The Pantone Color Institute reports that 60 percent of shoppers make their selections in-store, and that more than 65 percent of all purchasing decisions involve color. Achieving color consistency remains essential but is becoming increasingly more difficult across a wide range of substrates, and from shift to shift and plant to plant.
A lack of color consistency can negatively affect a brand’s image. “Consumers will reach past a product whose packaging looks faded, believing it is damaged or old,” X-Rite Pantone cautions in its 5 Keys to Brand Color Consistency white paper. “Worse yet, they’ll turn instead to a competitor’s package whose colors are more engaging.” The company offers factors to consider and ways to ensure color consistency regardless of a package’s origin.
Challenges to Brand Color Consistency
X-Rite Pantone outlines five reasons why maintaining consistency in brand colors is such a challenge:
- The need to print on a wide variety of substrates: Using substrates such as plastic, metal, glass and corrugated can present a problem, as each material’s characteristics can render a color’s appearance different than intended. For example, paperboard and corrugated substrates absorb ink, while metal and glass do not
- The use of different printing processes and inks: Within flexography, the use of water-based, solvent-based or energy-curable ink presents different concerns. Factoring in those inks (or, in the case of some digital presses, toner) used in complementary processes and the challenge of maintaining consistent color while juggling different gamuts multiplies
- Managing multiple suppliers required to meet demand: In a global market, multiple suppliers and multiple plants with a single supplier—even if using the same substrates, inks and printing technologies—often struggle in different parts of the world to deliver consistency
- Using a common language to specify color: Color can be subjective. Color on packaging is often evaluated on press by a single individual, where factors such as lighting, the surrounding colors and personal opinion can come into play. By establishing clear communication of color values at the point of specification and in premedia, production and quality control, consistent color can be achieved across the supply chain
- Balancing the use of physical and digital color standards: Physical standards like a contract proof or ink drawdown are important, but in many cases digital standards can provide a better way to consistently communicate color
Keys to Brand Color Success
To combat the challenges that come with achieving color consistency, many brands are turning to digital standards and compliance programs. X-Rite Pantone outlines the five keys to brand color consistency achieved through offerings like its PantoneLIVE.
Defining & Digitizing Color Standards
Defining digital standards means the best possible color matching with each member of the production line, who can each reference the designer’s specified color. The alternative—creating another copy in the production line for each new person—could result in the color becoming less and less accurate over time. When the same digital standard is referenced by any supplier in the packaging supply chain, the margin of error decreases, since everyone is referring to the same original source for color definitions.
Ensure Achievability by Setting the Right Expectation
After defining and digitizing brand colors, it’s important to consider how they will look on the specific substrates being used. Defining how a brand color will appear makes expectations clear and if they are even feasible in the first place. And visualizing the result of a certain color, on a certain substrate, printed with a certain process can reduce stress or rework during the approval stage.
Communicate Effectively
By attaining the first two keys, a brand begins to communicate effectively. At this point, a digital library has been implemented, all suppliers in the packaging supply chain are working to the same digital standard, and what the brand color should “be” is established and understood. As the white paper explains, “Everyone is aligned to the same expectations, no matter how many suppliers are involved, where they’re located or what they’re producing.” Working in the digital space, as soon as there are changes or additions to a brand color, they are instantly communicated to all involved without producing or sending new physical standards to packaging suppliers.
Consumers will reach past a product whose packaging looks faded, believing it is damaged or old. Worse yet, they’ll turn instead to a competitor’s package whose colors are more engaging.
Standardization & Compliance
Through a solution like PantoneLIVE, brand color palettes are optimized and consolidated into a digital set of standards. By providing instant access to areas where print quality can be improved, this can help to reduce costly and time-consuming press visits and approvals, as well as other aspects of a physical sample and proofing process.
Obtain Feedback & Monitor Results
After establishing digital color standards, there should be a way to verify they are consistently achieved. A digital color management solution should enable communication of exact color and print requirements and produce near-real-time data for each pressrun. Recalling job quality data can help brands to set clear expectations, monitor print quality on press and instantly see data reports.
Let’s Get Digital
“With digital color standards, there are far less review cycles and a lower demand for the production of physical proofs. Additionally because you have confidence in the fact that the right color is being produced, it minimizes the need for travel to inspect or oversee pressruns, and minimizes waste,” X-Rite Pantone says. “It is an exciting time to integrate technology for process improvement over your entire packaging ecosystem.”
X-Rite Pantone developed PantoneLIVE, a cloud-based solution designed to digitally communicate brand color standards. PantoneLIVE eliminates the potential variability of relying solely on physical standards, reducing the possibility for subjective color management. It enables the optimization and consolidation of brand colors, which can then be digitized for use by everyone in your packaging supply chain.