The division between designers and printers is becoming increasingly blurred as the capabilities of the desktop environment improve. Electronic imaging is one area where this disintegration is rapidly occurring. Abilities that were formerly the domain of the color separator, image assembler, and printer, such as scanning, color correction, and film separation, are available through many popular software programs. Unfortunately, the education required to allow the proper application of these software options is not as accessible as the tools themselves. Both printers and graphic designers will have to educate themselves about the emerging and changing technologies of the other. Eventually a common language will develop to facilitate the smooth production of designs created on the desktop. It is vital to the industry that students of design learn the terminology and technology of the printer, and that students of printing learn the terminology and technology of the designer. Educational institutes are one logical place for this process to begin. The purpose of this project was to develop a teaching tool addressing this need. The area of color was chosen as a focus because it is one of the areas where terminology and past learning experiences may conflict. A solid understanding of color is also becoming increasingly important as desktop systems operators prepare graphic designs directly for imagesetting. Interactive multimedia was determined to be the appropriate format for such a project and the subject matter was further defined. The result is a tutorial, created for beginning graphic and printing design students, which teaches the basic concepts of additive and subtractive color
