Color Basics Archives - insights4print.ceo

The Google 41 shades of blue test, valued at 200 Million US$ revenue increase, is fundamentally flawed

01/02/2022 Eddy Hagen

The recent Color 22 conference had an interesting speaker: dr. Terry Wu, about neuromarketing. My LinkedIn feed was full of it! And neuromarketing is an exciting topic. E.g. emotions can influence our perceptions. Knowing you […]

Best Practices

The Adobe–Pantone breakup: how brand owners, designers should deal with it

11/01/2022 Eddy Hagen

Designers, brand owners, and the like have heavily relied on the Pantone libraries in Adobe Illustrator, InDesign, and Photoshop. But the romance is over. Later this year, these libraries will no longer be included in […]

Fine art photo prints: “sRGB offers the highest quality” – No, not really…

16/08/2020 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

Deep blues, with just 4 colors? Yes, it can be done!

05/07/2020 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

XCMYK vs CMYK: here’s your business case

26/04/2020 Eddy Hagen

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. […]

Designing black for food packaging (not all black is designed equal…)

27/10/2019 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

Where ICC color management can (still) go wrong: the blue to purple conversion

15/02/2019 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

Best Practices

Brand colors IRL: creating better brand guides, as research shows most are flawed

16/01/2019 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

Best Practices

Brand color quality in print: the chain of tool tolerances

07/11/2018 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

XCMYK: regular CMYK gets a boost

06/12/2017 Eddy Hagen

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 […]

Best Practices

Brand colors and printing in CMYK: better safe than sorry

31/01/2017 Eddy Hagen

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 Basics

The Google 41 shades of blue test, valued at 200 Million US$ revenue increase, is fundamentally flawed

The Adobe–Pantone breakup: how brand owners, designers should deal with it

Fine art photo prints: “sRGB offers the highest quality” – No, not really…

Deep blues, with just 4 colors? Yes, it can be done!

XCMYK vs CMYK: here’s your business case

Designing black for food packaging (not all black is designed equal…)

Where ICC color management can (still) go wrong: the blue to purple conversion

Brand colors IRL: creating better brand guides, as research shows most are flawed

Brand color quality in print: the chain of tool tolerances

XCMYK: regular CMYK gets a boost

Brand colors: better safe than sorry (again)

Not all black is designed equal

“That color was different on MY screen!” It’s complicated, but I’ll show you why

Accurate color reproduction: the case of Michelle Obama’s colorshifting coat

Brand colors and printing in CMYK: better safe than sorry