Pantone

Pantone Inc. is a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, USA. It is known for its Pantone color matching systems, used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, although it is sometimes used in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric and plastics. The company is most well known for their Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space.

Overview

Pantone, as it is today, was founded in 1962, when the company -- at the time a small business which manufactured color cards for cosmetics companies -- was bought by Lawrence Herbert, who had been an employee since 1956. He immediately changed its direction, developing the first color matching system in 1963. Herbert remains the CEO, Chairman, and President of the company.

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 flipbook. For instance, a particular "page" might contain a number of yellows varying in luminance from light to dark.

The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to 'color match' specific colors when a design enters production stage. This system has been widely adopted by Graphic Designers, Reproduction and Printing Houses for a number of years now. Annual editions of the Pantone Guides are released, since the inks in each edition will fade over time, and Pantone recommended that PMS Color Guides be replaced yearly. Pantone guides from differing years and editions often have colors that deviate from each other (e.g. the paper stock may change color, leading to a different printed color).^[1]

The Pantone Color Matching System works within existing color systems such as the CMYK system. The CMYK system is a way of making up a multitude of colors by mixing only four (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black). The majority of the world's printed material is produced using the CMYK system. The Pantone system allows users to mix percentages of base inks (such as CMYK) to create new colors, either physically (these are called spot colors) or on the printed page using screens to allow certain amounts of ink through and then overlaying the base colors. The Pantone system also allows for many 'special' colors to be specified such as metallics and fluorescents. It is only recently that Pantone have started looking at linking their existing system in with screen based colors (Screen based colors use the RGB - Red, Green, Blue - system to create various colors).

Pantone colors are described by their allocated number (eg 'Pantone 130' or sometimes referred to as 'PMS 130'). PMS colors are almost always used in branding and have even found their way into government legislation (to describe the colors of flags). In January 2003, the Scottish Parliament debated a petition (reference PE512) to define the blue in the Scottish flag (saltire) as 'Pantone 300'. As well, countries such as Canada and South Korea and organizations such as the FIA indicate specific Pantone colors to use when producing flags. It is open to speculation whether legislators realize that Pantone may choose to reformulate the color.

Pantone asserts that their list of color numbers and values is the intellectual property of Pantone and free use of the list is not allowed^[2]. This is frequently held as a reason why Pantone colors cannot be supported in Open Source software such as GNU Image Manipulation Program (GIMP) and are not often found in low-cost software. It has been claimed that "it seems as if the company is being intentionally unclear" but it is acknowledged that "the simplest claim would be trademark misappropriation or dilution towards someone who produced a color palette marketed as compatible with Pantone's"^[3]. However, Pantone palettes supplied by printer manufacturers can be obtained freely, and depending on supplier, do not come with usage restriction beyond sales ban on hard copy of the palette.

Pantone also announced the ownership of patent 5,734,800, a six-color Hexachrome printing system.

In mid-2006 Pantone, partnering with Vermont based Fine Paints of Europe, introduced a new line of interior and exterior paints. The color palette utilizes Pantone's color research and trending and has more than 3000 colors.

References

1. ^ Pantone Press Release, 6 May 2004. Archived from the original on 2006-01-03. Retrieved on 2007-02-23. "Colors in the new formula guide and chips books have changed due to a shift to coated paper that is brighter and whiter"
2. ^ Pantone Terms of Use Clause 3 includes "published materials of Pantone, are protected by copyright laws and include, for example, graphic presentations, color references, PANTONE Colors, PANTONE Names, numbers, formulas and software"
3. ^ Newsforge: Pantone and free software. Three quotes from the section "Colorful language". Retrieved 6 July 2006

See also

• Process color
• Spot color
• Natural Color System (NCS) and Munsell color system, other proprietary color spaces where most consumers use swatches to make color decisions; unlike Pantone, these systems are based on underlying color models rather than simply assigning names to colors.
• Database rights (copyright protection of databases in the EU)

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