Happy Printing Ink Day (13/365)

It’s National Printing Ink Day so here’s a simple map-like illustration made from the three main inks used in four-colour offset printing., cyan, magenta, and yellow. Now – given you’re likely seeing this map on a screen, and it’s never actually been printed, then what you’re looking at are the additive mixing of red, green, and blue but let’s not let that minor issue ruin it. It’s also not really halftone but maybe our AI hasn’t quite grasped that yet.

Illustrative map using print colours

Original prompt (ChatGPT)

Using only three print colours cyan, magenta, and yellow, make an illustrative world map of countries with halftone symbol fills and, as far as possible, use the four color theorem so no two adjacent countries are the same fill colour.