Online Extra from May/June 2006 “Top 10 Colour Trends” by Paul Haft 
Top 10 Colours for 2006 

Orange (C1 M62 Y 95 K2)
Corporate goes orange from blood orange to pumpkin 

Espresso (C 36 M52 Y65 K85)
A complex brown, almost black with a warm cast

Wasabi (C 14 M4 Y36 K12)
Yellow-based green acts as a great neutral 

Teal (C100 M5 Y100 K24)
Making a come back, less 80’s because it’s used with new, fresh colour combinations 

Chocolate Pudding (C17 M64 Y60 K51)
A milky, chalky brown

Avocado (C25 M3 Y100 K14)
Think Brady Bunch with a twist

Clear Blue Sky (C51 M0 Y1 K0)
Fresh, spa inspired

Cool grays (C22 M15 Y11 K32)
Works nicely as a contrast to warm, yellow-based colours

Pink (C0 M59 Y5 K0)
The metrosexual colour in the boardroom, great as an accent colour

Butterscotch (C4 M35 Y65 K10)
Golden, warm, the start of the yellow trend 

Online Extra from May/June 2006 “Tool Tips” by Bob Atkinson
The secrets of soft proofing…continued

In the May/June issue of Design Edge Canada (“Tool Tips,” page 18), we looked at colour management and soft-proofing techniques that will cost you little or nothing, assuming you already have the colour-management-capable software used by most designers. To get the most accurate soft proofing, however, you'll need to spend a little money...

While the profile you get with your monitor is designed to accurately reflect that model's colour capabilities, every individual unit is a bit different. More importantly, every monitor's colour will drift from hour to hour based on how long it's been on. CRT-based monitors drift a lot more as the months or years go by whereas LCD monitors are more colour-stable but will dim over the years. Generally speaking, you should wait at least 30 minutes after turning the monitor on before doing any colour-critical work and try to replace monitors every two to three years. 

To ensure you have the most accurate monitor profile at any given moment, you may want to invest in a monitor colorimeter, which allows you to run a five-minute calibration to create a new and accurate monitor profile anytime. These little devices temporarily attach to your monitor screen and communicate with their included calibration software through a USB connection to your computer. While these devices once cost over $1,500, they're now available for far less and are quite easy to use. If you have a tight budget, look at Pantone's new $129 huey system, which accounts for both monitor condition and ambient room light. ColorVision's Spyder2Express offers similar capabilities and the same price. Monitor calibration tool Eye-One Display 2 from Gretag-Macbeth is $299, as is X-Rite’s Monaco Optix XR system. 

All of those options will help set up your studio's monitors to display accurate colour and soft proofing but if you want to add this capability to your most popular repeat clients' sites, you'll want to encourage them to pick up or make a monitor hood and buy one of the monitor calibrators above, then view the PDF job files you provide with Adobe's free (and colour-management-capable) Acrobat Reader for Mac or Windows. 

www.pantone.com
www.colorvision.com
www.gretagmacbeth.com
www.xritephoto.com

Moving to InDesign?
Online Extra from March/April 2006 “Tool Tips” by Bob Atkinson