Lost In Translation: Why your logo or branded colors may differ from medium to medium.

Have you ever wondered why your company's logo or branded colors look different on your office printer, computer monitor, and professionally printed materials? (They shouldn't by the way!)

 We see colors in three different ways. 1) Natural color: what you see in nature; 2) Printed colors: inks, pigments, dyes, and paint; 3) Light Spectrum: computer monitors, screens, televisions.

Natural colors are what we try to reproduce with ink and light every day. The process and file type that your colors and logos are created with and saved in will determine what you ultimately see in your end product.

PMS FILES
When an agency creates your logo they will (should) create your logo first using a combination of PMS (Pantone Matching System) inks. These are custom inks that a printer will use on a printing press (not a copier) that will always produce the exact same color even if you use more than one professional printer. Your PMS logo may not look the same on your monitor or when you print in your office. It's meant for a press only. The only way to evaluate what the color will look like before you print on press is to view a PMS color chip. Your design firm or printer will have these books for your reference. There is more than 1 type of PMS color too! A PMS ink, meant to print on a coated paper, will not always look like a PMS printed on an uncoated paper.(Leave that part to your agency!)

CMYK FILES
The second file format is CMYK (Cyan/Magenta/Yellow/Black). Four inks combined to create a single color. This file type is meant for a digital printer in your office or at a professional printer using a digital press. An agency will create a CMYK version of your logo that simulates your PMS color. If someone converts your PMS color directly to CMYK, the colors may not match. Another variable is when you print on your office/home printer. All printers are different as well as the inks they use and your ink levels. You may see a difference from digital printer to printer.

RGB FILES
RGB formatted files (Red/Green/Blue prisms of light) are generally used for when you view your logo/color on a monitor or screen. Most commonly you will use an RGB file for the web. (.png, .jpeg, .gif). If your logo was converted directly from a PMS color to RGB without any compensated adjustments, it probably looks very different! RGB files need to be adjusted commonly to match the "perceptive color" that you end up seeing on screen to match your PMS colors. The trouble with the RGB is that people use this format for programs such as Powerpoint and find themselves printing the presentation when it was ultimately meant for projecting. If your colors are way off, you may want to save 2 versions of the presentation using different colors. You may also find that your colors change from monitor to monitor. This is because each computer's monitor may be calibrated to use a smaller or larger spectrum of light. I recommend checking yours to see if it's set to the highest color setting (millions). Lastly, some logos used on the web are saved using a web safe colors. Web safe colors are RGB colors created from the smallest RGB light spectrum so that you guarantee that MOST monitors will see your color the same even when calibrated differently.

Below is an example of 1 PMS color directly broken out to CMYK and RGB with no adjustments made. I then printed it our on our office printer and scanned it in. Note how 1 color can look so different if not used correctly. Who knew color could be so complicated! I won't even get into mixing oil paints.....