You’ve probably heard of it, Pantone… no, I’m not talking about that Italian cake that comes around the holidays (panettone). In the field of graphic design, the Pantone matching system is one of the most common forms of communicating color in a consistent manner. It may seem like a silly thing to need a book of colors, but think back to the Italian cake just briefly. Picture yourself in Italy enjoying an expresso and didn’t know any Italian words, yet you wanted the waiter to bring you a delicious slice of chocolate cake. Without a common term to describe the cake that waiter might bring you a piece of angels food cake or fruitcake (panettone), but you really wanted a piece of chocolate cake (they’re all cakes). In this case, it could easily be resolved with a menu showing pictures of each type of cake- regardless of what it might be called, you could just point to the one you want and the waiter would absolutely and clearly understand what your asking for, regardless of language barriers.

That scenario holds true in color as well, but to some degree is even more difficult to communicate. You see we may speak exactly the same language but you tell me that you really like Red and you’d love to see it on your label. I pick an red color and show you the comp, immediately you say “oh no, not bright red, I like rusty red”, as you can see, this is were having a book full of different shades of red colors comes in handy. Regardless of whether you call it rusty red and I call it brick red, we can both sit down and agree on the sample in front of us. In the world of print, Pantone is the universal language of color.

I just touched on the most simplified version of color management, but it has enough complexity to warrant a couple more posts, I’ll come back to this in another post.

“I need a wine label design”- this is a common phrase that I hear when I’m getting acquainted with a new client and project. While it is true, they do need a wine label designed, the unspoken yet more powerful portion of the statement should be, “I want to sell wine”.  And its important to differentiate between designing pretty packaging and designing packaging that successfully and precisely supports sales to the target audience.

Design just for designs sake, slapping a pretty piece of art on a product and calling it packaging, may indeed sell some product and have some success. However, in a well designed product every design element of the particular package should be chosen with a singular purpose in mind: encourage the target audience to interact with (and purchase) your product. In the absence of a purchasing the secondary goal should be to increase your brands visibility and perceived value.