In order to promote the Pantone colour guide book to design students, Basheer Graphic Books commissioned this 8 metre Pantone rainbow consisting of over 5000 colour chips, built by the agency Bates141 in Jakarta.

Pretty.

There wasn’t a whole lot of information on the project unfortunately, but interesting none the less.

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Read on for annual winners from years gone by.

2009, Mimosa. The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance.

2008, Blue Iris. A mix of blue and purple that suggests dependability and magic.

2007, Chili Pepper. Chosen for its pizazz and sophistication and its hint of ethnic taste.

2006, Sand Dollar. A neutral color that expresses concern about the economy.

2005, Blue Turquoise. Another reversal to a calming shade

2004, Tigerlily. Acknowledges the hipness of orange, with a touch of exoticism.

2003, Aqua Sky. A cool blue meant to restore hope and serenity.

2002, True Red. Recognizes the impact of 9/11 with a patriotic hue.

2001, Fuchsia Rose. A reversal from the pervious year, more exciting, more feminine and sexy.

2000, Cerulean Blue. Chosen for the millennium for its calming zen state of mind.

What’s your vote for next year?

No love for green so far, perhaps a nice emerald for a healthy and prosperous year?

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While the bulk of most graphic designers work is destined for paper there’s a whole world of substrates out there. ( substrate is fancy design talk for stuff to stick your design on. )

Gathered from the excellent packaging design site, The Dieline, here is an interesting collection of packaging substrates and designs applied to them, starting with the above conceptual colourless Coke can by Harc Lee.

I’m not sure how pleasant the tactile element of this design would be, 10 points for originality though. Nothing says masculine like a block of concrete…

These snails and pack in moulded and coloured, you guessed it, snail poop. Just when the snails thought it couldn’t get any worse than being stuffed with garlic…

No portfolio is complete without designing a tube, this tre chique trio holds a collection of inflatable boot trees, used as point of sale merchandising for European footwear and fashion.

I’m not entirely sure what these containers for Azita’s dry spice rub are made from, but I’m a big fan of the wooden finish, especially the black one. Much more pleasant tactile-wise than the concrete.

Good to see some simple, clean vector illustrations that make sense on these Cravendale milk cartons, instead of using the slap rainbows all over everything technique favoured by so many.

More milk packaging design, this time by Ecolean and focused on using the least materials possible.

This lovely tin is for Nudo Olive Oil, I’m not entirely sure what’s inside as presumably they don’t sell oil sloshing around in a tin of this style.

A pleasant change from the otherwise relentless world of glossy plastic chip packets with these Freeloader Feed designs.

Another tactile favourite and plastic alternative with this letterpress label for Reserve Collection coffee.

These salt and pepper shakers for Soso is made from textured PVC.

The client was looking for a distinguishing container that could be used both to store salts and as a salt cellar. An egg is the perfect container, as its own shell is the packaging, so it was decided that an egg shape would be reproduced.

Finally this glass bottle for Tap Water was designed as an alternative to the sporty/lifestyle feel that most bottled waters have in common, and to eliminate the the waste from constantly discarded plastic bottles.

What do you think?

So many substrates, so little time…

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This is a “business card” by PacBlue Printing delivered to advertising agencies to promote their large format printing capabilities.

Very Clever.

Probably a touch to big to carry a stack around with you, at least their clients will never lose the card.

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If you haven’t already seen this BBC documentary by Stephen Fry you’re missing out, it’s fascinating.

Quoted from the BBC – “The printing press was the world’s first mass-production machine. Its invention in the 1450s changed the world as dramatically as splitting the atom or sending men into space, sparking a cultural revolution that shaped the modern age. It is the machine that made us who we are today.

Stephen’s investigation combines historical detective work and a hands-on challenge. He travels to France and Germany on the trail of Johannes Gutenberg, the inventor of the printing press and early media entrepreneur. Along the way he discovers the lengths Gutenberg went to keep his project secret, explores the role of avaricious investors and unscrupulous competitors, and discovers why printing mattered so much in medieval Europe.”

Whether your a designer or not, setting aside an hour to watch this will be time well spent.

What did you think?

Fascinating, no?

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As you no doubt know, no 2 screens are the same. Due to manufacturing differences, software settings, and the age of your screen, each display shows colour differently. When printing this obviously creates a problem.

If your working on corporate ID using Pantone colours having a 100% accurate screen probably isn’t critical as you’ll be referring to your Pantone swatch book for colours and will know exactly what to expect. For anything full colour your monitor needs to be right.

For a roughly accurate display you can try to match onscreen colours to you swatch book, though doing it by eye is never going to be perfect.Between changing ambient lights and your brain correcting what you see, you’ll never create a truly accurate profile.

This is where monitor profiling hardware like the Huey Pro comes in.

Monitor profiling tools such as the Pantone Huey Pro, are sensors you place on your screen which read test patterns to create a monitor colour profile to match your printed media.

While there is a selection of profiling hardware available it seemed logical to buy the Pantone Huey Pro since they also manufacture the inks use in commercial printing. Unfortunately I was met with mixed results when using my new purchase.

Firstly, to attach the Huey Pro you must push the unit onto your screen so the 6 small suctions cups stick to it. I pushed a firmly as I was comfortable with only to have the Huey fall off repeatedly. In the end I held the unit on the screen while the calibration ran, not willing to press any harder on the LCD.

When calibrating my monitor for the first time i was disappointed to find my Huey was in fact faulty, making my screens horribly green. After emailing Pantone, I searched the internet for a solution I found I wasn’t alone, my problem is apparently very common.

Additionally, despite all the Huey Pro’s claims of working on LCD’s screen I found an answer from a Pantone tech, buried in the depths of their support forum stating it does not work on gloss LCD screens, which have been standard for a few years now.

Pantone did however reply to me the next day and send a replacement no questions asked, great service on their part.

Conclusion

After getting my replacement unit it worked great. It’s important to note too, that the Huey Pro supports multiple monitors while the Huey standard does not.

Beware though, as i said earlier there does seem to be a high percentage of faulty units. Another product to take a look at if the Huey doesn’t fill you with confidence is at the Datacolor Spyder.

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While digging through the mountain of my archived study notes and projects from my diploma, I dug up a little reference guide I was given with some of the more detailed terms involved with professional printing.

I thought I’d share this for any up-and-coming designers who might still be a little unsure on what’s what. If you’ve taken an interest in this post I’ll assume you know the basics such as bleed, trim, process colour etc…

1P, 2P, 4P : 1 page, 2 page, 4 page.

4CP : 4 colour process.

4CP + 1 special : A 4 colour process job + an emboss or die-cut etc. The special may also be a Pantone colour, though this is typically referred to as a 5 colour job.

GMV / MMV / SMV : Gloss, matte or satin machine varnish, respectively.

Spot GMV / MMV / SMV : Spot gloss, matte or satin machine varnish, respectively.

UV varnish : Screen needed as a separate screen print process, may be UV lithography.

Celloglaze : Plastic film coating applied with heat and pressure.

Trim to guillotine : Straight edge cut made with a guillotine.

Knife cut : The same as a die cut.

The following terms are likely to only be useful if your providing your own impositions to your printer, otherwise this would all be handled by the printer.

Image area : The maximum area that can be printed, this is smaller than the sheet of paper.

Sheet size : The total size of the paper sheet to go through the press.

Finished size : The final size of the job once trimmed or knife cut, this can still need folding at this stage.

Grip : Leading edge of the sheet where the grippers pick up and handle the sheet.

Colour bars : Added for the printed to check the quality of his print. You might be tempted to add these to your job yourself but your printed knows his equipment best, I’d suggest leaving this to him.

Stripping bars : Added at the tail of the sheet where possible to ensure an even ink coverage.

Imposition : The layout of pages to printed a multi page document.

1 up complete : Front and back to view ( whole job to view ) imposed together, usually head to head for a work and turn job.

2 up complete : Similar to 1 up complete, except there are 2 whole jobs to view, 2 fronts and 2 backs. Can also be 4 and 6 to view if simple.

Work & turn : The job turns from left to right to flip the sheet.

Work & tumble : The job turns from top to bottom to flip the sheet.

Long or short grain paper : The direction of the paper grain in the sheet.

To see an example of this, take a regular sheet of paper and tear it left to right, and then top to bottom. One direction will tear awkwardly, while one should tear in a near straight line, this is the direction of the grain.

You’ve likely also heard terms such as set-off regarding excess ink being transferred from sheet to sheet, this occurs when either too much ink is used, or when sheets are trimmed while still being too wet. This falls entirely to your printer however and isn’t something you’ll need to manage yourself.

Printers do however have a coverage % limit, usually somewhere about 300%. This means between your 4 process colours you don’t exceed a total of 300% ink coverage.

For example, printing 100% magenta and 100% yellow forms red at 200% coverage. To print a rich black you might use 100% black 80% cyan, 60% magenta and 40% yellow totalling 280% ink coverage.

Did you find this helpful?

Hopefully you’ve gained some useful information from this, if you have any other terms you think should be included or any questions let me know.

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I recently began a job for a client to design a brochure for their patient care service, the project is small budget and to be printed in CMYK only. Everything was going fine then someone said it, brown text.

While extremely accurate, printers are not 100% perfect. There is inevitably a tiny amount of misregistration between the 4 layers of ink.

In this case, mixing the 4 colours to create brown, if you imagine the layers of cyan, magenta and yellow being slightly off centre from the black, they create coloured halos around the text as pictured above.

When printing headings or large text this isn’t a problem, but applying this to a body of 8pt type has the potential to create quite a mess.

When printing body copy a single colour is always best. Black is obviously the standard choice for CMYK printing, if a coloured type is required you really should use a spot / Pantone colour.

A spot colour is single coloured ink applied to the paper in 1 pass. Obviously when ink is applied to the paper in a single pass there can be no misregistration. The result is crisp clean edged type ( as pictured above ) with no halos or irregularities.

A spot colour will add an additional cost to your design project, but if coloured body copy is required you can’t argue with the result.

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Have you ever had something printed only to find the final product isn’t quite the colour you expected? A likely cause is the paper used.

Different stocks produce different colours when using the exact same colour ink. If you’re familiar with Pantone colours at all you’ve probably noticed there are seemingly multiple instances of the same colour. 200u, 200m, 200c etc.

On screen these all look the same, on paper these colours will be printed on un-coated, matte and coated stock respectively and produce variations of colours despite the exact same ink being used. This is due to the different absorbent properties of the stock.

Additionally, the light under which you view your prints also affects the colour you see. Next time you visit the supermarket take a look in the meat section, while the store itself will most likely be flooded with energy efficient fluorescent lights, the meat section almost certainly will not.

Fluorescent lights emit high levels of green and yellow which when combined with the red of your potential dinner cause the meat to look brown while the fat will look yellow. Appetizing, no?

The same applies to paper. Many printers provide PDF proofs which are fine for confirming the layout and trim marks of your project, but not the colour.

Just to be safe…

To be sure that your final product will live up to your expectations, ask your printer for a digital proof before signing off.

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You might think that using black couldn’t be simpler. After all, black is black right? Wrong. Depending on what printing/ink system is being used their are literally dozens of choices when it comes to choosing a black, each with distinct differences.

Fellow designer Andrew Kelsall recently posted a designers guide to using black, over at his U.K. based graphic design blog.

The aim of this article is to document every conceivable type of black that is destined for print and web.

It is my aim that if you are a designer, you can find some information here that you didn’t know―and if you are learning about design, I hope you can educate yourself from this post.

Andrew goes on to list both the mix, provide examples of and suggest the best uses for over a dozen possible black selections including, process mixes, flat black, pantone, warm, cool and even Hexachrome black mixes.

Check it out.

Whether your a greenhorn or a seasoned designer, Andrews comprehensive write up will be a great reference for your future projects.

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