, will create a vibrant fluorescent orange. Try replacing your CMYK colors with DayGlo fluorescent colors and make new fluorescent combinations. Blend our fluorescent colors with your process colors to produce cleaner and brighter printing results.

Create New Colors - Mix DayGlo fluorescent colors with white and/or conventional colors to yield a unique new color range. For fluorescent tints, add an opaque white to a fluorescent color to reduce the strong fluorescent color to an unusually clean, bright pastel. For semi-fluorescent colors, add conventional color to fluorescent color to achieve immediate brightness. For fluorescent blends, mix two DayGlo fluorescent colors to produce intermediate fluorescent hues.

If you need samples/swatches, submit a request on the form here and use them to ensure you have a match once your design is printed!