Early art lessons in primary school evoke memories of endless supplies of Poster Paint and PVC Glue, most of which ended up on my freshly washed shirt. Another fond memory of my early ‘design’ education was learning the colours of the rainbow, which to a 5 year-old child are all the colours they will ever need.

To help our small, but bright, developing minds remember all 7 colours in order, some clever clogs came up with the very memorable mnemonic ‘Richard Of York Gave Battle In Vain’. A catchy saying that remains with me today, all-be-it relatively useless when it comes to designing for print and the web.

It was not until I began studying for my BTEC National Diploma in Graphic Design that I was introduced to the two design industry standard colour systems: ‘CMYK’ for print and ‘RGB’ for web.

Print
Traditionally print is produced either using lithography or digital means to mix various amounts of 4 inks, Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black (CMYK for short) to achieve the desired colour.

Web
Colour that is produced on screen has some similarities to that of print, in that various colours are combined together to form the desired hue. It is different however that it is produced from only three base colours: Red, Green and Blue (RGB for short) and instead of ink it is light that is mixed together.

Advanced Colour System: Pantone
Through-out my time at university whilst undertaking my Bachelor of Arts Degree it became apparent that when designing for print, especially in the logo and branding world, it was good practice to choose colours based on the Pantone system. Pantone colours are pre-mixed inks that are chosen from a swatch booklet and because they do not need to be mixed on the press allow for better consistency and more reliable results. Medium to large size businesses usually opt for the pantone colour spectrum as it allows them to produce printed items with their corporate colours accurately.