In 2012, the Australian government was looking for a colour shade that would be associated with as few positive attributes as possible. It was about the new uniform cigarette packs. An opinion research institute surveyed about 1000 representatively selected people.
Winner: Pantone 448C. It was associated with terms such as „dirt“, „death“ and „tar“, it hardly has any positive connotations, and so this colour has been used for packaging design together with shock photos ever since. The standardised packaging was also introduced in France at the beginning of July 2017, and the EU-wide introduction is being planned.
Here are the neutral colour values of the shade:
Pantone 348C
Lab: 30.76 -0.92 13.23
sRGB: 78 73 52
CMYK: 70 60 100 50
RAL 6014 Yellow-olive (DeltaE=4,83)
HKS 62K 70 50 (DeltaE=4.08)
NCS S7020-G70Y (DeltaE=2.49)[:en]
