Design Forums - Graphic Design & Web Design Forums

As the title says, I'm looking for the pantone for Heinz Baked Beans green.

well, according to photoshop the 'green' on this can is: 5473

not sure if you know this already, but bring an image into PS, select a colour with the eyedropper tool, double click that colour in the left panel and click 'colour libraries' and it'll give you a pantone reference which is fairly accurate.

You'll notice that even within that image you've linked to, there are subtle changes in colour on the label because it's a photograph. It's not good enough to simply sample a colour from a photo of a tin because that's not going to give an accurate sample. When printed, it will look completely different to the colour of the wrapper.

Thanks anyway though.

when i was working with litho, i'd gaussian blur an area of the colour i wanted which would average out the colour sample better and then go through the same process i used above... I'm well aware screen colour is not going to be the same as print colour... but it'd give me an idea of where to start looking in the pantone book... have you tried looking for heinz brand guidelines via google? I've done that before and they show up half the time as pdfs, might be useful if google doesn't answer your original question?

buy a can, take off the label and scan it?

i've just been reading up on it... it does look like h.j heinz has copyright of that particular turquoise... i didn't know you could do that?


it's ref'd here: A Designer's Guide To Trademarks but there are other sites with more info... i still can't find a breakdown though

Thanks for the further advice, Nik. Good suggestions.

i love the idea of copyrighting a colour!

Surely the colour copyright only refers to baked beans, as in sainsburrys cant use the same colour on their cans? Certainly an interesting topic now though.

I didn't think you could copyright the colour, I was under the impression you could trademark it so that it can only be used for your product/brand. For example, the heinz turquoise and the t-mobile magenta are (I would expect) trademarked due to them making up their brand identity.
Seems a tad strange to be able to copyright a colour

you mean the specific colour of a bean tin wasn't interesting enough?!

but yea, i'm sure it's just been copyrighted so other bean makers don't copy heinz' look to dupe stoopid peepal into buying their product instead. Saw a vauely interesting documentary a while ago about shops like sainsbury's putting the brand leader's product mid-shelf to draw people in and then put all the other similar products around that... they did an experiment and moved the brand leader to another part of the store and all the other similar brand that would have been above and below didn't sell as well.

On the colour trademarking part of the thread, reminds me of the dispute between Orange and EasyMobile in 2004 - BBC NEWS | Magazine | Can you 'own' a colour?

I think you can copyright the trademark colour usage in the products field.
ie tins of beans etc. Orange i think have copyrighted Pantone 151 orange in the mobile field.Likewise Cadbury's and their purple
I think there is a big arguement and dabate over the 'importance ' of colour' and that importance of brand colour recogniton has great bearing whether or not the copyright will be granted. It has to be proved that the colour recognition like the brand logo has value and could be used by competitors in that area to infringe and use and therefore benefit.

I rememember Easy Jet trying to copyright the word Easy a while back.

Surely with reguards to copyrighting the word easy, you couldnt start an airline and call it easy plane or something?

I think Stelios genuinely thought he could copyright the word Easy over every form of usage and term. That was the belly laugh i remember back then.

I might try and copyright the letter 'a' and complete world domination