I’m disappointed, frustrated. A few weeks ago, I ordered two large format prints (100 cm wide) of images from my photobook on the lockdown in Antwerp. Both had – of course – a large number of vibrant deep blues, plus a touch of red. When I received the prints, the…
You may have read my previous article, on XCMYK and the business case: my ‘corona photobook’. Since the publication of that article, a lot has happened. And it’s an interesting story, and sometimes a sad one. But in the end: I got my book printed, in the quality I wanted!…
XCMYK is a rather simple method to produce an ‘expanded’ gamut with your standard printing inks on your standard, four-color printing press. You only need FM-screening, or another non-traditional screening, and a higher ink density. Although it seems an exciting technology, I recently found that it’s tough to find a printer using it. Which is a shame: there is definitely a business case for this.
In a previous post, I already covered the fact that not all black is designed equal. ‘Black’ can be composed in different ways when going to print. And this is becoming very relevant when designing food packaging. A brand of breakfast cereals I recently discovered shows you why. In a…
It has been an interesting week. Tuesday my newspaper had an article on the (in)famous Yves Klein Blue. But the printed color was purple… Later this week, I noticed some images with better conversions, but with others, it was the same issue again. When it comes to converting blue from…
In case you wondered: I’m not the only one with a special interest for brand colors in real life. Recently I came across two research papers by Michael Abildgaard Pedersen from the Danish School of Media and Journalism, examining both brand colors / brand guides (300+ / 156) and print…
Color is probably the main quality criterium when dealing with print. And lower deviations are better, leading to some people demanding, defending a delta E 2000 of 2 for brand colors. But this raises a few questions, among which what the reference is and how reliable that reference is. And…
Over the last few decades, print has seen a significant increase in quality. Just go to your bookshelf and take a look at an old book with color pictures to see it with your own eyes. And still today efforts are made to increase quality. One of them is certainly…
Your logo, your brand colors are important to you, especially when you’re a designer or a marketer. You care about how it is being reproduced, whether it is on a website, on a printed piece of paper, or any other kind of reproduction. And you should take all those kinds…
Designers know black. Especially when it comes to fashion. When looking at print, it might be a bit more complicated and sometimes strange things can happen to black, unintentionally. Last week I got two different mail pieces that contained a ‘weird’ black. Let’s take a closer look at black and…
With screens all around us, some people also use them for color evaluation. But that’s not always a good idea: there are multiple factors that can influence the color that is displayed. Let’s look at the three main reasons why it can go wrong: the screen as such, the operating…
Do you remember the first inauguration of Barack Obama as president? It seems like ages ago, but I clearly remember one detail: Michelle Obama’s coat. And more specifically: the color of her coat. When watching the journal on TV I saw a dress that looked a kind of gold to…
When designing a brand logo, you want it to reflect the brand, its values. And you want it to reflect these values every time the brand logo is reproduced. So you think about form and color. And maybe, at the end, about printing that logo. Which is not ideal: you…
In preparation of a future article, I should explain you the basic of color management. Don’t run away! The concept of ‘ICC based color management’ is not that difficult. But too many people can not or will not explain it in easy terms. That’s what I would like to do…