One of the issues that crops up at the shop on an almost weekly basis is the subject of logo file formats and the various color palettes required for effective brand management. Seems that this is a portion of the logo design process remains a little foggy for some, and completely misunderstood by others.
Not really surprising – in this, the era of logo contests, web-based do-it-yourself logo generators and home-made logos, a lot of the technical aspects of design are being overlooked (sometimes forgotten) as folks look for faster and cheaper alternatives that bypass working with designers who might have a clue how proper file setup works. Kind of a ‘we’ll fix it in post’ mentality. All fine and dandy, I suppose, if you’re looking to slap a rudimentary logo on a photo-copied flyer to hand out at the mall. If you want to use a logo as part of a branding system, you’re going to need a little more flexibility than that.
Trouble is, if your logo is just a ‘pretty picture’, without the correct file format array backing it up, it will remain so, albeit with a mess of reproduction problems in the not-too-distant future. As it’s a slow news day, and I’m in a tutorial frame-of-mind, thought it might be worth while revisiting some file format basics, specifically the various color palettes and their applications. This tutorial is written with the assumption that your logo artwork is available in vector based formats (Adobe Illustrator .ai, .eps or .pdf). If it isn’t, get one. If you only have access to a pixel based format – Adobe Photoshop .ps, .gif or .jpg for example – you’ll need to repair your logo into the correct formats. We’ll take a look at several types of color systems; Spot Color (using the Pantone Matching System), CMYK (also known as Full-Color and Four Color Process) with a little looksee at Black & White (focusing on Linear and Halftone, also known as Grey Scale or Gray Scale). For this exercise, we’ll use the logo of our imaginary company – The Logo Design Factory – and our characters – Vector and his beloved canine, Pixel.
Spot Color logos using the Pantone Matching System.
Back in the day, Spot Color logos where the only way designers rolled. Anything more was simply too-expensive to print, except for the largest corporations, and even they generally opted for Spot Colors for precise control of how their brand was presented to the world. Things are a little different today – online printers and desktop technology has made Full-Color printing much more accessible – but still, using spot colors in any logo remains the preferred route for many design professionals. The Pantone Matching System (PMS) is a universal color matching system that allows designers and printers to match colors accurately regardless of the printing job required. This method of color matching allows you to select colors for your logo using a series of pre-mixed ink color swatches (similar to paint chips at the local hardware store). These colors are cataloged and indexed using Pantone numbers (a 3 or 4 digit number prefaced by the PMS nomenclature ie: PMS 366). As colors react differently on various printing surfaces there’s two main types of Pantone colors – Uncoated and Coated. Any Pantone number followed by a C tells us that color referenced can only be matched precisely by printing on a ‘Coated’, or glossy, printing surface (shiny business cards for example). A Pantone number followed by a ‘U’ refers to an ‘Uncoated’ or matte surface. This is an important distinction that we’ll address more in a bit.
A print job using Pantone colors is referred to as Spot Color printing and is usually an economical way of reproducing business material such as business cards, letterheads and presentation folders while maintaining absolute control over the colors used (as I mentioned earlier, this used to be a set-in-stone rule, but more economical full-color printing has relaxed the financial restrictions somewhat). The Pantone System books – a series of color chips are expensive but can be viewed at your local print shop (usually when they’re printing your job – most print shops aren’t too keen on would-be designers ‘dropping by’ just to check out some color samples).
Spot Color printing – how it works.
How does it all work? Simply really. Your printer will take your Spot Color artwork file, and then output a metal plate for each color. The plates are set up on the the press, inked up with the appropriate colors, and when the paper is run though the press, with one impression for each color, what comes out at the other side is your completed image (see the image above). While using Spot Colors in a logo can be a little restrictive, we can still add the ‘appearance’ of more colors by adding screens and tones (which are selected as percentages) of a particular color. This can give the the appearance of more colors than we’re actually using while not adding to our overall print bill (below).
Spot Color reproduction is generally more economical than Four Color Process printing which requires four sets of plates, film and usually a larger press (though as I mentioned before – this is changing almost on a weekly basis). Spot Color reproduction is also more accurate in terms of color matching as the color values are absolute. In terms of resolution, Spot Color reproduction tends to be sharper than Full Color (see comparison below) though for most applications (and decent print resolution) this wouldn’t be noticed by anyone but design professionals or unless you’re using really crappy printing resolution.
Converting Spot Colors to CMYK or RGB.
Sometimes we’ll need to convert Spot Color logos into Full Color (CMYK or RGB) counterparts – not really a big deal. We can convert these colors back and forth using a one-click conversion in Adobe Illustrator (screen grab below). This conversion comes with a few caveats; some PMS colors do necessarily have a corresponding RGB (the color system used by monitors) and vice-versa (the Microsoft web blue is famously difficult to match). Too, Spot Colors may require careful matching to be precisely converted into Full Color Process – some PMS colors translate exactly, others are w-a-y off. This might be an issue – generally speaking, Four Color Process files are required by discount print shops (especially those you’ll find online) who ‘gang up’ several print jobs in order to offer cut-rate pricing.
If you’re particularly anal about color accuracy here’s a couple of things to keep in mind – if you’re printing on a combination of coated (glossy) and uncoated (matte) papers – typical with ‘shiny’ business cards and their letterhead counterparts – the colors may shift (sometimes dramatically) and the various bits and pieces of your stationery may not match. Your printer can address this by using different color inks for each part of your print job, but this will increase your tab due to the multiple print runs required.
Spot Color logos – a few tips and caveats.
As we mentioned earlier your logo colors may not match exactly if you attempt to print Spot Color artwork as a Four Color Process). Many printers will simply change the colors to CMYK in your original digital files (using Adobe Illustrator as we illustrated above), but this is haphazard at best. If you want to be really, really accurate, there’s a Pantone Spot to Process Formula Book that allows you to choose the closest CMKY equivalents to your spot colors. Keep in mind that certain spot colors do not convert exactly and there’s absolutely nothing you can do about it. If your printer is using the increasingly popular ‘gang run’ – grouping your job with a number of other pieces on a large sheet – expect varying colors from run to run and at different times. Other projects, especially with heavy ink coverage, may shift the colors of your portion of the sheet. This is to be expected – ‘gang run’ printing is designed to be cheap, not precise, and you’re not paying for exacting color standards. Be realistic in your expectations.
Here’s one issue that crops up once-in-a-while, especially with older TLF clients who want to change the colors of their artwork for a specific job. We’ve fielded the occasional panicked phone call, requesting new Spot Color files for output and wondering how they can get new digital files within oh, the next 3 minutes. Not neccessary. As long as the color changes are ‘global’ (ie: changing all the blue to black and all the red to blue) a printer can change spot colors on the press quite easily, regardless of what Pantone colors are ‘tagged’ in your digital files. The PMS number has no effect on the ink used – it is simply a notation to indicate to your printer what color should be used. They can set up the press substituting any colored inks for the ones originally proposed. We’ve saved a few grey hairs and blood pressures with that simple tip.
Four Color Process logos (CMYK or Full Color).
Full-Color traditional printing use four inks that make up the spectrum of colors available. These inks combined are referred to as CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, Black) and the printing process is known as Four Color Process (or simply Four Color). Artwork is set up using these four colors and various percentages of each make up the full spectrum seen in the final product. These percentages are printed as varying sizes and densities of dots – most noticeable in the low resolution printing of most newspapers. Let’s take a look at how Four Color printing compares with Spot Color work -
When these ‘dots’ of the Four Color inks are printed one over the other, the resulting combinations will make up all the colors required by our logo. Instead of having color tones premixed (as per Spot Color printing), we are mixing inks ‘on the fly’, and on the printing press, instead. For the time being Four Color reproduction is more expensive than Spot Color (unless our work is being ‘gang run’) and color accuracy is largely dependent on the skill and professionalism of the shop you’ve chosen to print your material. Four Color reproduction can utilize either vector based (.eps) or pixel based versions (.tif) of your logo (as long as the image has adequate resolution and it’s set to a CMKY palette).
Four Color Printing – tips and caveats.
If you’re printing a 4 color process project using pixel based images, the digital files that you’re supplying your printer need to be in high enough resolution. Some services will accept images as low as 150 DPI (dots per inch), it’s always better that your pixel based files are no lower than 266 DPI (300 DPI or higher for high-quality glossy reproduction). If your images are low resolution, you’ll probably end up with ‘blurry’ images in your printed piece.
It never ceases to amaze me when folks skip this step – always ask for a ‘press proof’ of your job. Almost all modern proofing systems are set up for CMYK and Four Color process so you can get a fairly accurate ‘first peek’ of your job as it will end up. Added bonus – getting a press proof beforehand allows you to check for typos and spelling errors that may have slipped by during the initial design phase.
Black and White logos – also known as Halftone and Greyscale (Grayscale).
While color is dandy, there will still be times that you’ll need Black and White versions of your logo. Think FAXes, checks and .PDF forms that are designed to be printed as BW on customers desktop printers. There are two types of Black and White logos and files – Linear and Halftone – and we need to take a look at both, using Papa’s Sports Bar & Lounge restaurant logos in our case studies;
Black and White Halftone of Grayscale (Greyscale) logos.
A logo that is one color, or extremely simple, converting it to Black and White is a snap. Simply convert the artwork arbitrarily and globally to black and you’re done. No need to read any further. If, on the other hand, your logo contains any blends, gradients or a multitude of colors, you’ll need to be a little more judicious in the creation of a BW version, and will probably require a Halftone (Grayscale) format developed. A Halftone version of your logo features varying percentages of black which will print as artwork that’s made up of varying sizes of black dots. A Grayscale version is suitable for BW print reproduction as long as resolution permits (for extremely low-resolution printing it’s probably probably advisable to utilize a linear version). This type of image is most apparent in BW newspaper photographs. In terms of converting your spiffy color logo into its BW counterpart, Adobe Illustrator has a quick fix – simply select all the objects in the logo artwork, go the Filter Menu, select Colors and then Convert to Grayscale like so –
This technique will do in a pinch with a few very strong caveats. Illustrator tries hard, really hard, to convert colors to a full BW range (using percentages of Black to make up the grays) but often times the results are extremely low contrast, or the parts of the logo that were prominent in color have turned into lifeless mid-range grays and receded into the background. It’s always a good idea to let Illustrator do the ‘grunt work’ and then hand edit the various percentages of gray into a wider spectrum for better contrast using the sliding scale. Like so –
Black and White Linear logos.
A linear BW version of your logo is made up of solid black. That’s it. Black and nothing else. There are no Halftones, screens or grays. This usual application for this type of artwork is for use on low-resolution reproduction (FAX cover sheets, Check artwork, etc) or reproduction where screens just aren’t available (think die-cut vinyl, 3D carvings and laser etching). Linear versions of your logo can also be printed using a colored ink on T-shirts and the like. How to convert your logo into a linear version? By hand, grasshopper, by hand. Eyeballing the artwork and deciding what to combine and what to turn into white is the only predictable way to do this right.
If the logo is particularly complicated (as the Papa’s logo we’re using here is) you may need to rework the original artwork into a more linear friendly version. Pain in the tuckus I know, but once you’ve finished, you have a full range of formats that are applicable in almost every scenario imaginable.
For more on the Papa’s Sports Lounge design project, see here. If you’re after more detailed information on file formats and technical info, check out our library of design articles and ideas for more.
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