When you’re buying labels, you’re probably looking for quality materials and a color that matches your brand standards.
But those terms mean different things to different people.
Almost every company is going to tell you they supply quality materials. But what does quality mean to them? Does it mean the materials will last a long time? Are they designed to hold up to temperatures in the freezer? Do they meet industry regulations?
If “quality” means one specific thing to you, it’s best to make sure your vendor is on the same page.
In our recent webinar, “Managing Color and Quality Expectations With Your Label Vendor,” Chief of Operations Joe Kane explains what "quality" really means in the world of labels — and how you can ensure your vendor delivers exactly what you need.
Understanding Color Quality: From Perception to Production
Color can be tricky — it doesn’t always look the same in print as it does on your screen. Why? It all comes down to how color works. Screens use RGB (red, green, and blue light) to create bright, vibrant colors, but when we print labels, we’re working with CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, and black ink). Some of those eye-catching digital colors just don’t translate perfectly to print because they’re outside what CMYK can reproduce.
But that’s not the only factor at play. The material you print on — called the face stock — makes a huge difference. Glossy surfaces make colors look bold and vibrant, while matte or textured materials soften them for a more muted, elegant look. And lighting? That’s another curveball. The label you thought was perfect in your office’s fluorescent lights might look totally different under warm, cozy store lighting.
The key to getting it right? Clear communication with your vendor. Share your branding guidelines, talk about your expectations, and understand the process. The more you collaborate, the closer you’ll get to the perfect print.
Take a deeper dive, and learn more about what was discussed in the webinar.
Webinar Transcript
0:06
Welcome everyone. We'll let the last few people get situated, and we can begin in a minute or two. All right, we'll get started.
0:46
I am Joe Kane, Chief of Operations and Partner here at The Label Printers.
0:50
A little bit about myself. I've been here at The Label Printers for almost 30 years.
0:55
The majority of my time was either in the Pre-Press Department or managing the Pre-Press Department prior to joining the executive team.
1:04
This is the third in our webinar series. The first was about pricing and all the factors — from ordering habits to materials — that impact that.
1:14
The second was kind of a deeper dive into the materials that you can choose and some of the pros and cons of the various options.
1:21
If you haven't seen those, I recommend checking them out on our website when you get a chance.
1:26
If you guys have any questions along the way, you can post them in the questions panel and I'll try to get them at the end of the webinar.
1:35
But for today's webinar, we're going to be, as the title suggests, talking about expectations, mainly surrounding color and quality — particularly how we can manage and communicate those expectations to our label vendors.
1:50
We're going to start with managing and communicating expectations.
1:54
We'll talk a little about color and how it works.
1:56
We'll talk through the proofing process, the different face stocks and the effect they have, overall visual quality and artwork, and a little bit about variance.
2:09
First up is managing and communicating expectations.
2:17
These days, people expect high quality and fast turnaround in almost everything that they purchase, and labels are no different.
2:25
Only we add accurate and consistent color into the mix just to make things interesting.
2:30
We strive to achieve these for all of our customers whenever possible.
2:34
But the terms high-quality and accurate color are subjective.
2:38
And it means different things to different people.
2:41
So it helps to talk about your specific needs so that we can ensure that those are met.
2:49
Some examples of specific expectations that we run across, they could be performance-related.
2:55
And that they pertain to the application.
2:57
It may need repositionability, the condition of the surface being labeled.
3:02
It might have special durability concerns.
3:04
It could be environmental in nature. The application environment or the post-application environment could be exposed to large amounts of moisture, light, heat, or other factors.
3:18
It might be regulatory in nature. It could be minimum font size, line weights, or specific statements that must be present.
3:27
Generally, we see these communicated through what we call branding guidelines.
3:31
You may have color specifications that go beyond the normal needs.
3:36
It might be a corporate color or matching some other printed media or an object.
3:43
Creating a document that states what these specific color expectations are.
3:47
It could be four-color process values, particular PMS (Pantone Matching System) colors, or tolerances of those colors.
3:54
It may also include font names and sizes, line weights, or dimension and location of certain elements of your design.
4:01
These don't need to be overly complex.
4:03
I've seen a box off to the side of the artwork communicate a ton of information in a small amount of space.
4:09
But I've also seen 20-page documents that detail everything and anything in between.
4:16
Another important tool here is similar or previously printed labels.
4:20
These could be labels that you have printed from a different vendor.
4:24
Providing those with some context can really help.
4:26
What did you like about those labels?
4:28
What did you not like about those labels?
4:30
We don't want to recreate the wheel or continue to give you something that you weren't happy with.
4:36
Even labels provided from the same vendor can be used as references.
4:40
For example, you might have a new part that says, “Hey, can you please match this blue section to the logo that we used on part XYZ?”
4:48
That type of information is extremely useful in keeping your projects consistent.
4:53
Over time, your vendor may get to know your needs. But for the first several runs, you're going to want to communicate as thoroughly as possible.
5:03
And the timing of that communication is also extremely important.
5:08
If you have access to these specifications or guidelines or samples, they should be provided early in the process along with the request for quote.
5:17
Because depending on your expectations, it may dictate which processes or procedures we might use or require to meet those needs.
5:25
Of course, communication is not a one-way trip.
5:29
We as the vendor must make sure that we also communicate back to you any concerns about your stated expectations, the artwork provided, or the combination of the two.
5:40
We should be providing feedback on any of those and work through any challenges that are identified.
5:49
We should also be restating your expectations throughout the quoting and the proofing process to ensure that everyone throughout the facility is informed and on the same page.
6:05
On to color.
6:06
We'll talk a little bit about how we perceive color.
6:09
We'll talk about the various color spaces in which we encounter color.
6:12
And we'll talk a bit about communication and our art files that we provide.
6:19
So what is color?
6:21
It's the way that we perceive the wavelengths of light that are reflected or emitted by objects.
6:28
It's a sensory experience created by the interaction of light, the object, our eyes, and our brains.
6:37
It's important to note that people see color differently.
6:40
It can be based on their genetics, on their age, and various other factors.
6:47
One of the most important things in perceiving color is ambient light. It has a profound effect on the color we see.
6:55
In the image here, you'll see these gray objects are the same object. They are identical in color.
7:01
But they were photographed in a special light booth that can simulate common lighting conditions.
7:08
On the far left side, you'll see fluorescent lighting.
7:11
This is often found in office ceiling lights, stores, etc.
7:15
These lights tend to make things look cooler or bluer.
7:19
They can also make things feel clean or sterile.
7:23
The far right side is incandescent lighting, often found in old-style light bulbs.
7:28
But these days, even modern LED bulbs can be set to this type of lighting.
7:34
These lights make things look warmer, more yellow or orange, and they give the feeling of coziness or a natural feeling.
7:42
The middle here is a standard light, or the middle ground.
7:46
This is the lighting that's used to view all proofs and press sheets on the production floor.
7:51
It helps us try to limit the amount of variability.
7:55
So you ask yourself, what color is this object?
7:58
Which one is the correct one? Well, the answer is: It depends on what you want.
8:06
So, let's assume we're viewing things under average and controlled conditions.
8:13
Let's imagine this rainbow circle contained every color that we could perceive with our eyes.
8:17
We'll call this the visible spectrum, or the total visible gamut.
8:22
The word gamut refers to the complete range of colors that can be reproduced or perceived in a specific context, such as a display, a printer, or even the human eye.
8:34
If something is out of gamut, it means that that color cannot be reproduced within that system.
8:43
The gamut charts that we're going to be discussing in reality are these three-dimensional things that are kind of hard to visualize.
8:49
So I'm going to be using two-dimensional abstractions of these to make it easier to understand.
8:55
The ones we're going to be reviewing is the RGB color space, the CMYK color space, and the Pantone color.
9:04
And we'll start with RGB.
9:06
So what is RGB?
9:08
Well, it stands for red, green, and blue, which are the primary colors of light used in digital screens and other light-based systems.
9:16
And if you can see that triangle there over the rainbow, it contains and covers a significant portion of the visible spectrum.
9:24
And even though this topic revolves around printed labels, it is important to realize that most designers and artists, buyers and estimators are only interacting with these labels through screens and PDFs prior to them actually being manufactured.
9:38
Understanding the technical difference between RGB and what we'll ultimately produce can help us manage our expectations.
9:46
You can also see, you can create about 16.7 million colors, and these again are how we're going to view PDFs, which we'll talk about when we get into the proof section. So how does RGB work?
10:01
Well, you've got red, green, and blue pixels.
10:04
So imagine this picture of this woman was on your computer screen.
10:07
If you zoomed in really close, you would see these red, green, and blue pixels.
10:12
And they combine, again, to create millions of different colors.
10:16
The more of each individual color used, the brighter the pixel gets.
10:20
And at full intensity, you'll get a white pixel.
10:24
And if they're off, or there's no light, you'll get a black pixel.
10:28
And because these lights add together to create white, this is called an additive color system.
10:37
But we don't print in RGB.
10:40
Instead, we use CMYK, otherwise known as four-color process.
10:46
So why do we choose these colors over red, green, and blue, or any other colors?
10:52
When we think back to when we were children, we would often mix red, yellow, and blue paints with brushes and sometimes our fingers and hands to create all sorts of different colors.
11:02
They're called the primary colors, right?
11:04
And painters and artists have been using and mixing these colors for centuries. So why do we use these four in modern printing?
11:13
It's because mathematically, to get the most precise and expansive color range, these are the ones that science has decided give us the biggest range.
11:23
We also have to start with lighter versions of inks because we can't just slap some more white onto our palette and make the colors lighter.
11:33
This is the same method that most of your desktop printers are using.
11:36
You remember paying all that money for those ink replacements.
11:40
That's also how the vast majority of printed media is produced in the world.
11:45
You can see it is limited to how much of the visible spectrum that it can reproduce, especially compared to the RGB one that we just viewed.
11:54
So what does this mean exactly?
11:56
It does mean that if a designer isn't careful, they could be using colors that can never be printed with conventional four-color process.
12:04
There are modern software packages that will have preview modes that will attempt to simulate what the difference between your artwork is once it's converted to CMYK, and you need to make sure we're exploring those to make sure we head off any conversion issues that might happen.
12:20
So how does CMYK work in practice?
12:22
So unlike the pixels that we saw in RGB, we're going to use cyan, magenta, yellow, and black dots.
12:29
These dots absorb ambient light and reflect the rest, which ends up being the color that we see.
12:36
The more of each individual color used, the less light reflected and the darker the result. Mixing all these colors gives you black.
12:46
In reality, it becomes a muddy brown, but if there are no colors mixed, we will just see the surface or the face stock used, and often this is just white.
12:56
And mixing more color results in light. This is called the subtractive color method.
13:02
Well, let's zoom in a little closer and see what's actually going on with these dots.
13:08
The woman in the image we just saw is entirely made up of dots of the four colors used.
13:13
We use different sizes and shapes and overlaps to create the illusion of thousands of colors.
13:20
This works because the inks are semi-transparent.
13:25
What this means is, we're combining not only the inks that we print with, but the stock on which that ink is printed, and the light being reflected to perceive the color.
13:36
That last line is extremely important to understand.
13:39
The color that we perceive on printed media is always a combination of the inks, the ambient light, and the material on which it's printed. This is very different to how RGB color works.
13:53
It's not affected by these other factors, as it provides its own light— it's projecting that into our eyes.
14:00
And again, that will play a part in the proofing process.
14:08
So even though we can produce the illusion of thousands of colors using four-color process, it often doesn't meet a customer's need.
14:15
And a few factors of that can be the required color might be out of gamut of the four-color process, or the visual properties of that four-color process aren't quite good enough.
14:27
It's possible that large areas of some colors in four-color process can look grainy or dirty.
14:33
Or it could just be a cost consideration. Your label may only be red and black.
14:38
It wouldn't make much sense to print four colors when two would suffice.
14:44
In these instances, spot colors may be used.
14:47
The most common of these is the Pantone matching system, otherwise known as just Pantone, but they're all considered spot colors.
14:56
Designers and vendors usually have these books that you see pictured here.
14:59
These come in various different types.
15:02
The classic one is the formula guide.
15:04
This lists the colors by number and how to make them in a production environment.
15:10
One of the most useful ones, I think, is the color bridge book.
15:13
This book not only shows the spot colors printed, but it also has a close representation of what those colors look like when printed in four-color process.
15:24
This book can come in extremely handy.
15:26
In one case, we had a customer supply some great-looking artwork.
15:31
It was created using seven different spot colors, all clearly defined, inspected out.
15:37
When they saw the price that they were given, they were kind of shocked, as printing seven colors can increase the price of a project considerably.
15:45
We ended up showing them a bridge book, and how close each spot color actually was reproduced in a four-color process.
15:51
And they were more than happy to have us convert everything to CMYK.
15:56
This is an example of overstating one's needs, where the artwork said something that they didn't truly need.
16:02
In the end, those colors were chosen just because they looked cool or they looked nice together.
16:06
They didn't necessarily need to be an exact match.
16:12
Keep in mind that not all printing processes can support adding or using spot colors.
16:18
Some may have even a limited selection to choose from.
16:22
You'll have to speak to your vendor during your coding process to ensure that all of the processes support your needs.
16:32
Communicating color expectations.
16:35
Your supplied arcs should meet your vendor specification depending on the process chosen.
16:39
They should clearly define the colors expected to be used.
16:42
This could be just four-color process.
16:45
Could be a combination of four-color process and spot colors.
16:49
Or just a certain number of spot colors.
16:52
You should also provide that branding guide we talked about earlier or any call-outs or communications about color expectations.
17:00
It's also important to note that having few or no expectations is an expectation that should be communicated.
17:08
If you're printing a label that's just gonna go on a warehouse shelf somewhere and you said it should be this particular red and you're not particularly picky, it can save you time and money if we know that your expectations aren't specific.
17:23
If you want a deeper look into all the factors that can go into that pricing, again, I'll recommend our other webinar on our site.
17:34
Proofing.
17:35
The main method that your vendor is going to use to confirm your expectations is through the proofing process.
17:42
This is done on all new projects and some repeat projects, regardless of the quality of the supplied artwork and the expectations provided.
17:50
It is the last step prior to production to ensure that all text, graphics and color breakdowns are all correct.
17:57
Any number of things can go wrong on both your end as the customer or on the vendor's part.
18:03
I've seen all too many times where the customer signed what they thought was the most recent version of the project, only to discover on the proof that they accidentally provided the wrong one.
18:14
We've also seen part numbers and quantities get swapped.
18:18
If things were not discovered at the proof stage, they would have resulted in bad production runs, which only costs everybody time and money.
18:25
So I encourage, when you get these proofs to approve, assume nothing and be as thorough as possible, regardless of the state of the artwork in which you presented or how many times you've printed this piece.
18:37
It's extremely important.
18:40
There are multiple types of proofs that we can provide.
18:43
By far, the most common type is the PDF proof.
18:48
As we discussed earlier, these proofs, when viewed on screens, are going to be displayed using RGB, regardless of the printing colors going to be used.
18:56
This means that that PDF proof should never be used for color matching.
19:01
They don't use the same colors or the same methods to display that content.
19:06
These proofs are inexpensive, and they're mainly used to check versioning, text, layout, and color breakdowns.
19:16
The next step up would be a color-match proof or a color-managed proof.
19:20
These commonly use specialized inkjet printers.
19:24
Unlike your desktop printers in your office, which use four inks, these can have up to 12 inks that they can use.
19:31
This gives them a very large gamut, which can match many of the Pantone colors, as well as the four-color process.
19:39
These are often profiled to mimic the print conditions of the various processes that a manufacturer may have.
19:47
They're usually printed on a special white ink receptive paper, but they will try to mimic the color of the substrate that you're targeting.
19:55
And we'll see a little bit more about the color material in a little bit here.
20:00
Lastly is the press proof.
20:03
This is essentially a production sample run using the exact inks, face stocks, and printing methods that will be used for production.
20:11
This is the method recommended when color is of the utmost importance.
20:15
It is costly, but I've seen it time and time again reduce the likelihood of rejections and reruns of a particular project.
20:27
So we talked about how we make color, but where we put that color, we put it onto materials.
20:35
So we'll talk a little bit about the color of materials, the materials themselves, their surfaces, and then how we may finish those materials.
20:45
Again, I keep plugging there are other webinars, but they are full of a lot of information.
20:49
We did a deep dive on materials that went into all the different aspects and effects of material on your project, so I recommend checking that out. So, face stock…
21:03
Depending on the type of face stock we choose, it could be a white, a cream, which is an off-white, craft material, sometimes even a clear material or metallic.
21:14
This image on the left here might not show up well on your computer screens, but it was an attempt at illustrating, there are four different materials here, all of which are billed as white materials.
21:25
But you can see none of them look the same, and I’d argue that none of them are very white.
21:30
They tend to have a white or a yellow or a blue cast to them, although most of our PMS books and measuring devices are going to assume a white stock, so that's a challenge that we have to overcome.
21:47
And so, stocks that are not white will inevitably have a smaller gamut because they can't print some of those lighter colors that rely on that white background, okay?
22:03
Again, each material not only has a color, but it also has a surface property.
22:07
So, many surfaces are going to be glossy. They'll be your films, your high gloss, or high cast gloss papers.
22:13
Ink is going to sit on top of these materials, and that results in saturated colors, which gives us a large gamut in which to print with.
22:24
Others are our porous materials: your papers, your textured paper — things that have a matte surface to them.
22:32
These inks tend to soak into those material and make colors more muted or desaturated, resulting in a smaller gamut.
22:40
You can also print on clear films.
22:44
While ink does sit on top like a gloss, without that background color, they're highly influenced by the surface on which they're applied to.
22:52
I'll give you some examples. So one would be, think of an orange juice label on a clear bottle.
23:00
Due to the inks, the material, and the bottle being transparent, the orange liquid will become the background and influence all of the printed colors.
23:09
They'll all be viewed with an orange tinge to them.
23:13
Most of the time in these cases, we're going to print a spot color, in this case an opaque white, underneath all of the colors in which we want to have that saturation effect.
23:24
This allows that white ink to act as the normal face stock, a normal white face stock would, to get those colors printed with good saturation and not be influenced by the orange juice.
23:34
You can also play some games with that and have areas not printed with white behind them if you want that interaction with the liquid inside.
23:42
By contrast, you could have a clear label for a cosmetic that's going onto a white bottle.
23:48
This would not need the additional white spot color behind all those, as the bottle itself would act as the white backing.
23:55
And your colors will still look saturated.
24:02
Finish.
24:04
So first off, why add finishing at all?
24:08
Generally, finishes, that's laminations or varnishes, are applied for greater protection.
24:13
That's often against scratching, scuffing, sometimes UV protection from fading.
24:19
But they can also be used just because they look cool, or you want that appearance to affect your printed content.
24:27
We often see that with matte surfaces — they tend to have an elegant look in the food and beverage industry, as an example.
24:35
So we have varnishes and laminations being applied, sometimes for protective reasons or aesthetic reasons.
24:40
But what do they do? So gloss versions of these are going to tend to make colors pop by making them appear more saturated.
24:48
Again, much like our gloss surface from the paste stock.
24:53
But they can also have matte, which matte finish changes how light reflects off that surface and will make those colors appear less saturated or even dull.
25:07
Talk a bit about visual quality.
25:10
So what do I mean about visual quality in this context?
25:13
I'm mainly talking about print clarity and accuracy, text readability, and sharpness.
25:20
And we'll talk through some graphic types and file formats.
25:27
So first up is raster graphics.
25:30
These are made up of individual colored pixels, ideally used for photos, images, and some complex patterns and gradients.
25:38
Common file types are Photoshop documents, PNGs, TIFFs, JPEGs, and PDFs.
25:44
The images provided should be 300 dpi or higher, ideally without any visible compression.
25:52
And I'll reiterate that last point there.
25:54
So the higher resolution, which is the number of pixels per inch, means more detail and smoother color transitions.
26:04
But you also want this higher resolution without any compression.
26:08
I'll show you an example of that here.
26:11
Compression is a method used to reduce file sizes of images, similar to how you would zip files together to email or to store more efficiently.
26:21
The most common image compression cause is by the JPEG format.
26:26
You may be familiar with this. For a long time, it was the standard image format for internet images, where the compression was super-useful when the internet was young and slow.
26:36
But when saving images as a JPEG, you are presented with a quality slider or a file size drop-down.
26:43
Selecting low quality or small file size is actually adding various amounts of compression to the image, as you can see here.
26:51
These images are the same resolution as each other, but you can see the one on the right is significantly less clear than the one on the left due to the compression settings.
27:01
This process creates an 8 by 8 pixel artifact in the image.
27:05
And once an image has been compressed in this way, there is little that can be done to restore the previous quality.
27:12
For example, we've pointed out to customers that an image is a low-quality JPEG, only to have them attempt to resave this image in another format, like a TIFF or a PDF.
27:20
But this does not remove that compression.
27:23
They would need to have gone back to an original version, a version of that image prior to that compression being applied in order to improve the image.
27:32
Very important.
27:36
The other type of artwork is vector graphics.
27:39
These are made up of points and curves.
27:41
They're best used for geometric shapes and specifically text.
27:46
Again, file common types, AI, which is Adobe Illustrator, EPS, SVG, and PDF.
27:53
These have no resolution or compression issues.
27:55
Due to the fact that its graphics are described by coordinates and relative curves between them, vector graphics can be scaled to any size without compromising quality in any way.
28:08
Oftentimes we find ourselves with PDFs being the most common format.
28:13
And it's a mixed format. It can support both raster and vector artwork.
28:20
But the file type does not imply the quality of the artwork contained within.
28:25
You could provide a PDF or a native Illustrator file, but it only contains low-resolution compressed JPEGs, which would not be ideal.
28:38
Again, we'll reiterate to recap here, resolution and compression both have a large impact on the sharpness and clarity of your images.
28:45
It's also important to use the right graphics type that will improve overall quality.
28:50
So as an example here, the top line of text is clean and sharp due to it being created using vectors.
28:57
This text could be scaled up and down without any adverse effects whatsoever.
29:02
While the bottom end of the text looks okay at certain sizes, you can see the edges get blurry by the nature of their square pixels trying to create the illusion of angled text.
29:12
Additionally, this text would look even worse if it was scaled up or down.
29:16
This is one of the reasons that we recommend always using live editable text or outlining the text in vectors rather than supplying it as an image or raster.
29:32
Variants.
29:33
Talk a little bit about variance, tolerance, defects, and how we avoid and detect those things.
29:43
Inherent in all manufacturing is tolerance, or defined as the allowable deviation from a standard.
29:50
In label manufacturing, there are many moving parts, challenging environmental factors, changing environmental factors, and high speeds.
29:58
This means that not everything can be 100% perfect all the time.
30:02
Even the components that we purchase have tolerance to them and the components that make those up, and so on and so forth.
30:08
And most of these variances are small and they don't cause any perceptible issues, but they can compound or, in extreme cases, lead to unexpected results.
30:20
So we like to avoid using words like “exact,” “identical,” “100% match,” or “defect-free.”
30:27
We'll use the phrase “achieve a close visual match within industry tolerances.”
30:32
Some of the things that go wrong are color-to-color registration.
30:36
You can see in this example where this particular word is made up of multiple colors, but the inks are misaligned, and that adds to a blurriness or a halo-like effect of that text. You also could have color inconsistency.
30:49
That might mean that the first label off the press and the last label off the press do not actually have the same color quality. We get to deal with material tolerances.
31:01
That is the color of those materials, or any defects within them.
31:07
Could be variation of colors, inconsistencies, or actual damage to them.
31:14
How do we combat these variances?
31:16
And we do that in several ways.
31:18
We do have trained personnel.
31:20
Inspectors are involved at various points throughout the manufacturing process to visually inspect the product, the beginning, the middle, the end, and sometimes everywhere in between.
31:29
There are testing components for densities, chemical makeup, and testing material white points and durability throughout the process.
31:40
Talk a little bit about variance, a little funny story here, just the other day, this happened.
31:44
We were printing a label that used PMS 186 red, kind of a standard red color.
31:50
The inspectors were not pleased with the color match to the PMS book, but this was a fresh new bottle of ink.
31:58
As luck would have it, the other press operator came over with their PMS book, but their 186 was different.
32:04
We've grabbed a third book to see, and that was also slightly different.
32:09
The books were all recently purchased within the last 12 months, and so even the manufacture of our standardized tools and aids have variations within them and make it very difficult.
32:21
In this case, we ended up picking a color that was sort of in the middle of all three of those colors.
32:26
The customer was happy and — success.
32:31
There are additional tests and procedures that can be applied to your project if needed to help reduce the variance even further.
32:40
We could do 100% visual inspection, using cameras to scan every label for certain types of visual defects.
32:47
We could use spectrophotometers to scan and control color at even tighter tolerances.
32:52
That does require frequent testing, stopping, and speed adjustments, and other things that can be costly.
33:04
So, to recap.
33:06
We covered a lot of ground in a short period of time, and I thank you for sticking with me.
33:11
Let's do a small recap before we see if there are any questions.
33:16
Again, it's really about communication.
33:19
It's as simple as that.
33:21
The earlier on in the process you communicate your needs, the better off we are able to meet those and to make any adjustments that need be to meet those.
33:32
Again, the big takeaway here is that color is a combination of the ink, ambient light, face stock, and any finishes that we apply.
33:41
If you get a proof, or even a production sample, when you're sitting in your office, and it doesn't appear to match what you expected, take it to a different room. Go outside, go in the bathroom, whatever it is.
33:53
You may find that your perception of those colors will change.
33:58
This is another thing that can be communicated. Where is this product likely to be viewed by your target audience?
34:06
If it's in a store, we may want to look under those lighting conditions to see if those colors match.
34:14
Again, when we're viewing PDFs, they are not for color match.
34:18
You can tell us where the colors are and what they're defined as, but you don't want to hold a printed sample up to a PDF screen and say, hey, it doesn't match my color.
34:27
They just do not produce light or color in the same way.
34:32
And again, I'll reiterate, as simple as it sounds, to check proofs thoroughly.
34:35
Regardless of your confidence level in the copy that you sent, it's extremely important that we all agree and sign off on that proof prior to production.
34:46
I'll leave you with this. Perfection does not exist.
34:50
There is some reasonable amount of variance in everything that we do.
34:57
And with that, I will go to the questions. Let's take a look and see. Anybody chimed in?
35:06
Looks like there is here.
35:08
So if supplied artwork is going to call out color formulas and spot colors, why would I need a branding guide or a call-out to tell you what colors they should be? That's a good point.
35:23
So one of the main reasons for this is art files are generally editable, right?
35:30
These changes might be on purpose if they’re adjustments for our processes.
35:35
And it could be an accident, a keystroke, or a mis-click.
35:40
It might also be converted from one color space to another.
35:46
These changes are going to modify that artwork.
35:48
If I'm using the artwork to tell me what the color should be and I edit that artwork, it kind of causes a problem there.
35:54
So having a single source of truth that's outside the artwork that won't be changed helps make sure that we always end up with the appropriate color output.
36:09
I don't see any other questions here.
36:13
So, if you were too shy to put them in the box, feel free to contact me through the website.
36:19
I'll be happy to answer any questions you may have.
36:22
I appreciate your time today.
36:23
Thank you very much.
36:24
And don't forget to check out the other webinars.
36:26
Thank you, I appreciate it.
36:28
Happy holidays.
For more information about choosing quality materials for your custom labels, contact us today. You can also watch the webinar on demand.
