Colour conscious

To gain insight into how vital colour management has become in brand marketing, and how it impacts the converter sector, Converting Today spoke with Ken Birch, colour and technical specialist at Sun Branding Solutions

Converting Today: Which print technology has helped the sector advance in the past years?

Ken Birch: The alignment of the data, print and colour profiling, as well as the link between digital colour data and the actual printing press are big advances. Today, it is easier to create accurate bespoke profiles; however, more printers are investing in optimising the printing press to improve makeready and productivity. This also enables them to use a standard generic profile.

How important is accurate colour management from a brand-owner's perspective?

With the technology available to create good print profiles, very few quality printers fail to match the CMYK colour, particularly for images and product shots. Generally, if a product does not match the proof, then it is down to an incorrect profile, a quality control issue or a fluctuation of colour during the print run.

However, actual brand colour can still be an issue as printers match what they believe is a correct colour, whether that be a proof, pantone book or a sample. It's always important to remember that we see colour slightly differently.

Good pre-prep and the use of spectrometry can eliminate inaccuracies. Working to spectral data, pre-formulating inks in the lab to ensure they are repeatable across multiple substrates and print processes, requesting ink draw-downs on the correct substrate with the correct varnish or finish and pre-validating before any live print run, all help with accuracy.

For brand-owners, the challenge is getting stake holders to sign up to an achievable colour and agreeing to pre-defined dark and light colour shifts. Only then can the printer be confident that brand colour can be achieved."

Using as few colours as possible has been a trend since the mid-90s. How is this automation with colour control and reproduction managed today?

Reducing colours is straight forward, but carrying out this procedure without impacting colour, reduction and printability is a different matter. Presently, the emphasis is on fixed-colour palette printing. Whether this is four or six fixed colours, ink manufacturers have tweaked the four process colour sets, or have additional colours to complement a standard CMYK palette. This extends the colour gamut to achieve a pantone colour simulation.

With software and proofing technology, this is not such a challenge for graphics' departments, but rather for the printer. Investment in the printing press and platemaking is needed to improve the print process.

An example of this is trying to print dark blue text out of three colours as opposed to a single spot colour. Minimum dot requirement needs to be reduced to ensure soft edges can be achieved using three colours as opposed to a single spot colour.

Has the need to be colour accurate shifted over the last few years? Are consumers as sensitive to the colours they associate with their chosen brands?

There is no doubt that these days there is big emphasis on brand-colour consistency. It's taken for granted that product shots in CMYK can be reproduced, but keeping any brand colour aligned is important.

A few years ago printers used to emphasise printing nice product shots, but where it all comes together is matching brand colours. Consistently reproducing colour across all different materials and products is where our level of expertise is needed. But the trend has definitely moved from product to the brand colour.