;;Intermediate
Perceptive realities
Communicating about Color
Print burgundy please.
BY RICK ROTH
Sure, you mean a dark
purple, like the wine?
No, not that purple,
more reddish.
You mean like Harvard
Crimson?
I don’t know what that
looks like, more like
Boston College.
You mean maroon?
I don’t know. Well,
a real dark maroon,
but brighter.
You mean very dark red?
No, that’s too brown.
More like wine.
Now would that be
Pinot Noir, Merlot
or Carmenere?
Burgundy.
We happen to have some
bottles here in the shop
but do you mean from
the Montrachet or
Corton vineyard?
84 • PRINTWEAR • JULY 2010
Communication about color can be as much fun as an Abbot and Costello routine. It can be frustrating, exasperating and, if you get it wrong, very expensive.
Let’s examine some ways to communicate
about color and some fine points about making our customers happy about the color of
ink printed on their shirts.
What are we matching?
This should be part of any screen printer’s mantra—repeat after me: “What are we matching?”
Is it the previous screen printing company’s
poorly printed batch of shirts? Or is the ink on
this shirt supposed to match the color of another garment? Is it supposed to match other
promotional materials?
Most printing professionals use the Pantone
Matching System (PMS) for communicating
about color. The Pantone folks produce books
of carefully-produced printed color chips that
have many, many colors and a corresponding
number to each color. So, a customer can ask
for Pantone 195 Burgundy and the print shop
down in Tierra del Fuego can print that same
color the customer’s looking at in Boston.
However, even Pantone colors pose issues.
For example, Pantone 505 doesn’t indicate if it
is U (uncoated) or C (coated). Or, for another,
Pantone 19-1629 is a Pantone fabric color, but
most customers and most printers don’t have
fabric books. This would be the reason for the
offset U and C colors. Still, inks for screen
printing on textiles don’t really match either the
U or C. But they are the best shot we have for
communicating about color.
In recent years matching Pantone colors has
become easier as ink companies have made
formulas for print practitioners to follow.
And, quality ink companies have consistent
ingredients so the formulas achieve the colors
customers want. There was a time it felt like
one needed an advanced degree in fine arts
with color theory to mix inks properly, but
now you can buy a scale and follow the reci-
About the author: Rick Roth
is president of Pawtucket, R.I.-based Mirror Image. In recent
years, his business has taken
home numerous Golden Image
awards in various categories, as
well as top honors in the industry media’s various printing
competitions. Read his blog at theinkkitchen.com.
pes that the major ink companies provide and
voila, accurate ink colors.
Good on paper
Let’s go back to the aforementioned burgundy. While some burgundy wines improve
with age, the Pantone books that communi-
The customer asks for “fire-engine red…” so which fire engine is fire-engine red?
