Defining Colours with Code

Colour. A small word with a lot of value, colours can determine the sales of your item by a large amount. The right colour can lead to a huge boost in sales, while a bad colour can lead to no sales at all. Thus, the colour and its accuracy is critical. 

Sometimes, however, even after choosing the right colour, the printing can make it all go wrong. It can be very frustrating to see the logo you worked hard to create look deep blue on the client's letterhead, blue-greenish on his business card, and light blue on his very expensive envelopes.

A way to prevent this is by using a standardized colour matching system, such as the Pantone Matching System. 

Pantone offers chip books that help you see how colours look on coated, uncoated, and matte stock. Pantone colours are distinguished by numbers and a suffix. While the number indicates the colour itself, and is standard across all types of stock, the suffix indicates the material on which the colour will be used, which affects how the ink is formulated to achieve the specific colour.

The material used will affect the appearance of colours. In separate swatch or chip books, Pantone shows you how their colours look on coated, uncoated, and matte paper. Therefore you have the number of the colour (for example, PANTONE Red 032) followed by a suffix, which indicates the material it is to be printed on. The materials and their codes are C for coated, U for uncoated, and M = matte.

Using Pantone colours while requesting a print with our products will help us provide you with better standards of colour at lower prices and faster rates. Using pantone colours would ensure that your logo is printed in the exact colour you have asked for, with no disparity in tone and shade.

One note of warning: even in cases of using the same colour, a different suffix would mean that the software creates a new plate of printing it, thus charging you extra. So don’t use the same colour on different materials if you can avoid it.