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SCREEN-TO-PRESS COLOR: ... Why don't they always match?
Just this week I had a conversation with a magazine editor who relayed her conversation with an advertiser that day. It was all about COLOR.
Why in the world is it, that when you create something beautiful on screen, the colors come out just awful when the same thing is printed. Well, sorry to say, it's time for some more education. Got your paper and pen ready? Here goes:
There are essentially 3-4 reasons, or, factors - if you like.
1. DOT GAIN
2. COLOR MODE
3. ENVIRONMENT & THE HUMAN FACTOR
4. YOUR SCREEN!
I won't bore you with tons of detail, but I'll try to present you with maybe 4 nutshells and then a solution.
1st NUTSHELL
If your printer (and I don't mean the HP, LEXMARK, etc on your desktop... I mean the guy who runs the press downtown) has been around for some time, and like most in a slower economy is trying to keep his head above water... he is running an older printing press. Although there is really cool technology now available with digital printing presses, computer to plate technology, etc., most smaller printers still use film, to make plates, to wrap to the drums on their 6-color Heidelberg printing press - which is what spits out your trifold brochure. DOT GAIN is what happens when the design on screen has sometimes up to 15% extra color added during the printing process. This results in a more colorful (and on darker designs) more intense display of color on the finished product.
2nd NUTSHELL
Colors of light vs. colors of ink. When you look at your screen, you are seeing colors of light, and every color you see on your monitor is made up of a combination of red, green and blue colors of light. Mix them all, you get white; remove them all you get black. Hence the term RGB color.
On the other hand, print colors are CMYK. Cyan, magenta, yellow and black. When you convert colors of light, to colors of ink (all colors of ink are also made as a combination of these 4 base inks), you get a general dulling effect or slight darkening, because you are looking at reflected light, not translucency. (Remember 4th grade science class?)
3rd NUTSHELL
Did you pay much for the printing? Did you get several quotes and go for the lowest? Chances are you paid a 'gang' printing price. This is where your beautifully pink ballet school postcard was placed next to Mr. Grunge and his heavy metal rock band's promotional 2 sided postcard. Your's is pink, his is black, but to save themselves and you some money, the printer 'ran' both jobs on the same press-sheet, cut them down, and delivered them to both of you. His darker design will affect your lovely pink, and possibly vice versa - although the printer's toughest task is to make darks, truly dark, so they will lean towards the dark designs being truly opaque on the page.
Additionally a press man is responsible to make sure that the dark/light areas of his press sheet are well balanced. But on rare occasion, he also may have been skipped by quality control and he has let the red, blue and black ink wells run a little heavy onto the rollers, and onto your clean and wispy design.
4th NUTSHELL
How old is your monitor? You say, "practically brand new, I bought it only 14 months ago". Sorry. It's already displaying poor color. When I worked in the pre-press room of a printshop in the backwoods of middle Pennsylvania, we still had to make sure our computer monitors were color correct. Color calibration of monitors typically needs to start after 3-6 months out of the box. It's not cheap, but if you are concerned enough about accuracy of color before your eyes, you should calibrate after 3-6 months and every 3-6 months - and then change your monitor after about 2.5 - 3 years.
SOLUTION
Invest or live with it. Yep, sorry, this one boils down to money. If you are a major corporation, and you want to protect your Dr. Pepper burgundy, you pay extra to the print shop to add a "5th color" to the press. That fifth color is PRECISELY mixed before it even comes to the press. These are called SPOT colors, often familiarized through the PANTONE color system. It's not unlike going to the hardware store and getting your bathroom wall paint color mixed ahead of time. If you want a very specific color, the ONLY way to guarantee that you get it, is to pay the print shop for the service of adding that color to your prints. Beyond that, you are at the mercy of the factors above.
Now it's not all doom and gloom, because technology in the print industry is every improving. Margins are tightening, digital machines are eradicating much of the problem, so the color variance is lessening each year. However, I can promise that for the foreseeable future, there will always be a variance between what you see, and what you get.
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DIY WEB DESIGN OPTIONS: Are they really worth it?
In speaking with a new client recently, I was prompted to slot this into the blog. There are literally hundreds of places online where you can go and get yourself a website. Pay a few bucks, and Voila! you have a cookie cutter template, some styled headers and body text, a run-of-the-mill menu... your very own first website. The trouble is, all these sites begin to look like the standardly packaged blogging pages that are also free. It's a new thing, but it's getting old quick. Where is creativity? Where is originality?
Well, let me just stop there before there is any confusion. As wise King Solomon said at the beginning of his book of Ecclesiastes, in the Bible, "There is nothing new under the sun..." - to which I say, yes, very true. Originality and uniquely created websites are relative. We as designers simply re-work an older design, tweaking it to oblivion sometimes, to create something that looks just a little different than the last attempt. However, that is what we do! We could throw out about 400 templates to choose from, and then reap the financial benefits by selling it to thousands, but there is just something special about a custom website design. That is, customized to your business or personality. Made to look like it belongs. If you don't already have a published identity, then it is very straightforward to help you create that across the board, from your corporate ID, your stationery, your color scheme, your physical location, and so on. Your website should always be a continuation of your visual identity. Why? Because it's the main portal these days! So much emphasis is on the internet today that was never there before.
Back to my point... One other thing to beware of is that there are limits to these cookie packages. You have probably spent hours trying to figure out the content manager to upload your photos and text, and then finally thrown your hands up and decided to hire someone to do it for you. By the time you do that, calculating both your hours and now your money spent for help, could you have put together a nice clean basic website by hiring a design firm that offers such a thing for about a grand? Hey, I'm just asking the question.
Have a look at some of these custom websites that don't fit the cookie-cutter look. I think they're fabulous and worth every penny spent.
  
  
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Does your text have room to breathe?
Here is one of those things that untrained graphic designers overlook. It is also one of the first ways to tell a good layout artist from someone who is simply interested in getting information out no matter what it looks like. It's the age-old dilemma... which is more important? Content, or presentation? Like the chicken and the egg, perhaps? Well, if you believe God created the world, then obviously the chicken came first. So in this case, I believe the presentation is equal to the chicken.
Think this through. If it looks awful, would you even bother to find out what the content is all about? Or would you dismiss it, and think, "well, there must be something useful for me"?
Content does need to be sufficiently interesting enough to keep your 'visitor' interested, but studies show that we judge a book by its cover, more often than we just dive in to something that does not really look attractive.
So applying this to text... it just simply needs to look well presented to be attractive and look enticing enough to read. Here is what I'm talking about. When you are setting up your text in a document, make sure you are leaving at least one or two characters' width between the edge of the text and the border or image it sits next to. Online, test the cell padding and make sure the text has room to breathe. It's just good sense, professional, and creates a better presentation.
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How does your logo look?
Following on from the latest posting on this blog, (below), let's talk a little about the visual appearance of your corporate identity, logos, your face in the market, visual reputation... whatever you'd like to call it.
A logo defines who you are as a business or entity. How does yours look? What file type is it?
If you don't have a logo that is in vector format, get it converted today. Here's why:
1. Vector art (usually created by Adobe Illustrator, Corel Draw, and others) is the cleanest and most reproducable format for a graphic file.
2. Vector art can be scaled up - unlike rasterized art. Examples of rasterized files are JPG, TIF, BMP, PNG, GIF... If you try to scale 'up' from a rasterized file, your image will distort or 'pixelate' and look worse the larger you scale.
3. Vector art is lite. It's the skinny version. If I have the same file, lets say that 'blog' logo above, and I have it in Adobe Photoshop (usually rasterized art), and I also have it in Adobe Illustrator (mostly vectorized art), the Illustrator file will be much smaller because all it has to remember is the path of the outline of each shape, and the style and color of the fill inside the lines. Photoshop has to be able to retain the color and position of every pixel that makes up that shape. The larger the image, the more pixels it has to remember - whereas if it is vector - the information that needs to be retained stays the same no matter the size.
Almost without fail, when a client comes to me with a logo to be used in some form of media, website, printed brochure, business card or wherever - it is supplied to me as a JPEG. This is ok, but only to a point. If I need to use it on screen (web, email banner, powerpoint template, etc.) and I DON'T NEED TO ENLARGE IT IN ANY WAY, it's usually a useable file. However, as is illustrated above, if I need to use it in print, the JPEG then has to be fairly 'large' right from the start. That is, the correct size and resolution for the application, whether it be a magazine ad, or an 80 foot banner [see my more in depth discussion on resolution below].
So let's look at a logo that was supplied to me for 'clean up'. This is where you can make sure that yours looks good, no matter who uses it or where it is applied. One of my services is to enhance logos, and some of these projects take longer than others. View below to see this example of how it was supplied to me [LEFT], and they way it was transformed to clarity once it was convertedinto vector art [RIGHT]. (in some cases, not this one, a logo needs to be completely recreated).
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Resolution. Resolution. Resolution.
So I was talking to a local sign shop today and was, although not surprised, quite disappointed by what they relayed to me.
You need a 'quick' sign made. Or for that matter you need an ad designed for your business, poster produced, point of sale structure.
At the sign shop, they don't always check over what the customers provide, because they are too used to, "Hey, I don't need to see a proof, and I don't care what it looks like, just get it done fast because I need to get my message out."
Wow. Have you any idea what sort of damage that creates? You and I live in a world where we are constantly visually assaulted by advertising and marketing from professional corporations in all areas of life. We are used to seeing the results of tens of thousands of dollars of investments into making us purchase the product at hand. So then we think that a quick, cheap sign is going to accomplish the same thing, and earn our business the millions? I think not. A wise man I was listening to once said that if you want to find out how to be a millionaire, do what they did and do. Did you know that most millionaires don't do day trading with the stock market? In the same way, most successful businesses don't cut corners when it comes to marketing.
The issue of resolution is probably in the top 3 that is taken for granted by up and coming businesses. It's often not because of active decisions to disregard the right way to do things, it's more a tendancy to be completely ignorant on the topic.
I've gotten this far into the posting and realized some of you who are reading this (and haven't given up already) are thinking,"um... what's resolution anyway?... are you getting to the point where you're actually going to tell me what in the world it is?"
My bad. Resolution is the amount of DOTS along 1 inch in a single line of pixels, or dots per inch (dpi). To use a very familiar example, your computer screen uses 72 dpi. Newspapers used to print around 115 dpi and are now somewhere between 150-170 dpi. Magazines and most other print applications like flyers, postcards, tri-folds, business cards all print at about 300 dpi.
Soooo...? What's the big deal!? Well, in a word, professionalism. When you do not apply the correct resolution to the correct output type, you are showing your lack of professionalism. You should be concerned about it if you have any type of business that wants to grow.
The most typical way this problem occurs is when you have someone finding themselves in possession of a computer, a graphics software, and not much experience with one, the other or both. That someone things, I need a quick flyer. It's layed out beautifully with lots of color, fonts, clip art and admired from a distance ... on screen. It rapidly gets emailed to the print shop of choice, and get's cranked out and delivered. Upon arrival, after a short glance to notice that things are not quite as beautifully crisp and clear it was on screen, a shrug of shoulders immediately dismissed the mild issue down to maybe the printer's fault, but not REALLY bad enough to complain about. The flyer is ejected out into society for use to try to draw in a more varied and populous customer base.
So what just happened? It was designed at 72 dpi and printed at a quality of 300 dpi but each pixel from the screen simply got enlarged by almost 4 times, and so the end effect is a 'boxy' or 'pixelated' appearance.
I've got to bring this to an end... well, the moral of the story is to either educate yourself more on the topic, or um... hire me to do the flyer for you ;-).
You think I'm kidding, but hey, this is what guys like me went to college for. We studied this stuff. We know better. Buying Corel Draw or Photoshop doesn't make anybody an expert. Just like me buying a set of dog hair clippers doesn't help me at all to become the next groomer driving around in a dalmation painted van in your neighborhood.
Just to wrap it up, here are two images. Can you spot the difference?
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Contrast your text!
As a designer of over 15 years, one of my biggest pet peeves is this: a text box or area of text that cannot be read well against either the box that contains it, or a background of some kind. Do you know what I mean? Here's a sample from a well-know web site:
On the headline the word "Windows Help and..." gets lost in the blue background because it's a mid-grey on a mid-blue background color. Shocking. C'mon MS you can do better. (Hey by the way, if you spot me doing this anywhere in my design, call me up on it, because I really can't be missing the opportunity to practice what I preach!).
So what's the rule? Simple. Dark on light, light on dark. If you are going to use a mid-range color, you must have it sitting either on pure white or black. If the mid-range color is your background, then your text must be either white or black. This website is an example of pure white on a mid-range blue background.
"But what if I like to have lots of color?" Hey, you'd be amazed at how much you're going to be able to learn just by looking around. The web is a wealth of knowledge, and by punching words in like 'design trends' or 'complimentary colors' or 'web design tips' into any search engine, you'll end up on some great looking websites. Maybe one of these days here I will recommend what I think are well designed sites, that are easy to read, and have good color and contrast.
Although it's trendy right now, stay away from going too light with your grey over a white background. That's hard on my eyes, and so far, I don't have glasses. Like to keep it that way.
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Branding your company with consistency
How often have you really thought about this for your small business? Branding is such a huge part of your marketing strategy and it involves so many areas of your presentation.
Now I'm sure you can go to all sorts of websites, seminars, classes and the like to figure out how to brand and market your small business effectively. I do not pretend to have any better knowledge than any or all of these avenues of marketing eduction, but I figured I might as well throw out there what I know, and what I have learned.
There are separate factors that affect your branding, from a graphic designer's perspective:
Logo
Do you have a single logo (some refer to it as a brand identity image), that you use on every single publication, business card, door hanger, flyer, website, banner, t-shirt that you produce for your company? Is it on your truck magnets, your billboards, your staff or internal memos and in your tv ads? It should be. You should beat that logo firmly onto every possible media.
Repeating that logo image throughout your various media will just continually hammer the subconcious of the audience. The more they see your logo, the more familiar it becomes. Just look at the string of logos below... can you tell which company they represent? If you can, even if it's just 3 or 4 out of 5, those companies you recognized below have done their branding job perfectly.
    
Your logo should be able to be minimized to the size you see above and still be recognizeable. If it's got text, the text needs to be clear and simple. One of the most common errors in a branding process is when some really fancy font is chosen, where it becomes unreadable at a small scale. Whatever you do, don't just look for a font you love and base your logo around it.
The shape of your logo is important, so that it's easy to work with. The actual image itself is not as important (though some may disagree) as it is recognizable. You can come up with any shape or graphic you want, and as long as you use it repeadedly and consistently throughout all your marketing media, you will find that it will work for you in the long hall.
Color
Oh wow. This is huge. Color is probably your strongest weapon in branding. If I asked you what color is Coke?... red. If I asked you what color is Tropicana?... orange. What about Burger King?... I'm sure you can reel off the colors in your head before you finish this sentence.
Now, to temper the above paragraph, many companies do not stand around a single color or set of colors. But if you do, use them everywhere. If I asked you what Pepsi's green drink is, most of you would guess it is Mountain Dew. I didn't even have to say the words, the drink popped in your mind. How totally powerful is that?
Font
Ok, I'll quit and wrap up here for the day. Choose your font, and stick with it. Your brand should be constantly associated with one font. Use maybe one (or at absolute most) two others in your media, but your branding will be marked by your font over time. It should complement every piece of marketing your company produces. Quit changing fonts on a whim, with the winds of trend, and stick to what your company is known for.
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True or False? Websites are just a one-off project
FALSE
Let me walk you through my thinking. Many businesses who hire graphic design services, or for that matter, strictly web design services, are still not getting the concept that the web is totally different than print media.
Generally, in print media, when any business would like to put out a new promotion or a new campaign, they would go to their graphic designer and ask for some comps. The request would be based on a few short keywords and a general direction in the form of hand scribbled notes or at best a word doc. You know, the kind with way too much time spent on typesetting that would be scrapped right away by the designer.
The designer would get the info and throw the comps together, then all would go through a critical process until the campaign is polished, approved and launched... and voila! you have your project under your belt.
Web is sooooo different. Graphic Designers, Web Designers, Ad & Marketing Agencies all still get the frequent request for a website, and often get a couple of chicken scratch covered sheets of paper with the idea that "we'll just pay for this starter site to get our name 'out there' and then we can move on to our next project"...
If any new business, existing business, having an inhouse graphic design staff, or hiring a graphics agency, is getting ready to create a new website - one of the most important factors in the planning stages of the site is this: a website project is going to last as long as the internet is working!
SEO has become so hot recently, requiring hours of extra work by the web and design guys to create SEO friendly pages. This is just a case in point of ongoing needs for every website out there. Content needs to be fresh, links need to be frequent. The public need an insentive to return to the site. If a website is designed well, and the content is catchy - is that enough? Not really.
So business owners need to be prepared to have a monthly budget for web development. No stagnent site is going to continuously bring traffic. Make yours intersting, up to date, and addictive. That doesn't sound like a quick, one-off project, now does it...? |
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