X-Rite Color Blog

Perfetti Van Melle (PVM) is a multi-national manufacturer of confectionery and gum. They offer innovative local flavors for numerous renowned international brands and distribute them to 150 countries worldwide. Since their final packaging includes a mix of materials including labels, foil, paper, paperboard, and shrink sleeves, each of their global printers must achieve accurate color on every substrate to portray a unified brand presence on the shelf… which is not an easy task. PVM sele...

When all of final production packaging comes together on the store shelf, it’s a brand’s moment of truth. Do the stand-up pouches, overwraps, and corrugated POP displays match? How close is the color to its standard? We know you spend so much time and money designing, proofing, sampling, printing, and shipping… so where does the color go wrong? Is it an issue with accuracy, consistency, or both? Package designs come together on the shelf. Here you see pouches, labels, cartons, and corrugated wit...

What happens when you have more than 2,000 brand colors to manage across a complex global packaging supply chain? Things get complicated! Although it may seem easier to create a new color than to dig through databases or binders of color drawdowns to find the closest match, the problem comes later when you’re faced with a huge, unmanageable library. One of our clients, a well-known fast-moving consumer packaged goods (FMCG) company, understands how easily things can get out of control. They wer...

When someone says “apple,” do you think red, green, or yellow? What do you do if a customer asks you to produce a color using descriptions that are not specific enough? Check out how something as seemingly simple as color communication can determine whether your color program succeeds or fails. A picture may paint a thousand words, but words alone do not paint a thousand colors. Circular conversations about color happen everyday. They generally start with someone asking for a sligh...

You say color is important, but do you know why it’s so important? In reality, color is a critical element in the manufacturing process. Unfortunately, many manufacturers are realizing that getting color right is much harder than it used to be, and the brands they support are asking them to meet tighter tolerances. Here’s why. While advances in color technology – think metallic packaging, pearlescent finishes, custom fabrics and vibrant new colors – entice customers, the...

Color management has caused an explosion of opportunities for new and interesting inks on a variety of substrates like paper, fabric, ceramic, transparent, and more. To ensure you can maintain accurate color when running jobs with these new applications, you need to create a printer profile for every printer, ink, and substrate combination. X-Rite offers the right tools to make profile creation fast and easy. Color Measurement Tools  The i1Pro 3 Family has you covered for virtually any prin...

Asda brand packaging is printed globally across a variety of suppliers, print processes, and substrates. With a small team of print specialists, it was impossible and impractical for Asda to attend even a small percentage of press passes across all suppliers to validate print quality. Seven years ago, Asda adopted the X-Rite Pantone ColorCert Suite, a digital color program to help them streamline approvals and deliver brand presence and quality assurance on the shelf across their primary and se...

In a perfect world, you should be able to put ink in the press and simply run a job. Unfortunately, every year flexo and gravure printing operations waste ink, substrate and press time trying to get color right. Although advancements in technology have made it easier to achieve color accuracy, the variables that affect color still exist. In this three-part series, we’re sharing over two dozen reasons your color might be wrong on press. We’ve already covered two important factors &nda...

X-Rite Pantone has been working with Asda for several years, supporting the implementation of ColorCert, a digital color program to achieve time and cost savings and deliver brand presence and quality assurance on shelf. We recently published a case study that explains how digital color has helped Asda improve color and consistency scores by 200%. We encourage you to download the case study to learn more. With a tried and proven color management model in its Food and Non-Edible categories, Asda ...

The Pantone Color Institute just announced PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray + PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating as the Pantone Color of the Year 2021. According to the Pantone Color Institute, PANTONE 17-5104 Ultimate Gray + PANTONE 13-0647 Illuminating, a marriage of color conveying a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting. Illuminating is a bright and cheerful yellow sparkling with vivacity, a warming yellow shade imbued with solar power. Ultimate Gray is emblematic of...