Compact Disc Design

How Parts of a Com­pact Disc Affect Design

The indi­vid­ual parts of a com­pact disc pro­vide unique graphic design chal­lenges and oppor­tu­ni­ties for desk­top pub­lish­ers and designers.

Main print­able area

The main sec­tion of the disc: This is where the audio or data is encoded. Col­ors printed on this sur­face will tend to appear darker than they would on white paper. Depend­ing on the ink cov­er­age, dif­fer­ing amounts of the sil­ver sur­face will show through. Higher ink cov­er­age (darker col­ors, in gen­eral) means you’ll see less of the reflec­tive sur­face show­ing through. Less ink cov­er­age, with print dots more spaced apart (lighter col­ors, in gen­eral), will reveal more of the under­ly­ing disc surface.

Mir­ror band

This is the ring area just inside of the main print area. The mir­ror band is not encoded with data so it has a dif­fer­ent reflec­tive qual­ity, appear­ing darker than any other part of the com­pact disc. Gen­er­ally the mir­ror band is etched with the name of the man­u­fac­turer, as well as a num­ber or bar­code iden­ti­fi­ca­tion asso­ci­ated with the client audio mas­ter. The effect of print­ing on the mir­ror band is a dark­en­ing of the text or images as com­pared to that of the main print area. Just inside of the mir­ror band is the stack­ing ring.

Stack­ing ring

On the under­side of each disc, this thin ring of raised plas­tic is used to keep a small amount of space between each disc when stacked up for box­ing and/or ship­ping. It pre­vents the flat sur­faces from scrap­ing against each other, which could scratch either the printed tops or the read­able bot­toms of the discs. Even though it is on the under­side, some man­u­fac­tur­ers are unable to print over the stack­ing ring area due to a small “trough” cre­ated on the top sur­face when they mold their discs. Other man­u­fac­tur­ers mold com­pact discs that are smooth on the top and have no prob­lem print­ing over the stack­ing ring area.

Hub

This is the inner­most por­tion of the disc, made of clear plas­tic, and includes the stack­ing ring. Print­ing over the hub area is sim­i­lar to the effect of print­ing on trans­parency media. The lighter the color, the more the trans­parency effect is present, due to the small, widely spaced print dots that are used to pro­duce light col­ors. With heavy ink cov­er­age over the hub, the trans­parency is far less notice­able. How­ever, all col­ors will appear dif­fer­ent when printed over the clear plas­tic hub as com­pared to the other opaque sur­faces of the com­pact disc.

A Basic Solu­tion to the Inconsistencies

Apply­ing a white base coat over the disc’s entire print area before print­ing the design lessens the dark­en­ing effect of the mir­ror band, and also lessens the trans­parency effect of the plas­tic hub. The white base (some­times termed “white flood”) acts like a primer coat, so the final design more closely resem­bles print­ing on the white paper of stan­dard jewel case inserts, wal­lets, posters etc. If your CD design includes pho­tos, par­tic­u­larly faces, a white flood will make them look more nat­ural. It can also help to match col­ors used on the printed inserts. Most man­u­fac­tur­ers will not auto­mat­i­cally sug­gest a white flood, and they may charge for it as they would any other ink, but it can make a big dif­fer­ence in the appear­ance of your designed disc.

Pro­fes­sional CD design encom­passes much more than manip­u­lat­ing images, text and col­ors with com­puter pro­grams: Even the most care­fully cho­sen type­face won’t com­mu­ni­cate effec­tively if visu­ally lost over the dif­fer­ent areas of a printed sur­face; clouds or snow on a CD design will be white only if you use white as one of your printed col­ors. The char­ac­ter­is­tics of the tan­gi­ble item you are design­ing for play a crit­i­cal role in the over­all design process. The com­pact disc is no excep­tion. Know­ing its anatomy helps make bet­ter design decisions.

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