Cardinals Red

January 18, 2024
The Cardinals during or before the 2023 season subtly changed their Red and Blue colors. For many years Cardinal Red has been represented by Pantone 200 and Cardinal Navy had been represented as Pantone 289. At some point in 2022 or 2023 the Cardinals noticed there were discrepancies between what we see in Pantone books, what we see on computer screens, what we see in other print and display media, and most importantly, what we see as the fabric on the uniform itself. In order to better match what the team wore, new CMYK codes were chosen in favor of Pantone swatches. I personally like the new swatches, mainly the red swatch, because I’ve always thought Pantone 200 was very pink/magenta. But PMS 200 became familiar, and it works just fine. The new CMYK swatch, however, I think better represents Cardinal Red. The new Cardinal Navy CMYK swatch appears with more color saturation than PMS 289, so I think I like that one better also.
Does this mean that these CMYK codes will fully replace the Pantone swatches? I’m not sure, and I try and think about all the pros and cons when making a change like this one. The biggest negative to the change I can think of is how easy it was to declare the Cardinals official colors. Red is PMS 200, Blue is PMS 289. With the change we might have to start saying, Cardinals Red is custom CMYK swatch 5 Cyan, 100 Magenta, 100 Yellow, and 20 Black. Doesn’t exactly roll off the tongue, but it does look better in my opinion. What say you?