The Importance of Color Consistency in Print

Regardless of size, many business owners want to create a brand around their business. A brand is the collective impact or lasting impression from all that is seen, heard, or experienced by customers who come into contact with a company and/or its products and services. When it comes to branding, color is one of the most powerful tools and can influence how someone feels, thinks and behaves.

A study found that color can increase brand recognition by up to 80 percent. This in turn can boost sales and engagement. But in order to benefit from brand recognition, your colors must be consistent across all of your printed material. If you rely on multiple vendors, color matching and consistency can be more difficult to achieve.

Printing is a tricky business; it is an art form as much as it is a science. Colors can vary between offset presses and digital printers, and color matching can become even more challenging when using different substrates since they accept ink differently depending on weight, surface tension and opacity.

So how does the printing industry achieve color consistency? One of the best ways is to use Pantone colors, also known as spot colors. Pantone colors are standardized colors in the print and design industry, and will assure that you will get the color you expect no matter what vendor you use. Many Pantone colors are more vibrant than CMYK colors, especially metallic and neon colors, and cannot be achieved with CMYK printing. However, a printer can use the Pantone Color Bridge book to look up the CMYK equivalent of a spot color to achieve color consistency. In addition to the Pantone Color Bridge book, Caskey Group’s digital press can match CMYK colors to Pantone colors during the printing process.

Don’t have Pantone Colors established for your brand? Caskey Group can still assure color consistency throughout your printed materials. We are G7 Certified, which helps us assure consistency and quality throughout our proofing, brand color management and print processes. Caskey Group is very proud to be G7 Certified, as only a select group of print service providers have successfully completed this extensive training, examination and qualification of their print production processes.

Have more questions about color consistency? Contact us today!