A Belgian colour management expert has created a standardised way to specify colours by brands and designers, launching Project BBCG at the same time that Adobe has withdrawn support for Pantone colours.
Eddy Hagen, who runs the Insights4print.ceo website, says: “Brand colours are precious to its owner. A lot of time and money is spent on picking the color that expresses the brand values the best. But then it goes wrong. For a consistent reproduction, the brand colour guides should be rock solid and unambiguous. And that isn’t the case, as studies have shown. Most brand colour guides are flawed.”
On the website he says: “When there are discussions between a print buyer and a printer, it’s usually, if not always, about the reproduction of a colour. And this often leads to extra work, even reprints and waste. But very often, the root cause is the brand colour definition itself. When checking brand colour guides, these are very, very often flawed, ambiguous, or incomplete. And this is also the case with brand colour guides from large corporations, with brand colour guides created by large agencies.”
The split between Adobe and Pantone has caused consternation among small designers and marketing departments that have been used to using the Pantone colour guides to specify which colours to match when printing, but can no longer afford the additional monthly subscription fee demanded by Pantone for use of its colour libraries.
The Better Brand Colour Guide believes that it has a methodology to define, transform and communicate brand colours using tools that are readily at hand.
This includes the use of Adobe Swatch Exchange which allows users to create brand specific colour libraries that can be swapped between those involved in a project. To create those colours, a swatch of a selected colour, on a carton for example. Those values can be saved to become the standard for future use.
An alternative would be to print out a vast array of slightly different colour patches on an Epson proofer for the client to identify the colours to be used, reading these into the ASE folder. This can be read in the standard Adobe Creative Cloud applications and also in the Affinity family of CC alternatives.
Beyond that the BBCG recommends use of ISO standard CxF format. Creating the format is more involved process involving production of test prints with colour patches on both black and white backgrounds. There is an opportunity for packaging repro houses and converters to create the application independent colour description as an additional service, says Hagen.
He has received widespread support from consultants and colour scientists. UK consultant Paul Sherfield of the Missing Horse Consultancy, says: “In my many years of hands-on experience, I’ve seen too many brand and corporate identity manuals, both from national and internationally well known names, that are imprecise and therefore inaccurate when specifying brand and corporate colour for use in the many different medias available.
“CMYK and RGB values, for example, are often quoted with no reference to an ICC profile or use case, resulting in a brand colour that will look different for every combination of printing process and substrate used. Project BBCG aimed in clear terms to improve the reproduction of brand and corporate colours and the way they are specified to the many types and media, and communicated to all involved in accurate colour reproduction, including designers.”
Dutch consultant Henk Gianotten adds: “This publication is extremely important for brand owners, creators of corporate design, packaging designers and printers. Get rid of the Pantone suggestions for CMYK percentages. Use the ASE or the CxF technologies to define the proper colours. They are predictable, stable in production and reliable for additional runs.”
The guide is available as a free download from the website. This is a deliberate choice to maximise take up and to get it into the hands of brands, designers and printers. A tutorial to show how to create the ASE files is included. “This way brand owners and designers can try it and immediately see the power of this little gem,” says Hagen.
While Hagen is at pains to stress that the project was initiated to overcome flaws in existing colour guides, not in direct response the the Adobe-Pantone rift, his is not the only approach that could replace the widely used colour reference guide.
