Why your brand colour looks wrong in print
Your screen mixes light, a printer mixes ink, and the two cannot produce the same range of colour. Here is what actually happens to a brand colour on press, and how to specify one so it survives.
A client sends a photo of a printed brochure and asks why the brand colour looks flat. Nothing has gone wrong at the printer. The colour was never printable in the first place.
Two completely different machines
A screen starts black and adds light. Red, green and blue at full strength produce white. Because it is emitting light, it can hit colours of an intensity that no physical surface can match.
Paper starts white and subtracts light. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black ink absorb parts of the spectrum, and what bounces back to your eye is what is left. The theoretical maximum is limited by the ink, the paper and the press.
The set of colours a device can produce is its gamut. The RGB gamut is larger than the CMYK gamut, and the colours that live in the gap (saturated oranges, electric blues, acid greens, anything that looks like it is glowing) are exactly the colours brands like to choose.
What conversion actually does
When an out-of-gamut colour is converted, the software picks the nearest reproducible one. “Nearest” is a judgement call, and different rendering intents make it differently. That is why the same file can come back looking slightly different from two printers.
Two consequences worth knowing:
- The shift is not uniform. A colour can lose saturation, lightness and hue all at once, and a colour that is just inside the gamut can shift more than one deep outside it.
- The shift is not reversible. Converting back to RGB only gives you a duller RGB colour that matches the print.
Paper changes the answer again
The same ink build on uncoated stock prints noticeably duller and slightly darker than on coated, because uncoated paper absorbs ink and scatters light. A colour approved on a glossy proof and then printed on uncoated card is a different colour, and nobody involved did anything wrong.
This is why proofs matter and why a proof on the actual stock matters more than a proof on whatever the printer had loaded.
How to specify a colour so it survives
Do it in this order, and do it once, at the point where the identity is being built.
- Decide whether print matters. If the brand will mostly live on screens, optimise for screen and accept a compromise in print. If it will live on packaging, signage or stationery, print leads and the screen value follows.
- Choose the printed colour first. Pick from a physical Pantone book under decent light, not from a swatch on a monitor. If you are printing in process rather than spot, choose a CMYK build you have seen printed.
- Derive the screen value from it, then adjust by eye. A straight conversion is a starting point, not an answer. The HEX that looks right next to the printed sample is the correct HEX, even if a converter disagrees.
- Write all three values into the guidelines. Pantone, CMYK, HEX/RGB. Label which is authoritative. Add the RAL or vinyl reference too if there will ever be signage.
- Give the accent a job. How often it appears matters as much as what it is.
The test that prevents the phone call
Before a colour is signed off, print the actual build on the actual stock, at the size it will be used. Put it next to the screen.
If the two are close enough that nobody would question it, you have a brand colour. If they are not, you have a decision to make now, which is far cheaper than making it after ten thousand boxes have been printed.
Specifying colour properly is one of the small, unglamorous things that separates an identity that holds from one that quietly falls apart. If you are putting a brand into production and want a second pair of eyes on the artwork, get in touch.
Common questions
Why does my logo look duller when printed?
Screens emit light and can produce colours that ink physically cannot. When an RGB colour falls outside the CMYK range a press can reproduce, it gets converted to the nearest printable equivalent, which is usually duller and slightly shifted in hue. Bright oranges, vivid greens and electric blues lose the most.
Should my brand colour be specified in RGB, CMYK or Pantone?
All three, chosen deliberately rather than converted automatically. Pick the Pantone first if print matters, then approve a CMYK build and a HEX/RGB value that sit as close to it as each medium allows. Never let software convert one into the others unchecked.
