This morning I spent the morning working on my logo concepts, but at lunchtime I found out that Julian didn't want me to email the client until Wednesday (as at that point it will have been a week since they paid the deposit) to arrange a meeting. However, although I am running the meeting Julian also needs to sit in on and he is already booked in meetings on Wednesday afternoon and Thursday, meaning that they can't come in until Friday at the earliest. When I found this out I decided to leave the branding for today and work on something else, so I took on a business card design for a millinery business.
While I was working this business card, Adam asked if I had ever used a PANTONE formula guide, to which I had to admit that I hadn't. He showed me the formula guide they have in the office and explained that when choosing colours for print jobs it is good practice to always used the PANTONE formula guide, as these colours can look very different on screen that when printed. He then went on to show me how to find the PANTONE colour books in Illustrator, explaining that if I use the PANTONE Colour Bridge CMYK EC swatches the I can use the PANTONE colour guide to find the colours I want and then find the matching swatches by their number.
This has been an extremely important tip for me today and I will now religiously use the PANTONE formula guide for all print jobs. In the past I have always used CMYK colours for every job I do as I wasn't aware of the difference between colour modes and which should be used for which job. This would explain why sometimes when printed the colours don't look as I expected them to. A good example of this is the work that I completed for the MDes Exhibition module. When designing my brand on screen the green background looked extremely pale and the logo worked well on top, however when printed the green was a lot brighter on paper, making it hard for the logo to stand out.
I have used the PANTONE formula guide to choose colours for a business card this afternoon and I can already see that the difference is significant. I have produced a gradient that on screen is very subtle, but according to the formula guide it will be more noticeable when printed.
In the future I will definitely look to purchasing my own PANTONE formula guide for print jobs, but in the mean time I will get into the habit of printing a selection of colours to choose from before I complete a design so that I know what to expect when it is printed. My next step is to learn the difference between colour modes and when they should be used. As a designer it is essential I have the knowledge anyway, but my branding project includes designing the branding, business cards, letterheads and a web page meaning I will need to know which colour mode to use and when, and the best way to match up colours from different colour modes.
Following my diary entry I researched the difference between colour modes. According to Dummies (2014), Basic RGB is used when the final destination is "web, a mobile device, a video player, a colour copier or desktop printer, or a screen presentation.", whereas basic CMYK is used if "you're taking your illustration to a professional printer and the files will be separated into cyan, magenta, yellow and black plates for printing". Graphics (2014) add that all cameras save images in RGB mode, so any editing should be done in this mode and then converted to CMYK if necessary. They also expand on the colour modes in Photoshop, explaining that Bitmap mode are pixels that are either 100% black or 100% white and no layers, filters, or adjustment commands are available, and the file must be converted to Grayscale first, Grayscale mode changes the pixels to black, white and 254 shades of gray, duotone is a grayscale image printed using two or more extra plates, which add tonal richness and depth, and in Indexed Color mode contains just one channel and a maximum number of 256 colours or shades in an 8-bit colour table.
In terms of the difference between CMYK colours and Pantone colours, Boyd (2009) explains that CMYK is ideal for full colour images whereas Pantone is ideal for stationary and logo designs. Pantone (2014) expand by saying that "to save money, the spot colour should be evaluated to see how it will look if printed in CMYK...As the quality of the resulting colour conversion is very subjective, the designer can make decisions using the PANTONE COLOR BRIDGE guide."
BOYD, Peter (2009). When to Use CMYK colors v. Pantone colors. PaperStreet. [online]. Posted 13th April, last accessed 9th February 2014 at https://www.paperstreet.com/blog/1449
DUMMIES (2014). Adobe CS5 Illustrator Colour Modes. [online]. Last accessed 9th February 2014 at http://www.dummies.com/how-to/content/adobe-cs5-illustrator-color-mode.html
GRAPHICS (2014). Photoshop CS6 Fundamentals: Color Modes. [online]. Last accessed 9th February 2014 at http://www.graphics.com/article-old/photoshop-cs6-fundamentals-color-modes
PANTONE (2014). spot vs. process color recognizing the differences. [online]. Last accessed 9th February 2014 at http://www.pantone.co.uk/pages/pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=19890&ca=24
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