Last week I was playing with some of our inks to see if it’s hard to follow a Pantone formula guide and mix some colours that I want. The fan gives you the formulas right there, so that sounds easy enough right? Negative. I was trying to mix PMS 117, a mustard colour, and my first attempt turned it into a mustard that had been dropped in poop. The second attempt, in my mind, was bang on, but when printed, looked like mustard that had been mixed in milk. Looks like I need to practice lots more with these inks.
I studied colour theory back in first year of university, and back then I never thought I would ever use it as much as I have in the years that followed. To not understand how colours look the way they look makes it very difficult to make changes in order to achieve what you want. It might sound silly to some people, but there really is a depth and mystery behind colour.
In addition to color theory, with all this different technology, there’s also a need for the understanding of colour systems that apply to print and to the screen – and how they are different. When I was in school, everything was based on paper swatches and paint – nowadays I’d imagine a lot of it happens on a computer, too. Are any of you out there colour purists?
