A few days ago I posted about the new Kinko’s logo. A number of people commented on it, but Thomas Haynes was the only one to point out that in fact, I had gotten the colors wrong. Mine has pure cyan, while the real thing has more nuanced colors. As usual, everything is more complicated than I had thought.

I made my image by downloading the EPS file from the FedEx logos page, rendering it with GhostScript, exporting it to a full-color PNG file, and cropping it to keep just the logo. Checking the process again, it seems that GhostScript rendered the color as pure cyan.

Looking into it some more, I see that the EPS file came with this readme.txt:

4CP = 4 Color Process (CMYK)

This signature can also be used for the printing process (lithography, silkscreen, etc.) We recommend only using this CMYK when you cannot produce a piece using the spot color or custom color version, due to cost or other limitations.

So it looks like I did the wrong thing using the EPS for an online image. FedEx takes their brand very seriously. Seriously enough that they have not only an online tool to find the right logo for the job, but it has its own domain: fedexidentity.com. Unfortunately, the new Kinko’s logo is not covered there. They also have an internal-only domain: fedexbrand.com.

In any case, the Kinko’s logo is a different (better) color than I showed. I’m sure I violated a number of other identity guidelines (I’ll guess that the logo shouldn’t be shown without the text, and it should have a minimum amount of whitespace around it). Mea culpa.