Understanding the difference between print and digital colour systems

Colour can make or break your brand. It’s one of they key ingredients in your brand identity, much like the banana in banana bread.

All jokes aside, I love colour, but it can be very confusing when no one has explained its complexity and you’re left quarrelling with the Officeworks guy because your business card isn’t the same colour as your website logo.

Printing is a huge part of the process, and experience is required to ensure your branding is consistent. Selecting print colours from a swatch book is recommended because due to different screen setups (brands, brightness levels, etc), what you see on your screen may be different what I see on mine, and we don’t want any surprises when the print job is delivered and it’s not what you’re expecting.

Below are the three colour systems we use in the industry that you need to understand in order to make sure your colour is consistent across all your marketing (both print and digital).

RGB – Red, green and blue

RGB stands for red, green and blue, and is a digital colour system. Think of them as rays of light on your screen – you can’t print rays of light, so when you click print on anything, it will automatically convert colours to CMYK (ink). This is where you can run into trouble if your files are not set up correctly because rays of light are always going to far more vibrant than anything your printer can achieve. 

It’s very hard to maintain consistency with RGB colours as all screen brightness levels and quality are vastly different. This is why it’s risky approving brand colours on screen because it’s not a reality of how it will print – your designer does not know what you are seeing on your computer or phone screen. Certain colours translate more consistently to print, so it’s a case by case basis so consult your designer if you have any questions.

HEX, which stands for Hexadecimal, is also used onscreen and is basically a short code for RGB color.

CMYK – Cyan, magenta, yellow and key (black).

This is what comes out of your printer – a mixture of ink. All designers should have a universal swatch book and this is how brand colours should be selected. As a general guide, colours will always print slightly darker and less vibrant than they appear on a screen. Particular colours such as dark blue and orange can be quite different from their screen colour, so I recommend viewing a swatch book with your designer before choosing any brand colours.

Commercial Printing

Printing in CMYK is by far the most common printing method as it is a lot cheaper than Pantone (the other printing option). It can be ever so slightly inconsistent though when using different paper stocks (different stocks absorb ink in different ways) and different printer setups, so it’s always a good idea to reference a Pantone colour from a swatch book as a closest match when printing in CMYK. To get the best result when printing in CMYK, I always recommend using the same printer and using the same paper each time.

PMS (Pantone Matching System)

Pantone is a common colour matching system used by the printing industry to print spot colours. Basically it’s a universal brand of hundreds (thousands?!) of pre-made inks that are far more vibrant than CMYK printing.

Pantone colour selection comes in the form of a swatch book (see blow photo) and guarantee the best result for consistency of colour matching and ink distribution (quality). The swatch book will always give you the PMS colour and the equivalent CMYK colour. It’s far more expensive to print using Pantone colours as you pay for each individual colour you need (you can’t print photos in PMS, so that would require a CMYK + PMS print job). Unfortunately it’s generally not financially feasible for small businesses doing smaller print runs of less than about 5000. The printer literally hand mixes the ink so it’s a time consuming process. If you require a brighter (almost fluro) more vibrant colour in your printed material, Pantone colours will give you the better result.You can print much brighter colours than you can with the CMYK, and the quality is far superior (no printer lines). You get what you pay for!

The below example shows the difference between a PMS colour and its closest CMYK match on the right.

Unfortunately the world of printing isn’t straightforward, but understanding the differences in colour systems will hopefully make the process a lot less confusing.

Your Brand Style Guide should outline all the colour variations for your brand, which is crucial for brand consistency.