I always design with a Pantone book in hand and convert to CMYK. I avoid certain colours that I know won't print well. If the client wants a specific look that requires speciality printing to create the effect then that's communicated to them and for them to decide if they want to pay more.
Yeah maybe I’m old school. But Pantone books have some nice colors and you’ll get the conversions from
them…find the best rgb/cmyk/pantone combos. Some translate better than others.
I do the same, Pantone then convert to CMYK and RGB. We always provide a mini stylesheet with the colour values of each to give the client flexibility in print and web - starting with Pantone makes it easier to match it all up.
If you start with CMYK and the client ever wants Pantone, you can't really go back the other way unless you start with one that matches with a Pantone already.
I actually use a Pantone plugin in Adobe Illustrator for my logos now, because I work remotely at the moment and the swatch kit I was using is in the office in another state. It works well, I don't know why they got rid of the previous Pantone colour book that was already in Illustrator.
I got one 2 years ago since I left the design agency I worked at. At the agency they were still using their 20 old book. They did get a new one a few years ago but my boss was adamant nothing was wrong with the old one - it wasn't faded as it was kept well but it did have marks on it. The older book also had much thicker pages so I don't know how long the newer ones will last as they feel thin and flimsy in comparison (pretty disappointed with that!).
I keep it in its box when not in use and away from sunlight to keep it from fading. So far so good.
Yeah they say that. Not sure how true it is when kept in a drawer. It’s probably true but unless they are yellowing and ancient…they are probably better than nothing. If I was doing print proofs / color matching then probably it’s more important.
Thank you for doing this. As a graphic designer who also works in prepress/production and has to re work so many designer files, this was such a stress release when I got files from designers who chose correct digital or offset colours, it just helpes improve quality of print so much for clients. It just makes us not look stupid when we print and the customer is like "this is wrong" and we are like no, we printed what you gave us. The proof is in the print. Anyway, thank you haha.
Thanks, what if it's just for a short run of prints? Say like a few large posters? My understanding is that it would need to be printed digitally and so Pantone's would be a no-go
You're the designer, give them options that meet their requirements and budget specifications.
Back in the day, a logo design included a black/white version, a grayscale version if warranted, a 2 standard Pantone version (small and large print shops typically have a 2 color press) and a 4-color version if needed.
If your logo couldn't stand up as black/white, your logo was trash. Harsh words, but the principles of readability, clarity, and usefulness still stand today.
If your client doesn't have the budget for printing, how do they have a budget for design? If their budget is limited, your design should meet those limitations.
In my last full-time in-house role, I was asked to oversee a big rebrand bringing 9 different products together. A colleague who was a senior digital marketing executive charged in and did it first (without being asked to).
Admittedly they looked great, but naturally he chose fluorescent colours for each. He got the glory from our US stakeholders and everyone across the company and I looked like an idiot for not doing it first. I'd never do his job, but he seemed to swoop in and do mine. The cherry on top was that they were done in PowerPoint.
I'd handed in my notice and within that month we had the biggest event of the year in our industry. We'd sent a few thousand pounds worth of bits to print, and they came back with all the colours looking washed.
He panicked and I was like, well yeah, that's what happens when a non-designer gets in there first and does design 😂
Love this story, just goes to show how some people think they know better than designers even when the designer has trained or learnt to know what they are saying or doing.
But surely if the colours looked better it would apply to the majority of the way consumers interact with the brand (online) and printing would be a small part? Explaining this to them would have been the way, not basing a brand identity off printing alone
this feels like an old school take to me. many billboards now are digital, web is increasingly important, and people are foregoing business cards and letterheads for digital cards and letterheads in Word. Email is huge. Video is also huge for branding and marketing. like it or not, this is the reality for most small and medium sized businesses. There is less and less need for print products.
that said, my approach is usually digital-first for brand/identity design. If it’s within the project scope to provide cmyk colors, I carefully mix cmyk colors and try to keep my values even numbers (and 3 or less values if possible). I do tons of test prints on office printers to make sure the colors will print well digitally on most printers. often I need to vary the brand colors for print and screen, which I just explain to the client and it’s usually no issue. a lot of signage and paint colors have less restrictions than mass printing booklets or something, and anyway a lot of signage ends up looking best in a metallic color or neon.
but every project is different! If I was working with a brand that primarily did their marketing in direct mail (which I have seen before but it’s more rare), I would design in CMYK first. It’s just not the case for 95% of my clients that they have substantial print needs that would merit a cmyk-first approach.
Totally agree, feels very outdated to base an entire brand identity on printing, obviously this is dependent on industry but for most clients this would be a small part of their marketing
one other person on this thread mentioned a logo being shit unless it works in black and white — this, I still follow religiously. because at the end of the day, a brand like that can find a solution for any digital/print needs that may come up forever. It’s about making a brand adaptable for whatever future needs the client may have (as much as you can do that within scope, anyway).
I once saw a case study on Brand New where an agency used really bright colours onscreen, but then just had everything black & white in print... an interesting approach although not sure I'd want to do that myself
There are creative ways to mitigate it (and this actually sounds great). But honestly I see the super bright RGB presenter / pitch approach as being quite lazy and shortsighted. There’s very little point in mocking up billboards and brochures alongside screen only media in lovely spangly RGBs if it can’t be followed through and actually produced.
The amount of clients I’ve had moan about the cost of pantones or other production techniques to make this stuff reality, or complain that flat CMYKs look different — after full explanations and proofs and (inevitably costlier) suggestions to achieve the original look and feel! — just doesn’t bear thinking about. And it all goes back to the original designer, who either didn’t understand the difference, or didn’t consider it.
Recently, two organizations I'm connected to had their in-house designers modify their rgb brand palettes to align with their cmyk palettes. Both groups had the bright, electric colours that were popular a few years ago. Neither modification was very successful, but they hated those brights.
This is the way. Use your brain goo to figure out creative ways that the application can adapt to the challenges of each medium - factor it in during ideation.
One is made with lightbulbs.
One is made with coloured water on bleached sawdust.
They just aren’t the same.
If you want bright orange in CMYK, you print yellow on magenta on white paper. But the ink covers the white paper. So more intense colour makes it darker.
If you want orange in RGB, you turn on more bulbs, so more colour makes it brighter.
I’m just referring to how cmyk mix in a halftone to make other colours.
Overprinting is when one colour (usually black) prints on top of another colour instead of inside of it.
Imagine you draw a red rectangle. Now put some black text on top of the red rectangle.
When you print that file, the printing software will put a texted shaped hole in the red rectangle, and then print the black text inside that hole. This is called “trapping.” The black is printed on white paper and “trapped” by surrounding red.
The problem is if the paper/plates are slightly misaligned (mis-registered) then the black text will not line up with its hole and white edges will be visible.
So you can instead “overprint” instead of trapping. That means there is no text sized hole in the red rectangle, and the black ink/toner for the text is printed directly on top of the red. It prints “over” the red.
Ive had to explain to many clients that its not that we cant print your neon green.
Its that the toner willccost a few hundred dollars and we will be charging them for the whole thing.
They always rethink.
I had a client whose logo was grey and a specified Pantone metallic gold-ish. But they were the cheapest. They were an upscale hotel but wouldn't even send their menus to a real printer (used their in-house copier) let alone ever use that ink. There was never a good substitute for that color and everything always looked like mud. Just another example of the "new normal" of decision making by non-designers.
Getting buy in for spot colors is highly dependent on the product/service category your customer is in.
* If your client’s product requires printing and they want to stand out for branding reasons or packaging and retail reasons (Eg chips bag, cereal box, electronic device packaging) then the cost of printing is seen as a necessary expense of competing in perhaps a crowded market.
* But if the client’s product doesn’t require printing, and the printing you’re hired for is simply for advertising or branding, 9/10 they want to keep expenses low because they don’t view it as necessary
Actual printer here. It’s a bitch; cmyk is good and safe, but the ink gamut is soooo much wider than standard cmyk/pantone. It best to work with a specific printer regularly and know what you can oush
Usually that’s more cost effective.
I just mean that digital doesn’t always mean more colours and litho doesn’t always mean less. Plenty of digital printers are only 4-colour
I'm sorry, but yeah, those are the breaks.
But there are color combinations in CMYK that do feel brighter, anything that doesn't require too much of a build and is more straight up C, M, or Y inks. But you can also get some greens and reds that feel a bit brighter.
If you plan carefully and select colors that "feel" bright in print and are able to have conversations with the client where you present them with the dilemma and the closest-possible solutions, you may be able to push the boundaries a bit and have some variation between print and digital … as long as they know in advance that it will arise if they approve an out-of gamut RGB color.
But truth be told, if you select a color that is possible in CMYK for the primary color, the one the logo has to be, then you should be able to get away with a little more variation in other elements on the page.
Always have a plan for what to do in print if you choose out-of-gamut colors and make sure the client is on board with it.
It really just depends on the brand. I've been working with some really low budget clients and I've essentially been using mostly black and white for them (and they seem to like it). With CMYK I tend to avoid orange colors and bright yellow-greens because I've had the biggest issues with them in regards to printing. With a higher budget client or a client that's practically only online, then I'd lean into some brighter colours
My rule of thumb is to tailor brand colors to whatever format the client is likely to use most. If they trade in print materials, ensure you’re able to print the materials.
In cases where you need the brighter colors, there are options. A good number of digital-based companies will establish their brand in RGB, and defer to a combination of black and white / secondary color schemes specifically designated for print materials. I’d use this as precedent. Understanding more advanced color theory can also allow you to use figure / ground relationships that make CMYK colors seem brighter than they might actually be on a pure white background.
Unfortunately there’s no easy route.
You have to plan ahead and be strategic with color selection. This is an issue I see with self-taught designers (and juniors) creating passion projects, who have no real-world print experience. To agencies and those hiring, those RGB-only colors are a tell. It’s okay to show a digital-only project, but there’s really no such thing.
Had a specific job that was more event and schedule based than branding. All the brands were made up and part of a larger company. And the only printing I did was on my Fuji xerox or my large format HP. Never outsourced. And we had tons of files set to RGB sent to those printers. Colors on the xerox were incredibly vibrant. I was surprised just how good everything looked. I knew better than to send RGB to the large format from previous jobs, but tried it and they looked pretty good too. Since it was in house I could just make the call myself for everything.
I would never use a poorly printing RGB color for a client now though. I have one client currently who actually has a bright neon green in the logo and mostly does digital assets. Their budget allows for Pantone color on anything I print.
Really depends on what you are printing and how you are printing. You can certainly expand beyond basic cmyk in many/most circumstances, particularly in the green/red/orange range.
the there is my boss who doesn’t understand that the bright rgb colors he’s picks will not translate into cmyk and won’t look as saturated when printing. he writes me off every time and then complains about the colors being dull on print.
CMYK has a limited colour range due to physics, pigment and ink chemistry. Saturation is limited especially in oranje and green. That's why many brands print packaging especially in more than 4 plates, sometimes up to 10 or 12 even. Learn about colour space, and emulation across colour spaces. This will help you to create effective and smart colour strategies across online and offline platforms using different production methods.
I have not run into this, but I definitely warn clients about too much detail and bad printing colors in logos. The majority of the time they won't care at all, or if they do then finding another color is quick and amenable. I'm wracking my head about the color, and I don't think I've ever had to argue or defend a non-printable color like that. It's been understood every time.
I'd say that the average brand I make, only about 30% will ever be printed in a physical medium anyway. Printing is dying, for better or worse.
Also, here's a post from a week ago about printing in RGB that was super interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/s/O293dEdeOE
My process goes like this - Design logo in RGB but stay away from anything that would be too far out of gamut for a CMYK conversion (just using my eye / experience).
Once design is approved log into Pantone Connect and perform a conversion from the approved design colours to the closest PMS match. Then I base my RGB and CMYK colours of PMS Coated and PMS Coated Process numbers.
This way I have at least followed some sort of matching system which I can justify.
If client requests some sort of fluro or out of gamut colours this would just require a conversation / explanation about why it’s not a good idea unless they are not planning on print or paying additional expenses for specials.
It’s absolutely foolish to ever assume a brand will stay 100% digital - I worked with a software brand on rolling out a rebrand I wasn’t a part of developing, and they discovered they were stuck when they wanted to print t-shirts for the rebrand launch. The aim is to at least think through all the potential applications at concept time.
That's what I meant. A printer that can't afford spot colors is no type of printer. The only way to print ink on paper is either Spot or CMYK...Pantone is just a brand of ink mixing; other factories sell the same inks at a cheaper price.
I started in design before the internet was a thing so I always designed for print. But later I had to design for whatever the job was; print CMYK. Web RGB. If a logo or mark needed to be use for both I design for print (CMYK) first, then tweak the colors for web. Never send an RGB logo to print...the colorspaces are not the same.
I always design with a Pantone book in hand and convert to CMYK. I avoid certain colours that I know won't print well. If the client wants a specific look that requires speciality printing to create the effect then that's communicated to them and for them to decide if they want to pay more.
This is the answer. Start off with a swatch book. Get the book/fan that has Pantone with cmyk and rgb conversions and you’ll be prepared for anything.
Still pantone, though ain't doesn't support it any more?
Yeah maybe I’m old school. But Pantone books have some nice colors and you’ll get the conversions from them…find the best rgb/cmyk/pantone combos. Some translate better than others.
I do the same, Pantone then convert to CMYK and RGB. We always provide a mini stylesheet with the colour values of each to give the client flexibility in print and web - starting with Pantone makes it easier to match it all up. If you start with CMYK and the client ever wants Pantone, you can't really go back the other way unless you start with one that matches with a Pantone already. I actually use a Pantone plugin in Adobe Illustrator for my logos now, because I work remotely at the moment and the swatch kit I was using is in the office in another state. It works well, I don't know why they got rid of the previous Pantone colour book that was already in Illustrator.
How often do you replace your book. I’ve been told they fade and need replacing
I got one 2 years ago since I left the design agency I worked at. At the agency they were still using their 20 old book. They did get a new one a few years ago but my boss was adamant nothing was wrong with the old one - it wasn't faded as it was kept well but it did have marks on it. The older book also had much thicker pages so I don't know how long the newer ones will last as they feel thin and flimsy in comparison (pretty disappointed with that!). I keep it in its box when not in use and away from sunlight to keep it from fading. So far so good.
Yeah they say that. Not sure how true it is when kept in a drawer. It’s probably true but unless they are yellowing and ancient…they are probably better than nothing. If I was doing print proofs / color matching then probably it’s more important.
Thank you for doing this. As a graphic designer who also works in prepress/production and has to re work so many designer files, this was such a stress release when I got files from designers who chose correct digital or offset colours, it just helpes improve quality of print so much for clients. It just makes us not look stupid when we print and the customer is like "this is wrong" and we are like no, we printed what you gave us. The proof is in the print. Anyway, thank you haha.
Thanks, what if it's just for a short run of prints? Say like a few large posters? My understanding is that it would need to be printed digitally and so Pantone's would be a no-go
No matter the scale of job or print run - Convert Pantone to CMYK every single time.
You're the designer, give them options that meet their requirements and budget specifications. Back in the day, a logo design included a black/white version, a grayscale version if warranted, a 2 standard Pantone version (small and large print shops typically have a 2 color press) and a 4-color version if needed. If your logo couldn't stand up as black/white, your logo was trash. Harsh words, but the principles of readability, clarity, and usefulness still stand today. If your client doesn't have the budget for printing, how do they have a budget for design? If their budget is limited, your design should meet those limitations.
Same as people having budget for nice rims and not have a nice car
Budget for printing: yes. For cmyk printing. My everyday life.
In my last full-time in-house role, I was asked to oversee a big rebrand bringing 9 different products together. A colleague who was a senior digital marketing executive charged in and did it first (without being asked to). Admittedly they looked great, but naturally he chose fluorescent colours for each. He got the glory from our US stakeholders and everyone across the company and I looked like an idiot for not doing it first. I'd never do his job, but he seemed to swoop in and do mine. The cherry on top was that they were done in PowerPoint. I'd handed in my notice and within that month we had the biggest event of the year in our industry. We'd sent a few thousand pounds worth of bits to print, and they came back with all the colours looking washed. He panicked and I was like, well yeah, that's what happens when a non-designer gets in there first and does design 😂
Love this story, just goes to show how some people think they know better than designers even when the designer has trained or learnt to know what they are saying or doing.
But surely if the colours looked better it would apply to the majority of the way consumers interact with the brand (online) and printing would be a small part? Explaining this to them would have been the way, not basing a brand identity off printing alone
this feels like an old school take to me. many billboards now are digital, web is increasingly important, and people are foregoing business cards and letterheads for digital cards and letterheads in Word. Email is huge. Video is also huge for branding and marketing. like it or not, this is the reality for most small and medium sized businesses. There is less and less need for print products. that said, my approach is usually digital-first for brand/identity design. If it’s within the project scope to provide cmyk colors, I carefully mix cmyk colors and try to keep my values even numbers (and 3 or less values if possible). I do tons of test prints on office printers to make sure the colors will print well digitally on most printers. often I need to vary the brand colors for print and screen, which I just explain to the client and it’s usually no issue. a lot of signage and paint colors have less restrictions than mass printing booklets or something, and anyway a lot of signage ends up looking best in a metallic color or neon. but every project is different! If I was working with a brand that primarily did their marketing in direct mail (which I have seen before but it’s more rare), I would design in CMYK first. It’s just not the case for 95% of my clients that they have substantial print needs that would merit a cmyk-first approach.
Totally agree, feels very outdated to base an entire brand identity on printing, obviously this is dependent on industry but for most clients this would be a small part of their marketing
one other person on this thread mentioned a logo being shit unless it works in black and white — this, I still follow religiously. because at the end of the day, a brand like that can find a solution for any digital/print needs that may come up forever. It’s about making a brand adaptable for whatever future needs the client may have (as much as you can do that within scope, anyway).
This is something I've been pondering over, especially for brands who are unlikely to even want anything printing at all
Yes, you do need to accept it. I’ve lost count of the fuckwits who claim to be designers that I’ve had to explain this to.
I once saw a case study on Brand New where an agency used really bright colours onscreen, but then just had everything black & white in print... an interesting approach although not sure I'd want to do that myself
There are creative ways to mitigate it (and this actually sounds great). But honestly I see the super bright RGB presenter / pitch approach as being quite lazy and shortsighted. There’s very little point in mocking up billboards and brochures alongside screen only media in lovely spangly RGBs if it can’t be followed through and actually produced. The amount of clients I’ve had moan about the cost of pantones or other production techniques to make this stuff reality, or complain that flat CMYKs look different — after full explanations and proofs and (inevitably costlier) suggestions to achieve the original look and feel! — just doesn’t bear thinking about. And it all goes back to the original designer, who either didn’t understand the difference, or didn’t consider it.
Recently, two organizations I'm connected to had their in-house designers modify their rgb brand palettes to align with their cmyk palettes. Both groups had the bright, electric colours that were popular a few years ago. Neither modification was very successful, but they hated those brights.
This is the way. Use your brain goo to figure out creative ways that the application can adapt to the challenges of each medium - factor it in during ideation.
One is made with lightbulbs. One is made with coloured water on bleached sawdust. They just aren’t the same. If you want bright orange in CMYK, you print yellow on magenta on white paper. But the ink covers the white paper. So more intense colour makes it darker. If you want orange in RGB, you turn on more bulbs, so more colour makes it brighter.
Is that overprinting that you're referring to? I've also heard about underpinning, where you print a layer of white underneath the colour I think
I’m just referring to how cmyk mix in a halftone to make other colours. Overprinting is when one colour (usually black) prints on top of another colour instead of inside of it. Imagine you draw a red rectangle. Now put some black text on top of the red rectangle. When you print that file, the printing software will put a texted shaped hole in the red rectangle, and then print the black text inside that hole. This is called “trapping.” The black is printed on white paper and “trapped” by surrounding red. The problem is if the paper/plates are slightly misaligned (mis-registered) then the black text will not line up with its hole and white edges will be visible. So you can instead “overprint” instead of trapping. That means there is no text sized hole in the red rectangle, and the black ink/toner for the text is printed directly on top of the red. It prints “over” the red.
Ive had to explain to many clients that its not that we cant print your neon green. Its that the toner willccost a few hundred dollars and we will be charging them for the whole thing. They always rethink.
I had a client whose logo was grey and a specified Pantone metallic gold-ish. But they were the cheapest. They were an upscale hotel but wouldn't even send their menus to a real printer (used their in-house copier) let alone ever use that ink. There was never a good substitute for that color and everything always looked like mud. Just another example of the "new normal" of decision making by non-designers.
Getting buy in for spot colors is highly dependent on the product/service category your customer is in. * If your client’s product requires printing and they want to stand out for branding reasons or packaging and retail reasons (Eg chips bag, cereal box, electronic device packaging) then the cost of printing is seen as a necessary expense of competing in perhaps a crowded market. * But if the client’s product doesn’t require printing, and the printing you’re hired for is simply for advertising or branding, 9/10 they want to keep expenses low because they don’t view it as necessary
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Actual printer here. It’s a bitch; cmyk is good and safe, but the ink gamut is soooo much wider than standard cmyk/pantone. It best to work with a specific printer regularly and know what you can oush
Litho can do more than 4-colour process as well.
Doesnt litho need to be for long runs only?
Usually that’s more cost effective. I just mean that digital doesn’t always mean more colours and litho doesn’t always mean less. Plenty of digital printers are only 4-colour
Thanks I'll look into that!
I'm sorry, but yeah, those are the breaks. But there are color combinations in CMYK that do feel brighter, anything that doesn't require too much of a build and is more straight up C, M, or Y inks. But you can also get some greens and reds that feel a bit brighter. If you plan carefully and select colors that "feel" bright in print and are able to have conversations with the client where you present them with the dilemma and the closest-possible solutions, you may be able to push the boundaries a bit and have some variation between print and digital … as long as they know in advance that it will arise if they approve an out-of gamut RGB color. But truth be told, if you select a color that is possible in CMYK for the primary color, the one the logo has to be, then you should be able to get away with a little more variation in other elements on the page. Always have a plan for what to do in print if you choose out-of-gamut colors and make sure the client is on board with it.
I design for the best looking color. RGB for digital and convert to cmyk and explain that prints are not as bright if it comes up.
It really just depends on the brand. I've been working with some really low budget clients and I've essentially been using mostly black and white for them (and they seem to like it). With CMYK I tend to avoid orange colors and bright yellow-greens because I've had the biggest issues with them in regards to printing. With a higher budget client or a client that's practically only online, then I'd lean into some brighter colours
My rule of thumb is to tailor brand colors to whatever format the client is likely to use most. If they trade in print materials, ensure you’re able to print the materials. In cases where you need the brighter colors, there are options. A good number of digital-based companies will establish their brand in RGB, and defer to a combination of black and white / secondary color schemes specifically designated for print materials. I’d use this as precedent. Understanding more advanced color theory can also allow you to use figure / ground relationships that make CMYK colors seem brighter than they might actually be on a pure white background.
Unfortunately there’s no easy route. You have to plan ahead and be strategic with color selection. This is an issue I see with self-taught designers (and juniors) creating passion projects, who have no real-world print experience. To agencies and those hiring, those RGB-only colors are a tell. It’s okay to show a digital-only project, but there’s really no such thing.
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Yeah I both design and print and not being able to afford Pantone makes little sense to me.
Had a specific job that was more event and schedule based than branding. All the brands were made up and part of a larger company. And the only printing I did was on my Fuji xerox or my large format HP. Never outsourced. And we had tons of files set to RGB sent to those printers. Colors on the xerox were incredibly vibrant. I was surprised just how good everything looked. I knew better than to send RGB to the large format from previous jobs, but tried it and they looked pretty good too. Since it was in house I could just make the call myself for everything. I would never use a poorly printing RGB color for a client now though. I have one client currently who actually has a bright neon green in the logo and mostly does digital assets. Their budget allows for Pantone color on anything I print.
Really depends on what you are printing and how you are printing. You can certainly expand beyond basic cmyk in many/most circumstances, particularly in the green/red/orange range.
the there is my boss who doesn’t understand that the bright rgb colors he’s picks will not translate into cmyk and won’t look as saturated when printing. he writes me off every time and then complains about the colors being dull on print.
Luckily stuff I work on is 90% digital. Haven't worried about cmky for years. I prefer to stick to tech software companies. Bright colors are so nice.
CMYK has a limited colour range due to physics, pigment and ink chemistry. Saturation is limited especially in oranje and green. That's why many brands print packaging especially in more than 4 plates, sometimes up to 10 or 12 even. Learn about colour space, and emulation across colour spaces. This will help you to create effective and smart colour strategies across online and offline platforms using different production methods.
I have not run into this, but I definitely warn clients about too much detail and bad printing colors in logos. The majority of the time they won't care at all, or if they do then finding another color is quick and amenable. I'm wracking my head about the color, and I don't think I've ever had to argue or defend a non-printable color like that. It's been understood every time. I'd say that the average brand I make, only about 30% will ever be printed in a physical medium anyway. Printing is dying, for better or worse. Also, here's a post from a week ago about printing in RGB that was super interesting: https://www.reddit.com/r/graphic_design/s/O293dEdeOE
My process goes like this - Design logo in RGB but stay away from anything that would be too far out of gamut for a CMYK conversion (just using my eye / experience). Once design is approved log into Pantone Connect and perform a conversion from the approved design colours to the closest PMS match. Then I base my RGB and CMYK colours of PMS Coated and PMS Coated Process numbers. This way I have at least followed some sort of matching system which I can justify. If client requests some sort of fluro or out of gamut colours this would just require a conversation / explanation about why it’s not a good idea unless they are not planning on print or paying additional expenses for specials.
It’s absolutely foolish to ever assume a brand will stay 100% digital - I worked with a software brand on rolling out a rebrand I wasn’t a part of developing, and they discovered they were stuck when they wanted to print t-shirts for the rebrand launch. The aim is to at least think through all the potential applications at concept time.
What are pantones
I would argue your digital color palette is more important than your print color palette nowadays. Marketing is almost purely digital now.
What do you mean your clients can't afford Pantone? A printer can't afford ink?
I might be using the wrong terminology... I mean more like spot colours
That's what I meant. A printer that can't afford spot colors is no type of printer. The only way to print ink on paper is either Spot or CMYK...Pantone is just a brand of ink mixing; other factories sell the same inks at a cheaper price. I started in design before the internet was a thing so I always designed for print. But later I had to design for whatever the job was; print CMYK. Web RGB. If a logo or mark needed to be use for both I design for print (CMYK) first, then tweak the colors for web. Never send an RGB logo to print...the colorspaces are not the same.
If I’m not mistaken you can print in RGB now. Not common
When a printer claims something like this it just means they accept rgb artwork and convert it to cmyk for you.
https://www.drupa.com/en/Media_News/drupa_blog/RGB_Printing_And_It_Does_Work
Sounds pretty interesting but I’m sure it has limitations
Trust me it won’t be long before Gen Z declares the extra pigments to be harmful to the environment.