Color of paper of Yellow Pages?
This might seem like one of those trick questions like, “What is in a cheese sandwich?” or “Who’s buried in Grant’s tomb?”
But I’ve been wondering about something in the yellow books (pages) that I get. Here are two images from the local book.
This is a typical ad from the book. In this case blue ink with a black screen is printed.
On first glance it looks like blue ink has been printed onto the yellow paper along with the black ink. But as the closeup shows, there is a knockout where the blue ink hits the “yellow” paper. You can see the small areas where the blue ink merges with the yellow to create a slight green trap.
Here’s another example:
In this case there’s a nice white background for the black and green ink to appear with no yellow underneath.
So, here are my questions:
How did the blue ink stay blue in the first ad?
Is there a white color underneath the blue ink to keep it from turning green.
How did the white area get on the page?
Is a yellow ink that is applied to all the white pages? Seems doubtful as it would be cheaper to just buy yellow paper. After all, they do call them Yellow Pages.
Is a bleaching agent applied to delete the yellow on the page? If so, I’ve never heard of such a thing. Can anyone explain?
Does anyone have experience with yellow (or non-yellow) pages?
5 Responses to “Color of paper of Yellow Pages?”
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Hi Sandee,
I am not sure about your sample but in Belgium, yellow pages are made with white paper completely covered with yellow ink. It makes sense because you can ask your customer to pay an extra if they want to have their ads on a white background…
Hi Thierry,
This is great information.
I suspect that it is the same for the NY book I have.
However, can anyone tell me if this has always been the case?
I can’t believe that for all the years I’ve opened the yellow pages, the paper started as white!
White paper, Yellow ink. I have been told that it is more cost effective to print the yellow on the paper than it is to buy yellow paper for the yellow pages.
Thanks PJ for the information!
The more I thought about it, the more I realized it was white paper with yellow ink.
But I wonder if that was always the case.
I suspect that the yellow paper in the books I grew up with was actual yellow paper.
But isn’t it interesting what you find when you take a look at things more closely.
Well, for that answer, we need to find a phone book from yesteryear and put it under the loupe. Of course, with the paper being as porous as it is, we may never know (unless we find someone from the industry that can tell us).