PANTONE® Lighting Indicator Stickers

Getting perfect color for your design projects can be a difficult task. Creatives and clients have battled over "just-the-right" shades for years and it's not getting any easier–or is it? One major issue is the color temperature of the lighting in which both parties are viewing the project. It's a similar issue to viewing a project on a color calibrated monitor and a monitor that is not. Colors will never match.

Pantone has created a way to help distinguish a properly lit environment for viewing. They're called Pantone Lighting Indicator Stickers and they consist of two light-sensitive patches that react to your viewing illumination. Proper lighting is considered to be D50-range lighting (5000k, the recommended illumination for accurate color evaluation). When the sticker is placed in D-50 range lighting, the two patches will match. But when the lighting is subpar the two patches will appear to be different shades–warning the viewer to move to a better lighting situation before making a critical color change. The farther from D-50 the more color contrast between the two patches.

At a cost of $49.00 you get 40 stickers on one sheet. When color is getting critical, this could be a great way to establish some common ground in the color world. Below is the link to the product page on PANTONE's website.

http://www.pantone.com/pages/products/product.aspx?pid=1300&ca=1&utm_medium=email&utm_source=eb20120410

Comments

Packaging: 10 Steps to a Better Process

1. Prioritize. Prioritize. Prioritize. When three people are talking to you, you can’t hear them all. The same is true for design. Visual priority must be established from the very beginning of the design process. If every item is given primary importance, nothing becomes important. The visual priorities are what drive how all creative will be judged. The design firm should include as part of their creative brief, a hierarchy of 5 communication points for the front of the package. This includes 1) brand 2) product name 3) why-to-buy statement 4) feature points 5) product image. 2. Come together. Everyone has an opinion, so clear project objectives are vital to any job. Consensus regarding the creative brief must be obtained from the people expected to judge the package design from within your corporation. Without this consensus, the design process will fall apart. Without clearly stated, agreed-upon objectives, you are not able to provide constructive feedback. As soon as you start t

New and Not Necessarily Improved

A story in the March 3, 2009 issue of the LA Times regarding the unfavorably received new Pepsi brand redesign reminded me of another recent unsuccessful redesign—the one for Tropicana orange juice. A few months ago, I was in a Target store buying some orange juice. I usually get the Tropicana brand, and was disappointed when I didn't see any in the cases. I just saw a bunch of unfamiliar cartons that I immediately wrote off as "not Tropicana" and kept looking around. It was only during a second pass that I realized that these new cartons were indeed Tropicana. Wow, I thought, that's a pretty radical new look. Gone were any vestiges of familiarity--the funky old-style logo, and especially the orange with the straw stuck in it. The new carton is dominated by a large shot of a tasteful-looking (not necessarily tasty-looking) glass of orange juice, with the word "Tropicana" in an unfamiliar sans serif font and green color turned 90º clockwise along the side. T

Let Your Packaging Sell Your Product, Not a Funny Name!

So I ran across this product while I was traveling in NY and needed some earplugs. I can't sleep without them. Earplugs are notoriously hard to find on shelf so I had to scan many products. I came across this product and got quite a chuckle. I don't think I need to explain why (To be fair, it was awhile ago, and the package design could have changed since then.): Zim's Crack Creme---we can assume that Zim is the pharmacist who created this all-natural herbal wonder cream (creme) for your crack. Or is that really what this means. Surly it couldn't. We design packaging and I couldn't help but analyze this package as I would for a client. The first thing we help our clients do is to prioritize the elements on the front of the package. What is the most important thing to communicate? The name? The brand? The why-to-buy? The features? Obviously, Zim felt the name of the product was most important. But if the name of the product doesn't really convey what it doe

What's in Store

Search This Blog