CMYK will be ok - but depends on what colour profile you are working with. The colour profile is dependent on output, for example you can have US Web Coated SWOP.
That's clearly marked for the US market - web specifies the Web Press (it's printed off rolls of paper instead of sheets (sheetfed) - and as it's Web press and geared towards faster print runs (like newspapers) and the paper is quite pourous - the ink limit is set to 300%.
300% ink limit literally means that when your mix of colours in C M Y K = 300% that's the limit your paper can take (like wetting a paper bag, eventually it will just tear if it's wet enough - right?)
If your logo is made of 90% cyan - 60% magenta - 80% yellow - it equals - 230% for ink it will work.
If that colour has a 75 % black - then it will be 5% over the ink limit.
There's plenty of CMYK profiles - for different printing standards - like Euroscale Coated and Euroscale Uncoated.
Coated and Uncoated refer to the paper type - if the paper is coated (like magazines) or uncoated (like newspapers).
This is why designing something in CMYK is not ideal. Converting between colour profiles causes colour shifts - as the ink levels can increase/decrease - for example sending a logo with 350% in coverage to be printed at a newspaper would end up the colour being adjust on output - so that there isn't 350% ink coverage but only 300%.
Do this they need to reduce the C M Y K coverage in the file - reducing the CMYK numbers changes the colour output.
That's a very broad coverage of it.
What you really need is a colour book - like Pantones Coated and Uncoated books.
In Japan (and parts of Asia) they use TOYO - a different set of colour books and don't use Pantone.
This doesn't mean you need to design in Pantone and TOYO - it's just to be aware that different parts of the world use different standards.
Anyway - when you use Pantone colours - you buy the Pantone books - and you pick from the Coated or Uncoated sets.
You very rarely find a colour in the Coated book that matches the same colour in the Uncoated book.
That's because the ink colour shifts when applied to different papers, on uncoated stock (like newspapers) it saturates more (like a wet paper bag) the ink becomes duller.
When you use Pantone Colours - you can define your spot colours as LAB colour system in Illustrator now.
Learn about the Pantone Plus color libraries and color books used in Adobe Illustrator CS6 and CC.
helpx.adobe.com
L*a*b* L* for perceptual lightness, a* and b* for the four colours of human vision: red, green, blue, and yellow.
Because Lab describes how a color looks rather than how much of a particular colorant is needed for a device (such as a monitor, desktop printer, or digital camera) to produce colors, Lab is considered to be a
device-independent color model.
Do you need to get bogged down in this?
No.
Pick up a pantone set of books - coated and uncoated.
Pick from them.
It will also show you the CMYK equivalent beside it - again - this is rarely the same shade - because the CMYk equivalent can't be produced.
It's often best to pick a CMYK equivalent from another swatch in the book.
You can see here in the pantone book - that the SOLID (spot) is nowhere near the CMYK equivalent.
For this I'd pick a different CMYK from the Pantone book that would be closer to the original.
You can see it gives the RGB and Hex Colours too.
