It doesn’t happen all the time, but when it does, it can be a doozey. You review a proof and the job goes to press, and when the finished product is in your hands, you’re mildly (if you’re lucky) shocked at the color. Whether we’re talking a blue that’s a shade or two more purple than you anticipated or if your corporate logo is now more candy apple than garnet red, oftentimes both designer and client are surprised by color shifts. Output confusion strikes again.

Used to be only professional designers and typesetters sent files to press, and more often than not they were seen as professional craftspeople who were a necessary—and crucial—part of a design project. Nowadays, price is king and more and more businesspeople are going it on their own for business cards (online or color copied), brochures (ditto) and ads (a put-it-all-in-the-square-inch approach).

Unfortunately, money is not the only item being spared in these transactions. Go ahead and count precision and corporate identity as things that are also bare-boned when folks who are professionals in other realms try their hand at the Art of Printing and Design.

Color perception is highly individualized and varies greatly by the output device. Color shifts are inevitable, logical and accounted for when you utilize a professional graphic designer. That is to say, your designer understands that the color a flat screen monitor displays will be vastly different from that which a color laser printer outputs—which cannot be compared to a color inkjet printer—and doesn’t even come close to a sheet-fed press, which looks different even than a web press, which is true printing, unlike the newer digital printers which can be described as copy machines on steroids, which is not at all what your logo or ad will look like online … are you confused yet? Exactly.

To help you understand why your corporate materials may look vastly different in each scenario, here’s a little primer from design school, otherwise referred to as Why Professionals Are Worth It.

Let’s use a business logo for example. A good graphic designer will specify colors (spot colors) from the Pantone Matching System (PMS) Formula Guide in your logo. Pantone colors correlate exactly with Pantone ink recipes, which professional printers load into their presses. Think paint chips here—except we’re talking about extra-thick, gluey inks that combine to make an array (currently 1,341) of shades. Since printers are not mixologists, they use the Pantone formulations exactly when printing, say, PMS 286, a bright royal blue. This means that each and every time a printer—universally—prints your logo with this ink, it will look the same (with minor differences resulting from absorption if you change paper stock).

This same logo could also be printed on a full-color brochure, which, in the case of most project budgets, requires four-color (CMYK) printing. This means the entire brochure will be printed using a mixture of just four inks: C (cyan), M (magenta), Y (yellow) and K (black). Yes, every color in the brochure, from faces to logos, are usually displayed by creating “screens” of each color, made by an array of dots. While this is very economical compared with paying for an extra “spot” color of PMS 286, the CMYK (or “process”) conversion of this PMS color will not match the original. Blues, along with purples, reds, greens, often have trouble converting to process—they tend to be darker or lighter versions of themselves that lack the “pop” that drew you to them in the first place.

A good designer compensates for this by making a custom CMYK configuration of the PMS color in your logo and creating a “process” or “CMYK” version of the file—for this specific purpose! At the very least, the designer should alert you to the fact that the logo blue will be different, and should recommend a press check—where you stand by the actual press as your piece is printing, tweaking the color to your liking with the press operator) if you (or they) are overly concerned about the outcome.

Side note: Some will say, “But I saw a proof!” But was it a “contract color proof” or just an inkjet proof? Contract color proofs are just that—a color review that you approve and to which the printer matches the color in the final product. If it isn’t a contract proof, then you aren’t proofing color.

The same goes for “onscreen” proofs. If you’re not viewing that proof on a professionally- (and daily-) calibrated monitor, then it’s not a contract proof.

Instead of going into the gory details, let me assure you that there are differences—however subtle—between sheet-fed and web offset presses. The differences aren’t always great, but it pays to ask your designer what they think. Paper choices (coated versus uncoated, etc.) are another factor in the color decision.

Many folks today are taking advantage of digital printing, which offers great flexibility in terms of quantity, and also comes at a huge discount for volume jobs. Technically, these “presses” are akin to color copiers. The paper is better and the ink (toner) is better, but the process is NOT press printing. Therefore, the PMS blue in your logo now can look darker or lighter or even a shade or two toward either side of blue (purple, green), since the press is using CMYK toner (not PMS and not ink!). The good news is, with digital printing, you generally get a proof on the actual paper stock you’ve chosen. If you don’t like the color, ask them to change it before printing the rest of the job.

Finally, let’s anguish over the never-can-count-on-it world of digital design, otherwise known as RGB. When the world went digital, so did most of the marketing material we come in contact with on a daily basis. Unfortunately, we also went from thousands of colors down to the RGB array, which is a spectrum of only 216 “safe” colors, which will somewhat reliably reproduce onscreen. RGB is also device-dependent (wait, what color model isn’t, truly?) which means that it will display differently on every device. End users have control over the contrast, brightness, and sharpness of their own monitors. Therefore, they also have control over how your logo appears. (There is a bit more control with the hex color scheme, but to a print designer, it’s not nearly enough control!)

Once again, your trusty designer should advise you of this if your logo color is an important part of your corporate identity.

The bottom line here is that if you like the color in your logo (or other important marketing material), then be sure your designer explains how it will look in all iterations of use. They can give you examples of outcomes, but the most important aspect will be their control over the output, and how they amend the color appropriately. After all, you are paying for their expertise in not only design, but also final output. That’s the un-scientific art of design and printing.