Tried printing a design on a neon yellow paper and the ink almost disappeared

I thought neon yellow would make my flyer pop for a garage sale in Phoenix last weekend. But the black text turned into a faint gray mess, totally unreadable from 5 feet away. Has anyone else had a color combo fail on bright stock like this?

2 comments

2 Comments

the_diana7d agoMost Upvoted

3 packs of that neon yellow paper from Staples and I had to redo the whole run on regular white. @jordangibson mentioned dark purple or navy which is interesting but I actually found that a really dark brown works too, almost like a dark chocolate color. Something about how the yellow reflects light makes black ink just give up entirely, it's like the paper wins the fight. I ended up just printing white text on a black background and layering that over the yellow in Photoshop instead. Saved the flyers but took way longer than I planned.

jordangibson7d ago

Man I learned that lesson the hard way too. Had a friend who ran a small print shop and he told me neon paper is basically a black hole for ink cause the dye in the paper fights with the toner or something. He swears by using a dark rich purple or a deep navy blue for the text if you gotta use bright stock like that, said it shows way better than black even though it sounds backwards. My garage sale flyer ended up looking like a weird optical illusion where the words just vanished into the paper, total waste of 20 sheets. Neon yellow is a trap for anyone not ready for it thats for sure.