A color that is printed from one printing plate which contains one matched color of ink. Spot colors are used when only one or two solid colors are needed on a page or when a color has to match perfectly and be consistent such as with a company logo or when colors are the trademark of the organization or message. For example, you can be sure that IBM's "Big Blue" color is a carefully chosen spot color mix that the company is quite particular about! If spot color is used along with process color, then a four-color print job becomes a five or six-color job. Contrast with
process color.