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True Colors

“Color is the first principle of Place.” Ellen Meloy, Anthropology of Turquoise

Amid the grey days of winter here in Cleveland, Ohio, it’s easy to recognize the impact of color and light on our relationship with place. Meloy’s lovely book is not anthropology per se, but a meditation on the sense of vision:

"The complex human eye harvests light. It perceives seven to ten million colors through a synaptic flash: one-tenth of a second from retina to brain. Homo sapiens [dedicate] up to 70 percent of its sense receptors solely for vision, to anticipate danger and recognize reward, but also--more so--for beauty."

Meloy, Anthropology of Turquoise, pp. 8-9

Apple Inc., of course, takes the visual sensitivity of humans seriously. With the 2010 iPhone 4, Apple introduced its first Retina display. At 300 pixels per inch (PPI), on a device held 10 to 12 inches from the eye, individual pixels became effectively imperceptible. With the iPhone X, youhave 458 PPI and photographic versimilitude--or so I’ve heard.

My main interest remains, of course, printed materials, which still set the standard for the representation of text and images. Digital printing technology has nearly equaled the standard of offset printing in terms of resolution, but resolution’s not the only variable. Colors matter, and your team of designers and printers can take selective steps to ensure that your materials accurately “harvest light” for the business (and pleasure) of your clientele.

What your designer sees on the screen in terms of the CMYK color model (cyan, magenta, yellow, and key, or black) will typically match what comes out of the printer--but not always. Print-outs of your job need to be verified as “true to color,” which is easier to manage if you live, say, in Phoenix (310 days of sunshine per year) than Pittsburgh (164 days of sunshine per year). For those of us in more Pittsburghian climes, LED lights allow us to approximate true sunlight, either at designated stations or in all available light fixtures. We have them standard, in every room of the shop, in order to ensure that your job and its colors are true blue--or cyan, in this case.

As a client, you want to be certain that you’re seeing the true color of your job. As Rebecca Killam notes on the 1000bulbs.com blog, true color is a key concern for many businesses. "You don’t want your customers loving an outfit on the sales floor only to lose the sale in the dressing room because the overhead lighting isn’t flattering or that pink blazer suddenly looks orange." LED lights bring the equivalent of sunshine into the office and may, in turn, help alleviate seasonal affective disorder, too. So, the more LED lights in your printer’s shop, the happier those employees might be, and that’s good for business, theirs and yours.

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