WHAT IS THE PANTONE COLOR

WHAT IS THE PANTONE COLOR

Pantone LLC (stylized as PANTONE) is a limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, notably graphic design, fashion design, product design, printing and manufacturing, and supporting the management of color from design to production, in physical and digital formats, among coated and uncoated materials, cotton, polyester, nylon, and plastics.

X-Rite, a supplier of color measurement instruments and software, purchased Pantone for US$180 million in October 2007 and was acquired by Danaher Corporation in 2012.

OVERVIEW

Pantone began in New Jersey in the 1950s as the commercial printing company of brothers Mervin and Jesse Levine, and M & J Levine Advertising. In 1956, its founders, both advertising executives, hired recent Hofstra University graduate Lawrence Herbert as a part-time employee. Herbert used his chemistry knowledge to systematize and simplify the company's stock of pigments and production of colored inks; by 1962, Herbert was running the ink and printing division at a profit, while the commercial-display division was US$50,000 in debt; he subsequently purchased the company's technological assets from the Levine Brothers for US$50,000 (equivalent to $450,000 in 2021) and renamed them "Pantone".

The company's primary products include the Pantone Guides, which consist of a large number of small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small "fan deck". For instance, a particular "page" might contain a number of yellows of varying tints.

The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to "color match" specific colors when a design enters the production stage, regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers and reproduction and printing houses. Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually, as their inks become yellowish over time. Color variance also occurs within editions based on the paper stock used (coated, matte, or uncoated), while interedition color variance occurs when there are changes to the specific paper stock used.

PANTONE COLOR MATCHING SYSTEM

The Pantone Color Matching System is largely a standardized color reproduction system, as of 2019 it has 2161 colors. By standardizing the colors, different manufacturers in different locations can all refer to the Pantone system to make sure colors match without direct contact with one another.

One such use is standardizing colors in the CMYK process. The CMYK process is a method of printing color by using four inks-cyan, magenta, yellow, and black. A majority of the world's printed material is produced using the CMYK process, and there is a special subset of Pantone colors that can be reproduced using CMYK. Those that are possible to simulate through the CMYK process are labeled as such within the company's guides.

However, about 30% of the Pantone system's 1114 spot colors (as of the year 2000) cannot be simulated with CMYK but with 13 base pigments (14 including black) mixed in specified amounts, called base colors. Those 1114 colors included 387 colors with numbers 100 to 487 from 1975 and some lighter colors from 600 to 732 in 1991. The original 4-digit colors introduced in 1987 were remapped into 3 digits.

The Pantone system also later allowed for many special colors to be produced, such as metallics, fluorescents (neons), and pastels. There are 56 fluorescents from 801 to 814 (the first 7 here are base colors, so-called Dayglo) and from 901 to 942. Packaging metallics (previously premium metallics) are placed from 10101 to 10454 (54 of those added later, 354 altogether, 2 base colors Silver 10077 and Rose Gold 10412), while normal metallics are placed from 871 to 877 (first 7 here are base colors) and from 8001 to 8965. Pastels are from 9140 to 9163 with base colors being 0131, 0331, 0521, 0631, 0821, 0921, and 0961. While most of the Pantone system colors are beyond the printed CMYK gamut, it was only in 2001 that Pantone began providing translations of their existing system with screen-based colors. Screen-based colors use the RGB color model-red, green, and blue systems to create various colors. A lot of colors are outside sRGB. The (discontinued)  Goe system has RGB, LAB, and SPD values with each color and has 10 base colors while only 4 of those are new: Bright Red, Pink, Medium Purple, and Dark Blue. The other 6 were in the system before: Yellow 012, Orange 021, Rubine Red, Green, Process Blue, and Black which in Goe were named Medium Yellow, Bright Orange, Strong Red, Bright Green, Medium Blue, and Neutral Black. (PMS has 8 more basic base colors, some not mono pigmented: Yellow 010, Red 032, Warm Red, Rhodamine Red, Purple, Violet, Reflex Blue, Blue 072.)

Pantone colors are described by their allocated number (typically referred to as, for example, "PMS 130"). PMS colors are almost always used in branding and have even found their way into government legislation and military standards (to describe the colors of flags and seals). In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition (reference PE512) to refer to the blue in the Scottish flag as "Pantone 300". Countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA have also chosen to refer to specific Pantone colors to use when producing flags. US states including Texas have set legislated PMS colors of their flags.

PANTONE GEOSYSTEM

On September 5, 2007, Pantone introduced the Goe System. Goe consisted of 2058 new colors in a new matching and numbering system. In addition to the standard swatch books (now called the GoeGuide), the new system also included adhesive-backed GoeSticks, interactive software, tools, and an online community where users were able to share color swatches and information.

The Goe system was streamlined to use fewer base colors (ten, plus clear coating for reflections, only 4 base colors were new) and accommodate many technical challenges in reproducing colors on a press.

The Pantone Goe system was discontinued in November 2013, but 4 new base colors were added into PMS and some of the new colors too, though those 4 base colors are harder to purchase.