My tried and true navy blue finally betrayed me on a client project

I've used the same deep navy as my anchor color for about 6 years now on branding work, but last Tuesday on a website for a local bakery in Portland it came out looking almost purple on their monitor. Had to redo two full pages of mockups after I realized the hex code got corrupted when I switched software versions. Anybody else lose a go-to palette color to a random glitch and have to start over from scratch?

3 comments

3 Comments

terry_hayes1810d agoMost Upvoted

Had to redo two full pages of mockups" - man, that stings. I had the same thing happen with a warm gray I used for years. It looked like a nice neutral on my screen but turned greenish on the client's laptop. What finally worked for me was ditching hex codes for a bit and using a color picker tool that checks how colors look across different monitors. Also started saving my palettes as a separate file in the project folder, not just inside the software. That way if something glitches again, I can just reimport the original values. It's a pain to rebuild that trust in a color, but once you lock it down with a backup system, it feels way safer.

terry_hayes189d agoMost Upvoted

That color picker tool you mentioned, which one did you use? I tried a few but they either required a subscription or only worked with hex codes. I'm looking for something that can simulate how a color shifts on a cheap LCD versus a calibrated monitor. Also, do you save the palette file as a CSV or something else?

diana_bell749d ago

oh man, the warm gray trap got me too lol. i swore by this one beige tone for months, then i saw it on my sister's old dell laptop and it looked like baby poop green. seriously. i use this free tool called DisplayCAL to simulate how colors shift on cheap screens, it's not perfect but it saved my butt a few times. i just save my palettes as a plain csv because i'm too lazy to learn anything fancier, plus it's easy to open in notepad if the software crashes. i still go back and adjust stuff like three times before i commit though, old habits die hard.