The work aims to study the application of interactive orthogonal design in gravure printing water-based ink in order to obtain the best formulation of water-based ink in printing products quickly. The appearance quality of 18 water-based ink printing products printed by 9 color gravure press was evaluated by chromatic aberration instrument and visual inspection. Through orthogonal experimental design and the combination of range analysis and variance analysis, the appearance quality of 18 water-based ink prints were analyzed. A2B1C1 was the best combination, and the average value of printed matter was 91. The analysis of silver color block showed that the combination of A2B1 was the best. At this time, the silver color block was 41. By the analysis of red color block, the combination of A1C2 and A2C1 was better, the average value was 47 and 46, respectively. In the process of analysis, there was a complex interaction between white ink and red ink, white ink and silver ink. Interactive orthogonal experimental design applied to gravure water-based ink is an efficient, fast and economical experiment.