A historic photomechanical process for adding texture, shading, and secondary colors to line work. It relies on applying transparent sheets of precisely spaced dots or lines over specific areas of an image before engraving. By overlapping different screens, printers could create the illusion of optical color mixing without the cost of complex separations.
Heard on the job
We need a heavy Ben Day on the background to make the foreground figures pop.
Insider tip
Although obsolete in commercial printing, the aesthetic lives on in pop art and comic book styling.
Also heard as
- Ben Day process
- Ben Day dots