by JimRaffel on September 8, 2010
Recently Seth Godin reminded us Don’t forget about color. He’s right. Subtle use of color, whether to make airports signs easier to follow or to make your blog more memorable, is a great idea.
A Dumb Little Man can’t be wrong. When I am skimming posts in my RSS feed I can always identify a Dumb Little Man post by the bright orange headlines. Subtle use of color works wonders for brand recognition. I’m not saying bright orange is a subtle color, but in Dumb Little Man’s case working it into each and every post has resulted in me being able to easily identifying a post as belonging to his blog.
Green is a good color. Well it is for the ColorMetrix.com e-commerce shopping experience anyway. Starting with the shop menu option, we have made subtle use of color, as each action point in the shopping process is color coded green. The idea being, that by a couple clicks into the process, the user is looking for green.
Title and headline contrast. I’ve made use of bold fonts on this blog for a while. Mr. Godin got me thinking about the success of Green over on ColorMetrix.com and the strong memory of Orange on Dumb Little Man. Over the last week or so I have been toying with the title and headline colors here.
Have you noticed the subtle use of color in the headlines? What do you think of colored titles and headlines here and on other blogs?
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by JimRaffel on February 16, 2007
Since #45 in December we have been discussing resolutions to improve the quality of your proofs. In order to gain the full benefit of this installment one should have read and implemented the suggestions in #46 & #47.
Proceeding forward it does not matter if you are utilizing a methodology like GRACoL G7, or a more traditional color management approach. In either case you will include a target on each print job with the same color bar swatches that you output on the proof (#46). This will allow you to measure the press ok sheets and compare them to the proofs, thus building even a larger statistical database to call upon.
When utilizing software like our ColorMetrix and ProofPass.com products for process control and print certification purposes it does not matter if you are using a methodology like G7 or traditional color management. While there are some new formulas out there to run the collected data through the tried and true colorimetric data (L*a*b* and derivatives along with some version of Delta E), do a great job comparing two similar or dissimilar imaging systems.
Unlike density and dot gain values which must be used with pigment sets designed for 4/color process printing, L*a*b* values allow the comparison of an inkjet proof and an offset press sheet. This is possible because we are looking at the actual colors, not values derived from a formula which assumes a certain pigment set.
Not only will you be comparing the measurements of the proof to the press sheet, but you will be building a history of what is a “normal” print condition of each press and paper combination. Some refer to this as finding the “sweet spot” of the printing press.
Overall, as your volume of collected data grows you will be able to refine the system in small steps by reviewing the proofing and press information both independently and together. Using numeric results, charts, and graphs you will be able to see small differences in color that can be adjusted for over time. No system is stable over time, so continuous monitoring is a must in order to maintain stable color.
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