09/01/2026
Has this ever happened to you?
The color looks blue on your screen, but when it’s printed on the name badge… it comes out purple!
This can be frustrating. It means wasted badges printed in the wrong color and extra time trying to fix the issue.
⚠️ It happens because your screen and your badge printer make color in completely different ways.
The screen uses light, mixing red, green and blue. That's RGB. The printer uses ink, mixing cyan, magenta, yellow and black. That's CMYK. Whatever you design on the screen has to survive the trip into the ink.
Most colors make that trip without anyone noticing. When one doesn't, it costs you a reprint you didn't budget for, or every attendee wearing the wrong brand color for the whole show.
Blue is the usual culprit. In ink, it's built from cyan plus magenta, and too much magenta slides it toward purple. You won't see it coming either, because the screen you designed on can't show you what the ink will do 😱.
The fix is to set the badge file up in CMYK before you design anything. Then every color you choose is already one the printer can reproduce, and what you approve is what ends up around people's necks.