Which Color standard to use for Graphic Designing?

First of all not only layman but also some designers need to know what CMYK and RGB are! An experienced Designer should be well aware of the colors and more importantly should know which one to use when and where. In this post, I will try my best to answer all these queries regarding the colors (CMYK/RGB) for what kind of Logo or Web Design Project these colors should be used.

The basic and most important thing to know about RGB and CMYK is that these are standards, by standards I mean color standards used for creating logos, Web Designs and other graphic design projects.

RGB (Red, Green and Blue) – Best for Digital Display

RGB color stands for Red, Green, and Blue, also termed as additive colors. Graphic designers use them differently to create a combination of different shades for their designs. The best qualities these colors possess are that these are sharp, appealing and really stand out. That is one of the reason they are popular. These colors are also suitable for images that are displayed online or even a brochure.

CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black) – Best for Print Media

CMYK colors are known as subtractive colors and stand for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black respectively. CMYK prefers using letter ‘K’ as abbreviation to denote Black instead of the letter ‘B’. The reason for this is to prevent people from confusing it with the color Blue which also uses the letter ‘B’.

CMYK is best for prints on shirts and fabrics. Companies looking to print their logo on different materials such as T-shirts, caps, VCs, cups, hats, prefer to design them in CMYK. They are perfect for stationary, Brochures, package designing and many other forms of marketing collateral.

Check out this surprising tutorial for how you can change colors of any raster image in Adobe Illustrator.