The approach to take to achieve colour consistency is to begin with Pantone colour chips. Pantone identifies specific conversions for cyan, magenta, yellow, and key/black (CMYK) and red, green, and blue (RGB) based off their original Pantone colours. With these specifications in place, printers can achieve absolute accuracy with the Pantone ink formula. If the printer won’t use Pantone or it becomes cost prohibitive, you can use the Pantone conversions for CMYK to get the closest approximation when printing. An approximation that will also closely align with the on screen RGB conversion from Pantone.

To illustrate how different colour values look on screen vs when printed, here is a precisely matched colour for Pantone 107C as shown in Illustrator when using the Pantone palette chip and Pantone conversion values for CMYK and RGB. 

When printed, the Pantone and CMYK should closely match on paper. They certainly don’t on screen. While the RGB should match the printed Pantone and CMYK colours. Therefore, the RGB colour shown on screen is the closest approximation to what the printed Pantone and CMYK colours should look, and you should never colour match on screen to a Pantone or CMYK value, which you can see are brighter and less saturated on screen than the rich colour that should print, as represented by the RGB colour.

From screen mockups to final selections

Trying to match from RGB, you might have a difficult time finding a closely aligned CMYK colour that will match when you print it. And you’ll never have the ease and accuracy of starting with Pantone. However, when you’re quickly trying to mock up new work prior to approval, there’s an efficiency to working quickly with RGB. Experiment with colour options, gain approval, then hold up your Pantone chips to the screen to find a close approximation to your on screen colour. Once you’re there, slight tweaks to the RGB values to match the Pantone conversion guidelines will get you a final colour you can trust.

While it’s not an inexpensive process, in that you’re buying Pantone chips, confirming values, and making sure this is handed off/used for printing, this is the way to ensure colours across various media align.

Of course, different screens have different colour profiles and brightness, so your RGB values will never be consistent across different types of screens, but you will have colour consistency across all the media you control.

But I can just convert the Pantone chip in Photoshop to CMYK.

Sorry, no. You can’t trust conversion values on screen by converting Pantone swatches to RGB/CMYK in Illustrator or Photoshop. You’ll need to use the conversion formulas from Pantone and manually identify the RGB/CMYK values.

Converting Pantone swatches to RGB/CMYK in Illustrator/Photoshop does not provide accurate colour conversions.

For example, if you switch your Illustrator swatch from Pantone 107C to show as RGB, you get the values of 255,242,31. The values in the Pantone Color Bridge are actually 249,225,30 which, on screen, is noticeably deeper and more red compared to the canary yellow of 107C on screen, which is, of course, closer looking to the printed Pantone swatch.

The sooner you check those Pantone formulas, the better.

The sooner you make your colour choice from Pantone based on whatever you’ve shown the client for approval, the sooner you’ll be able to ensure your RGB/CMYK values are aligned and avoid added work.

When we’re doing mocks, as a last step of approval we’ll select the Pantone value that closely approximates whatever the client has seen, make the minor adjustments to the RGB values on screen or CMYK if there’s a print element, and confirm the approval once again. This is essential because anything already produced must be updated to the final values in order to match across print and digital.

Consider it this way: if you design a whole slew of digital components (website, social logos, ads, and so on) and you haven’t yet chosen a Pantone colour to match your on screen RGB, when you finally choose the Pantone colour, if there’s a noticeable difference in the RGB values, you’ll have to adjust all the colour values across all the already produced digital media. Yikes!

End your colour guesswork

All you need to end your colour guesswork is this Pantone Color Bridge set. Have at it!

Looking for more practical insights from our product and design experts?

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Massimo Vignelli, storied designer, passed away yesterday. The Vignelli quote pictured above, “If you do it right, it will last forever”, captures the spirit of his work, as does this quote:

We like design to be visually powerful, intellectually elegant, and above all, timeless.

The image above is taken from Pentagram’s program design for The Architectural League’s Lella and Massimo Vignelli Gala, March 8, 2011.

With five different covers featuring five different classic Vignelli quotes (in Helvetica, of course) printed in PMS Super Warm Red (the couple’s favorite color), the programs were the perfect table settings for a memorable evening.

Other folks have shared their stories about Vignelli, none better than Michael Beirut, who learned his considerable trade over 10 years at Vignelli Associates:

Today there is an entire building in Rochester, New York, dedicated to preserving the Vignelli legacy. But in those days, it seemed to me that the whole city of New York was a permanent Vignelli exhibition. To get to the office, I rode in a subway with Vignelli-designed signage, shared the sidewalk with people holding Vignelli-designed Bloomingdale’s shopping bags, walked by St. Peter’s Church with its Vignelli-designed pipe organ visible through the window. At Vignelli Associates, at 23 years old, I felt I was at the center of the universe.

We don’t have the same first hand view of the man, but we can share some of his work and reflect on the profound impact he’s had on design in New York City, and beyond.

Now I just need to get my hands on some simply elegant Sasaki flatware designed by Vignelli Associates.

Further Reading
Massimo’s Last Letters video.
Vignelli Associates work included in AIGA’s Design Archives.
The history of the NYC subway map.
Who made that big brown bag?

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50 x 93 x 10 cm

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Following the launch of the University of California identity, it seems a petition was sent around calling for the new logo to be kiboshed, with a return to the original UC seal. Well, 50,000+ voices have been heard.

From the announcement by UC Senior VP for External Relations, Daniel M Dooley:

The monogram was only a piece of the visual identity system — a new approach to typography, photography, colors and the like — that was developed by UCOP design staff.

Since it debuted in the past year, this new “look” has served the UC system well, replacing what was a clutter of dated materials that varied from UCOP department to department. And it has received praise from an array of accomplished design experts not affiliated with the university.

And yet, while I believe the design element in question would win wide acceptance over time, it also is important that we listen to and respect what has been a significant negative response by students, alumni and other members of our community.

Therefore, I have instructed the communications team to suspend further use of the monogram.

Armin at Brand New offers this perspective:

Happy now? By next week you’ll have forgotten about even signing the petition but, in the course of that, you have caused irremediable damage in the confidence of the leadership team at UC to even consider doing anything new or different anytime soon that would potentially help improve your university system to succeed. Enjoy your seal.

And boy is Armin getting an earful in the comments. No one there supporting the new monogram, of course, but they are taking Armin to task for not appreciating the public and alumni discourse that led to this decision.

I just wish they’d gone exclusively with this, which seems to also have been part of their plans:

Instead of this:

Which makes us all think this:

In the end, why all the variation? Seal vs monogram vs monogram with text vs monogram with the gradient fadeout. There’s no surprise things turned out this way when no one was willing to be decisive about how the monogram was to be applied.

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Nigel Smith recently wrote a great article noting the design history of Team Canada’s iconic jerseys, chock full of fun little anecdotes. It begins with:

In 1972, the most famous Canadian sports uniform — a design icon — was created by John Lloyd, a transplanted Englishman with no knowledge of hockey. (He was more into yoga.) Lloyd is completely uncelebrated for his extraordinary contribution, and he never mentioned it. This work is an example of the power of good design, and here’s how it came to be.

The whole article is worth a read, but here are some choice highlights:

Vickers and Benson were given 24 hours to come up with a name and sweater design.

They were originally to be called the NHL All-stars, but Terry O’Malley at Vickers and Benson worked to position the series as “not a series between Russia and the NHL, but Russia and Canada.”

O’Malley on the mad rush and work by John Lloyd:

Everything was moving at warp speed. We not only required the sweater, but we needed home and away versions by, you guessed it, tomorrow.

The incredible John Lloyd had bought two large red and two large white sweaters. He cut out the now famous stylized maple leaf in red and in white. He then stitched the red on the white jersey for home and reversed the process for the away.

Defying convention: There is no central crest on the uniform. There are also no numbers on the sleeves.

All this derived from a Canadian flag which was, at the time, just 7 years old, designed by a man who had only been in the country for 2 years, and stitched by his wife, Michelle Lloyd, who went on to co-found Club Monaco.

Awesome.

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The image on the left shows the consistent spacing of left-justified text. Still hard to read over long periods, but better than having the inconsistent spacing between words on a line that you get with justified text that doesn’t use hyphens (pictured right).

But here come the new Kindles.

With the release of new Kindle devices last week, it was my hope that the world’s largest e-book seller would right this wrong and make reading that much easier for those of us who would like to move from print to digital.

Unfortunately, the first thing I noticed when going to the new Kindle Paperwhite promotional page was this extremely poorly justified promo image:

Look at the giant spaces between words on that 4th line. You can park a bus in any one of those spaces.

So much for Amazon addressing this issue that’s preventing me from getting on the Kindle bandwagon.

Then again, there may be a bigger issue in the e-book ecosystem than hyphenation. One that affects all the main e-book vendors, from books to comics to textbooks. And that’s DRM.

DRM, nothing learned.

We’ve been down this road before with music, and it appears book distributors and publishers are throwing up the exact same inscrutable barriers, locking us into formats and software that has an unknown shelf life, preventing us from controlling how portable our media is and what devices we consumer it on. All the same hostile behaviour towards consumers we did away with in the music industry (at least for purchased downloads, which is all that concerns me).

David Crow’s just acknowledged many of these e-book issues, motivated to reflect on the media he’s been buying due to cost fluctuations the same way I’ve been motivated by remembering my troubles with DRMed music:

Now, I remember DRM because it was a massive pain in the ass when I was buying DRM music and, in one specific example, couldn’t play it for friends, on my own computer, even with my password (other licensing limitations got in the way). That was the last time I bought a DRMed piece of music.

How publishers have allowed this to happen is beyond me. It’s remarkably short-sighted. And generally thoughtless. From Dark Horse Comics FAQ:

DO I OWN THE DIGITAL COMIC I PURCHASED?
You do not. As with Amazon, Nook, and other e-book companies, you don’t own the book you buy. You are licensing the right to read the book on supported and authorized devices.

Boy, that last sentence is irksome. In the case of new releases, I’m generally asked to pay the same price as a physical copy of the book. With the physical copy, I may read it wherever and however I choose, lend it to whomever I choose, and resell or give to someone. But if I pay online, I’m asked to authenticate my purchase via a software of the vendor’s choosing on a device they’ve decided, for now, to support. What a load of shit.

I suggested in response to David’s article that we as consumers do the following:

1. Stop buying DRM content unless it is ludicrously discounted. Enough so that it’s okay that we may lose access to it in any matter of months (due to software or device changes the vendor decides not to support).

2. Either start a general petition or start reaching out to those publishers who are supporting this mess with words of encouragement to move away from DRM and unreasonable pricing for restricted, licensed content.

3. Be sure to give props to publishers offering content unencumbered by DRM either during your checkout process or whenever you have a chance to do so.

In the 24 hours since David shared his article, I’ve read some encouraging news from Rosenfeld Media, a publisher who was already well down the road of not dicking customers over with DRM. And I received a nice email from Dark Horse offering 50% off my next digital purchase, which I politely declined and then directly explained why via email.

You have elected to provide the comics you’re licensing digitally in a closed, rights-restricted format which means that I’m limited in both what devices and software I may use to read them and how I may transfer them to another user (ie, gift or otherwise transfer my ownership). Further, I’m stuck with a format that will surely not remain available to me over time as technologies change and Dark Horse decides to stop supporting their current technologies and/or new and existing platforms and devices.

…

If you adjusted your digital pricing to start at about 75% off printed retail pricing I would suggest that to be a fair price given the above limitations, but I’d rather Dark Horse, a company I’ve long supported, take a stand on this foolish practice of licensing rights-managed content to consumers and, contrary to the ridiculous justification stated in your FAQ, see you follow in the footsteps of O’Reilly, Rosenfeld, and other e-book companies in licensing your content without DRM so your customers have the opportunity to choose the software they wish to consume it on for years to come.

Adrian Kingsley-Hughes suggest on ZDNet that publishers’ fear of Amazon (and Apple) owning the e-book market because DRM locks most books sold to their devices will be enough to drive DRM from books. I’m not as confident as he is, so I encourage you to start a dialogue with the publishers you support.

And, if you’re a Kindle user, prodding them about hyphenation wouldn’t hurt either.

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Excess exposes the soullessness of conventional design, in the same way that sarcasm cuts down puffery.

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Here’s what they looked like on Monday:

And here’s what our Tumblr Dashboard looks like today:

Wow. What an improvement!

So, what makes these new icons so great? Well, at a glance recognition, that’s what.

Previously, there was a relatively clear distinction in the colour differences for each post type. Tumblr’s done well to keep this colour palette so, not only do the icons continue to be visually distinct from one another, but they retain the same colour for user’s who identified post types this way. In other words, the new icons are still familiar to long time Tumblr users.

However, the previously-used fancy torn paper motif was a needless distraction with its high realism, off balance angle, and consistent shape, ultimately creating a pattern that made it difficult to recognize the icons themselves.

In this case, the apparent decision to simplify meant removing the paper, gradients and drop shadows, so now each of the icons has a distinct shape from one another, at a glance.

Though I could quibble about the inconsistent weights (some icons appear needlessly heavier than others), complain about the vertical alignment (they do look like they’re all centred vertically, but why make some taller than others so there’s no rhythm or consistency to the icons), and wonder about the decision to illustrate the too similar Photo and Chat shapes (that’s a funky chat bubble which is very similar to the camera, making it harder to differentiate between the two), overall this is a great improvement.

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From January 13 to January 17, browse to tiff.net/design for details on joining Gary Hustwit and friends in viewing his three-part exploration of modern design, the docs Helvetica, Objectified, and Urbanized.

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