To provide a gravure printing method which uses an aqueous printing ink and exhibits high fogging resistance in a printing plate, outstanding inking characteristics of a light part (a dot skip) and excellent halftone dot shape (a doughnut phenomenon) and also shows high operating efficiency and economy.

This gravure printing method creates printed matter using an impression cylinder with a rubber hardness of 75 to 90 Hs, a ceramic plated doctor blade with a cutting edge thickness of 50 to 70 μm, a printing plate (a gravure cylinder) with a chromium hardness of 950 to 1,100 Hv and an aqueous gravure ink. As the aqueous gravure ink, 12 different color base inks including eight basic colors at the most, yellow, vermillion, indigo, black, red (or orange), verdure (or green), purple and white, and transparent yellow, gold, silver and an almost transparent medium for color density adjustment (including an extender pigment, if necessary), are prepared. Thus the gravure printing is performed by changing the assortment of the necessary base ink colors according to a printcopy. Alternatively, a special ink of at least a single color prepared by mixing the necessary inks selected from those of the eight basic colors, is used.