Color Systems
Naming, matching & specifying
Color · LEARN
A color on your screen is not a color on paper, and neither is a color in a brand guideline. Color systems exist to pin colors down. Pantone matches ink across printers and materials; RGB describes light for screens; CMYK describes the four-ink printing process; HEX and HSL are the web's notations for the same idea.
Designers also speak of color models versus color spaces: a model is the math, a space (like sRGB) is the agreement about what the numbers mean. The practical skill is translation — specifying one color across print, screen, and environmental applications, and knowing where each conversion loses something.
Naming and specifying color
- RGB, HEX, and HSL for screens
- CMYK process color and print separation
- Pantone and spot-color specification
- Converting color between print and screen
- Gamut: what screens can show that ink cannot
- Documenting color in brand guidelines