It happens all too often; people order labels for their new products and receive them to find that the colors on the labels don’t match what was expected. Sadly, this can lead to reruns and setbacks for product releases. While it’s obvious that it’s important for colors to come out right on your product labels to match your branding, you may not be comfortable ordering labels without being sure that they’ll come out the right colors. Fortunately, there are some things you can do to ensure your label colors come out how you need. This way, you can trust that the labels you pay for are the ones you’ll receive.
Colors have codes and names to help with identification. However, because these colors can differ from printer to printer, it’s a good idea to have a physical example of the colors you’ll need on your new labels. So, if you have older products that showcase your company brand or logo colors, it’s a good idea to send them over to your label manufacturer. This way, the specific color can be identified or created perfectly to match.
Printed marketing materials, including all kinds of colored labels, are printed on either flexographic or digital printing presses. Both of these types of printers utilize what’s known as a four-color print process. This is otherwise referred to as CMYK, which stands for the four colors used in this process (cyan, magenta, yellow and key black). Basically, with this process, every color is made by the blending of these four colors. The best way to get around color challenges across the board is to choose colors using the CMYK color process for the first of your branding materials so that the remaining products you design and purchase later can match perfectly.
Unfortunately, colors on a digital screen like your computer or phone don’t use the same CMYK color process as printing presses used for colored label making. Computers use RGB, which is a three-color process consisting of red, green, and blue. And, because these colors are developed differently for digital showing, they won’t translate for printing on flexographic or digital presses. So, it’s important to consider this BEFORE designing any graphics or logos for your marketing materials. If you do decide to design on a computer, make sure there is a setting for the conversion of RGB colors into CMYK colors. Or, have a label designer, like our team at Blue Ribbon Tag & Label, design your label graphics for you.
The Pantone matching system is a universally utilized program to help match colors to previous branding materials. Sometimes, businesses need a specific color but either don’t know what it is or it needs to be converted from RGB to CMYK. This can be done with the Pantone matching system. This involves choosing the color closest to the one you need from the physical Pantone booklet so it can be developed with the CMYK four-color process.
If you have questions about how to choose the right colors for your labels or matching a previous color used in branding efforts with colors on your new labels, we can help!
We have years of experience helping business owners feel confident about their color choices, along with designing and developing custom labels for dozens of industries. If you’re ready to get a quote for colored labels, contact us today!
