Design Packaging with Achievable Color

Brands invest a great deal of time and resources when selecting a new color to represent their products. If the color doesn't match expectations after printing, runs are wasted, and everyone is left wondering where the color went wrong.

Here's a typical scenario.

A brand selects a season color for product packaging and communicates that color to the designer. The designer integrates the color into the design and hands it off to the premedia team to convert it into print-ready files.

The files are sent to three printers for production.

During printing, each printer matches the design standard to the best of their ability. However, when the packages come together on the shelf, the color does not match.

What happened?
Where did the color go wrong?

It isn't necessarily due to errors made by the designers, premedia companies or print suppliers; instead, it is usually the way the color was communicated and the subjective nature of how we perceive color.

Why Is Color Matching So Difficult?

Brands and designers often communicate color using names from popular color guides such as the Pantone Matching System. Designers and suppliers then use their physical guides to match the color.

However, these physical guides are printed using offset lithography on white-coated glossy paper with fast-dying inks and pigments. The printing process for the guides differs significantly from commercial and packaging processes, which must consider multiple variables such as lightfast, rub resistance, food-safe pigments, different substrates, and more.

If a brand or designer communicates color by name and relies on the corresponding physical guides to match color on packaging, it's not an apples-to-apples comparison. This objective process introduces color variability before the design even goes to print.

Many other factors influence color perception too, including:

• Environmental Effects: Guides and physical color samples can fade or change due to exposure to sunlight, humidity, or dirt and lead to inconsistent results.
• Human Perception: Every person perceives color differently. Age, environment, and regional differences affect how individuals see color.
• Lighting Conditions: The type of lighting—daylight, moonlight, incandescent, or LED—can significantly alter how color is perceived.
• Printing Technology: Each press and printing method produces color differently and has a different achievable color gamut. This results in variations in the final color, even when using the same design files.
• Substrate: A substrate's texture, base color, and finish significantly impact how ink adheres and interacts with the surface, affecting color representation. A color printed on white glossy paper will look different when printed on recycled brown Kraft board.

Leading to... the Error Stack

Depending on how each individual perceives a color, they may make minor adjustments that cause the color to drift further from the design intent. What looks right on one person may be entirely off to another, leading to widespread inconsistencies.

Moving Away from Subjectivity with PantoneLIVE

To achieve consistent color on the shelf, brands must transition to objective color communication. That's where digital color tools can help.

PantoneLIVE™ was specifically designed to help address these color communication challenges. Using this cloud-based ecosystem, brands and designers can digitally specify and distribute achievable color standards across the supply chain using the spectral data definitions for Pantone colors.

Dependent Standards

But what makes PantoneLIVE so powerful is the use of dependent standards, which provide access to the best achievable color for a specific substrate. So, instead of trying to match a master standard on kraft paper (which may not even be possible), the brand and production teams can see how the color will look during design and make decisions based on the closest achievable color target for that material.

With PantoneLIVE, instead of communicating the master standard of Pantone 375C, a brand can communicate the best achievable dependent standard on brown Kraft so each supplier is aiming toward the same target.

See What’s Achievable, Before Going to Print

With PantoneLIVE dependent standards, brands and designers can select achievable colors from over 50 color libraries covering various substrates and printing technologies and determine if a brand color is achievable in seconds. These dependent colors are securely stored in the PantoneLIVE cloud and can be accessed by designers, premedia teams, ink manufacturers, and printers – anyone in the supply chain who is granted access.

What About Private and Custom Brand Colors?

In addition to Pantone standards, many brands also use private brand colors. Using Private Library Manager, brands can now digitize their proprietary colors and share pure spectral values through PantoneLIVE, ensuring priority and engineered colors can be managed and communicated with the same precision and consistency.

Like PantoneLIVE, Private Library Manager colors seamlessly integrate into X-Rite software, including ColorCert, Color iQC, Color iMatch, Autura Ink, InkFormulation Software, and more. This creates a truly connected and streamlined color workflow from design through final production.

Color Decisions Made Easy

Color consistency is crucial for maintaining brand identity, but it's a challenging goal to achieve without the right tools.

PantoneLIVE provides an efficient and proven digital process to select and share achievable color standards across complex packaging supply chains. Using a cloud-based platform, dependent standards, and extensive color libraries, PantoneLIVE enables brands to make informed decisions about color from the start.

In a world where color can make or break a product's success, investing in the right color management solution is essential. That's why over 100 leading consumer brands and their designers leverage PantoneLIVE to ensure color consistency on the shelf.

To learn more or get a demo of PantoneLIVE Private Library Manager, get in touch with our Color Experts.