Had a terrible week with color palettes and it ruined three projects

Last Tuesday I picked a dark blue and orange combo for a landing page. Looked great on screen but when the client printed it out for a meeting, the orange came out looking like a dirty mustard. Then on Thursday I tried a pastel pink and green scheme that seemed fine in Figma but gave everyone headaches after 10 minutes. I spent Friday redoing all three layouts from scratch with plain black and white. Has anyone else had a color choice look good on a monitor but fail in real life?

2 comments

2 Comments

christophermurray3d ago

Did you check the print color profiles before sending it off? Like did you convert to CMYK or just assume it would match.

keith_henderson3d ago

Hang on, you printed it out straight from a digital file without checking the CMYK conversion first? I've made that mistake exactly once back when I was starting out. A bright red I used for a logo turned into this weird brick color on paper. Cost me a whole weekend to fix. Now I always do a test print on cheap paper before sending anything final to a client.