Last month, we unveiled the logo for our new advanced wound care product line, MediPlus™.

In the news release that I wrote, I mentioned a link to an “official list of print and Web equivalents” for the new logo. If you visit the page, you’ll see the official colors for all of our logos, including the corporate logo for MediPurpose® and the brand logos for SurgiLance® safety lancets and babyLance® infant heel incision devices.

Somebody that saw that page recently asked me about the differences between RGB, CMYK, Hex and Pantone. You might have never heard of some or all of these terms, but they are worth understanding, especially if you are responsible for your medical device company’s marketing and branding.

Along with your own print and online documents, encouraging color consistency from everybody at your medical device company is a key technique to ensuring consistency with your brand awareness.

When talking about "color" in regards to printers or online displays, there are several ways to ensure consistency, especially since the "red" you see on your screen might not exactly what's on mine—or what you might expect to come out of a printer. These are called “color systems” or “color models.” Among the most common are RGB, CMYK, Hex and Pantone.

What is Pantone CMS?

The Pantone® CMS (color matching system) is a standardized list of virtually every color imaginable. It's what professional printers often use to keep things consistent.

For instance, if I had a printer print our logo on a business card, I would tell them to make the red part of the logo "Pantone 206c." That helps differentiate from other shades or red, such as the red that is used by The University of Georgia.

What are RGB and CMYK?

Most devices that create color images—televisions, inkjet printers, etc.—typically use red, green and blue to create the image; this color model is known as RGB (for Red, Green and Blue). Colors are identified by specific combinations of RGB (on a scale of 0–255) are used.

There’s another similar color model called CMYK (for Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and blacK), which is a more sophisticated "four-color process" that is often used by professional printers. Similar to RGB, colors are identified by specific combinations of CMYK (with percentages of 0–100 percent).

What is “Hex” Color?

Websites that use HTML (HyperText Markup Language, which is the predominant coding language for Web pages) have their own system of color standardization, which is known as "hexadecimal," or just "hex," because it uses a combination of six letters and numbers to identify specific colors and shades. Colors are identified by specific combinations of letters A–G and numbers 0–9.

So, What Color is “MediPurpose® Red”?

Depending on the color system or model, there are several ways to identify the red in our logo:

• Pantone: Pantone 206
• RGB: R (211) | G (5) | B (71) •
• CMYK: C (1%) | M (94%) | Y (45%) | K (1%) •
• Hex: #D30547

See It For Yourself!

One of the easiest ways to experiment with color models is to open a Microsoft Word document. Write some sample text and select it; then use the "color" sliders to choose a palette (e.g., RGB, CMYK). The above image is what the RGB sliders look like in Word for Mac; the selected color is "babyLance® green."

Once you have a color selected in a particular color model, you can see its equivalent in another model by selecting another palette.

There are many converters available online, e.g., RGB to HEX, or CMYK to RGB; one is the Pantone Color Cross Reference. Design software such as Adobe Photoshop also includes palettes that can be used with the eyedropper tool to pinpoint your medical device company’s colors.

After you’ve identified your company’s colors, it’s best to draft a “style guide” that should in your company’s internal communication governance, as well as a public resource for distributors and other clients.