Digitized Custom Color Unifies Beauty Packaging Worldwide

No7 Beauty Co. is celebrating the 15th anniversary of its Soap & Glory skin care and cosmetics brand with a brand visual identity redesign that features a bespoke pink color for packaging and marketing materials. The new color provides visual consistency across print substrates, assuring a unified look for the brand worldwide.

No7 worked with X-Rite and its Pantone subsidiary to develop a digital solution that would not only define the new pink but also eliminate color inconsistency across printers and packaging materials. Previously, Soap & Glory had used physical color references to guide its printers, and the brand’s color consistency had eroded over time.

“Our Soap & Glory brand has always been about affordable luxury beauty. Really efficacious products with tongue-in-cheek names in equally fun and clever, retro-esque pink packaging — instantly recognizable on shelves around the world,” says Yasmin Persaud, senior global product manager at Soap & Glory.

“Staying true to our color hasn’t been easy, and over the last 15 years we’d lost a bit of control of the shade of our pink,” Persaud adds. “Our color was different across the globe due to complicated supply chains and all the different print processes and types of packaging.”

Realizing that when a package’s color looks off, consumers may think there’s something wrong with the product, No7 tapped X-Rite and Pantone to create a custom pink for Soap & Glory.

“Having our very own bespoke color allows us to make an immediate connection with our customers, and this consistency in color helps to maintain our iconic branding,” Persaud says. “Combine that with our tone of voice and graphics, and that’s the unique Soap & Glory killer combination. Not to mention the amazing product formulas, of course.”

The PantoneLIVE and X-Rite ColorCert Scorecard Server digital solutions are central to Soap & Glory’s improved color consistency.

Stored in the cloud, the new digital color standard addresses numerous variables related to print processes and substrates. All participants in the Soap & Glory packaging supply chain, from designers to packaging production specialists, can access the digital standard via PantoneLIVE.

In addition, the ColorCert Scorecard Server enables No7 to control the colors on printed packaging. The brand owner and its print suppliers use the server for quality assurance and color evaluation.

“Soap & Glory’s bespoke pink is securely stored in a private color library within the PantoneLIVE Cloud,” says Pieter Mulder, global strategic account manager at X-Rite. “The color definition carries the full spectral data to allow suppliers to formulate inks and QC [quality-control] product with confidence that they are hitting just the color that Soap & Glory requires.”

Repeatable color for dozens of packaging types.

After No7 selected its bespoke color with the support of Pantone Color Institute, the digitization process and creation of the private color in PantoneLIVE was performed within a month.

“The PantoneLIVE cloud currently carries 41 different dependent standard sets — color targets for the different package types — that set standards for and show what can be achieved on relevant substrates and related inks,” Mulder said.

“This includes the most common packaging substrates, such as flexible packaging, cartons, and labels, and print processes such as offset lithography, gravure, and flexo,” Mulder adds. “Using these digital dependent standards has helped Soap & Glory and its supply chain to achieve consistent and repeatable packaging results on key packing materials.”