Guide to Maintaining Brand Standards With Color Management

Guide to Maintaining Brand Standards With Color Management

12/05/2024

Staying on brand can boost a company’s bottom line. In fact, a recent study reported that brand consistency can increase revenue by 10 to 20%. First impressions can influence perceptions and decisions, that’s why maintaining brand consistency is essential for every business.

This consistency ensures that every interaction a customer has with your brand, whether through a product, service or marketing material, reinforces the same message and values. A key component in achieving this level of uniformity is effective color management.

Color management plays an integral role by ensuring that the colors associated with your brand are accurately and consistently reproduced across all media. In this manner, your brand's visual identity will remain strong and recognizable, no matter where it is encountered.

By managing colors effectively, businesses can evoke the right emotions and associations, thereby strengthening their brand identity and leaving a lasting impression on their audience. 


RELATED: How to Know When It’s Time to Invest in a Large Format Printer 


The Importance of Brand Standards

Brand standards play a pivotal role in ensuring that printed materials present consistent brand-associated colors for optimum identity recognition. This is vital for maintaining brand integrity, as consistent colors help consumers instantly recognize a brand.

In addition, by using color management standards to standardize your printing processes, you’ll increase your efficiency, promote faster turnaround times and decrease costs. This will also lead toward less materials being wasted, therefore promoting greater environmental sustainability. 

Understanding Color Management and Its Role in Branding

Color management is the process of controlling the way colors are reproduced across various devices and media. In the context of branding, it's essential because colors evoke emotions and associations that are integral to your brand's identity. When colors are inconsistent, it can lead to a disconnect between your brand and your audience.

Effective color management ensures that your brand colors are reproduced accurately, whether on a business card or a billboard. This consistency helps in maintaining a unified brand image, making your brand easily recognizable no matter where or how it's seen.

Challenges of Color Matching

One of the primary challenges in maintaining brand consistency is ensuring that colors match across all of your branded materials.

Different printing methods, devices, substrates and environmental conditions can lead to significant variations in color output. This inconsistency can be particularly problematic for organizations needing a large variety of printed materials.

Moreover, coordinating color management efforts requires a standardized approach and specialized knowledge. Without proper protocols and technology in place, even slight discrepancies can become glaringly obvious, undermining your brand’s professional appearance.

Best Practices for Effective Color Management in Printing

To achieve effective color management, it’s crucial to implement some best practices. First and foremost, establish a set of brand guidelines that include detailed specifications for colors, fonts, and other visual elements. These guidelines should be easily accessible to all team members and partners.

Next, invest in high-quality color calibration tools and software to ensure that your printers are consistently producing the correct colors.

Originally developed for halftone laminate proofing systems, G7 is an industry color management standard that is now used for a wide range of print services. Implementing G7 specifications creates more consistent printing conditions across multiple print devices, technologies and materials, reducing rejected work and reprinted jobs.

Canon’s PRISMAsync color print server has built-in G7 calibration features allowing any print provider to achieve G7 compliance. In fact, several of Canon’s production-quality sheet-fed and wide format printers are G7 certified making it easy to achieve consistent color results.

In addition to being the largest independent Canon dealer in the nation, Troyka-TC also has a team of Business Analysts ready to help select and configure the correct printer (or print fleet) to fit your needs. And our Business Analysts, several who are G7-certified, are skilled at solving color control challenges, even in the most demanding print environments.

Your Production Print Experts

Contact Troyka-TC to discuss your large format and digital press technology options. Our team will help you discover the value in innovative new technology and software designed to increase your productivity, automation and accuracy. 

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