Colours / Spot colours

In logo design, there's the general question of whether you want to create a logo in the CMYK colour space, or use spot colours (e.g. pantone). Both models have their respective advantages and disadvantages.

If the client doesn't explicitly request (or allow) only one of these colour spaces, it's a good idea to give them an understanding of the pro's and con's of both models.

Characteristics of Spot Colours:

• Beautiful, saturated colours, not rasterized

  Shades that would not be as luminous in CMYK, e.g. shades of orange

  Gold and silver

  Bicoloured logo in CMYK, mostly 3 colour decks necessary

  For business printed matters: Often, less printing colours are necessary -> printable on smaller machines

  Often more expensive, if CMYK is to be printed simultaneously, more than 4 colour decks are necessary

Characteristics of CMYK colour space:

• For forms, no extra colour decks with spot colours are necessary

  If a spot colour logo is printed in CMYK, there are often colour variations

  For colour text: Frayed borders because of halftoning

As you can see, several points argue for the use of spot colours for logos, but the notable disadvantage of additional costs for an extra colour deck in printing machines militates strongly against them.

This is why logos are usually designed in 4 versions:

A spot colour version, a version that is transformed into CMYK process colours, and a greyscale or black-and-white version.