As print professionals know, the colors that are used to promote a brand are very important. Likewise, the quality and consistency of those colors are instrumental to the success of the brand. It’s important for awareness, recognition, and consistency. Different light sources can affect the consistency, perception, and effectiveness of your brand colors.
Here’s why you should always check color consistency under all light sources.
Different Light Sources & Color Consistency
Color and print professionals understand that light source affects how we perceive color. That’s why most design and printing facilities have various light source standards for the products they create. The goal is to ensure the color is consistent with customers in a variety of situations. Not just to please the customer visually, but to make sure the brand is perceived consistently by all customers.
Not every lighting source can be controlled on the customer side. But it’s important to understand the most likely situations that customers experience. Then make sure both the design side and the print side are working checking color under the same lighting sources. This makes the process more efficient and provides consistency to the customers.
Checking Consistency Under Different Light Sources
Regardless of how large your brand is, color consistency is important. It can be easy to overlook or push aside the importance of light source, though, for printed materials.
Customers interact with countless brands and businesses via printed material every single day. This makes it difficult to stand out and it also makes it difficult to stand out for the right reasons. If customers see a variation in brand colors on printed materials they will take notice. But obviously not in a good way.
It’s even possible that inconsistency in color could lead to your brand being mistaken for another company. When viewing branding material, many visitors remember different businesses by their brand colors rather than name.
Take Jennie-O, for example. The brand colors feature distinctive shades of green and yellow. When talking about turkeys, customers might find themselves referring to it as, “you know, the green and yellow packaging”.
But as you might expect, a number of companies in the same industry use variations of greens and yellows. It’s critical for each to make sure printed materials use the exact right color. This is especially important under different light sources. From the markets to homes, light sources can lead to brand recognition or brand confusion.
Conclusion
By and large, overcoming the challenges of color inconsistency caused by different light sources isn’t easy. Having cooperation between the design department and printer is a crucial part. And it’s one that many brands adhere to. It can be a challenge for small firms with small teams. But usually, the best printers will work with you to make sure your color is consistent across various light sources.
For all brands, consistency also involves understanding your customers and all the ways they experience your brand’s colors. This too comes with the maturation of the business. But even then it’s important to have feedback processes to understand how light sources affect the way people interact with your brand’s colors.
Color management is a vital function in businesses of all sizes. The more control you have over the colors that you use, the better off you will be.
Printed marketing materials take time and money to produce. It’s easy to get excited about new promotional material. But it’s frustrated to have to go back and make changes. Even after a test run. The more you can work with your printer upfront, the better. And the more you can learn about your customer, and the light sources they use, the better.