Brand Color Swatches

Download Swatches

Process Coated

Spot Coated

Consistent use of Colorado State University’s official brand colors is critical to building brand consistency and awareness in the marketplace. Many well known brands use color as a primary visual identifier, UPS brown and Target red are excellent examples of this concept. The Colorado State University brand color palette consists of primary, secondary and accent colors. To assist University communicators in maintaining color consistency, the University is providing color swatches for the print environment for both spot color and process colors to be loaded into Adobe Creative Suite applications. Once the swatches have been downloaded to a local computer, please follow the instructions for each of the common Adobe print production software. Please note these files will work only in the Adobe Creative Suite programs. Should communicators be using something other than the Adobe Creative Suite, a different process must be used to maintain color consistency.

InDesign

  • To load swatches into Adobe InDesign CS2 and higher
  • Start a new InDesign file
  • Open the color swatches palette (window>swatches).

If you have the default set of InDesign swatches, another set of swatches, or different set of brand swatches present, it is suggested you remove those swatches to avoid mixing the brand colors with other non-CSU colors.

To remove swatches: click the down arrow button in the upper right corner of the swatches palette, and select the option Select All Unused. Take all the swatches and put them in the trash in the lower right corner of the palette.

Load the Swatches: To load the CSU brand swatches: click the down arrow button in the upper right corner of the swatches palette and select the option Load Swatches, navigate your computer to the location you saved the downloaded swatch files, and click on either the CSU Process Coated.ase or the CSU Spot Coated .ase files as appropriate for the color space you’ll be working in. The swatches should now be loaded in your palette.

Illustrator

  • To load swatches into Adobe Illustrator CS2 and higher
  • Start a new Illustrator file
  • Open the color swatches palette (window>swatches).

If you have the default set of Illustrator swatches, another set of swatches, or different set of brand swatches present, it is suggested you remove those swatches to avoid mixing the brand colors with other non-CSU colors.

To remove swatches: click the down arrow button in the upper right corner of the swatches palette, and select the option Select All Unused. Take all the swatches and put them in the trash in the lower right corner of the palette. You may need to repeat this process, or select individual swatches in the palette and drag them to the trash manually.

Load the Swatches: To load the CSU brand swatches: click the down arrow button in the upper right corner of the swatches palette and select the option Open Swatch Library>Other Library, then navigate your computer to the location you saved the downloaded swatch files, and click on either the CSU Process Coated.ase or the CSU Spot Coated .ase files as appropriate for the color space you’ll be working in. The swatches should now be loaded in your palette.

Photoshop

  • To load swatches into Adobe Photoshop CS2 and higher
  • Start with a new or existing Photoshop file
  • Open the color swatches palette (window>swatches)
  • Click the down arrow button in the upper right corner of the palette.
  • Click Replace Swatches, navigate your computer to the location you saved the downloaded swatch files, and click the CSU Process Coated.ase.

Note: most instances Photoshop files work in process color rather than in Spot which is why only the Process Coated is being identified to be loaded. Color space is also a significant consideration, it is suggested to load the color swatches into Photoshop files that have been converted from RGB color space to CMYK.