Many years back, at the cusp of consumer internet taking off I owned a magazine company - we worked purely in print. Pure black is often not the correct colour

Many years back, at the cusp of consumer internet taking off I owned a magazine company - we worked purely in print. Pure black is often not the correct colour for text, unless it’s monokrome (“B&W”) printing, rather than CMYK (but more on that later, because B&W monokrome black is often not “true black” either). If you are printing CMYK you rarely use key (“K” - black) on its own, but rather use a CMYK mix to build a black shade, to give a rich black (more M) or cooler black (more C) or balanced black - neutral but not stark. The different mix can really change the way a page feels - and the right mix on the right paper (“stock”) can make the black pop or muddy, and have a huge impact on readability. This is really important when you’re designing for print. It really does make the difference between someone continuing to read and chucking your print aside after a paragraph. Good print designers know how to build different blacks for different stock. When you are printing in monokrome black you are really printing g a shade of grey, to a greater or lesser extent, determined by the absorbency of the paper you are printing on. And, indeed, different inks have different qualities so some “black” ink for monokrome print maybe be built from various pigments giving it a slight blue sheen or a brownish tint under certain lights. Plus inks - and the paper substrate - are more or less reflective meaning they will behave and appear differently depending on the light conditions. I loved working in print.