What Does a Hair Cut and Colour matching have in common

One of the most common questions I get asked by designers is how a certain spot colour will look when it's printed out of 4 colour process.

This whole conversation becomes much more complicated when we take into account the colour of the material we're printing on and even more pronounced when textured or silver materials are used.

I was thinking about colour matching while trying to cut my son's hair and had an epiheny!

Colour management is a complex science and I don't purport to be an ink specialist or even a colour management expert, but having been involved in the business my whole career, I have picked up a few things.

"The colour I have chosen in illustrator is the same as what will be printed."

"I've chosen a pantone from the book, so that's how it will look on the finished packaging and it should look the same on the label, the box and the card insert."

"If we're printing on silver, the colours will be brighter."

"All colours can be printed using 4 colour process."

"The artwork on the pdf is bright and punchy, so that's what the print will look like."

"Colour matching is an exact science, and there's lots of colour control mechanism which can make sure it looks how I expect."

I could make a whole blog about each of these topics, but they indicate that there's a whole range of variables which can impact the final result compared to the initial design intent. For this reason, it's important that your designer understands the medium and method in order to ensure the final result looks good.

With packaging, there are often multiple materials involved, making this process a whole lot more complicated.

Most printers you talk to will say that greys and pastel colours always cause them headaches, and while instinctively we know this, I often find I'm pulling my hair out explaining to a designer that the colour they've chosen will never work out the way they expect.

When it comes to cutting hair, we instinctively know that the shorter it is the more often it needs cutting. The reason for this is to do with the relative length. If it's a number one all over a week's growth will more than double the length. Whereas if you have shoulder length hair, a month of growth may not be noticeable.

If we think about colour as the amount of ink on the paper, the analogy becomes clear.

The hardest thing to see when looking at your screen is the amount of ink involved.

The colour sliders (1-100%) give a guide to how much ink will be printed.

Usually the paler the colour, the less ink is involved.

With spot colours 100% is the colour, and any less is a paler version of the colour (called a tint)

If you have a slightly yellow material, and apply 5% of cyan for example, you're going to get a green colour. A 1 or 2% variance is going to have a big impact visually, the difference between 5% and 6% is 20%. If there's 80% cyan, there will be more blue than yellow, so the cyan will be dominant.

A 1 or 2% variance is negligible and not going to make a visual difference (the percentage difference between 80 and 82 is roughly 2.5%)

So like hair, the less there is, the more noticeable it is when there's a change.

If you have a problem colour or are struggling with brand consistency in your packaging, feel free to give us a call or get in touch to find out some of the ways we can help.