What is Pantone? In 1963, “Pantone revolutionized the printing industry with the colorful PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, an innovative tool allowing for the faithful selection, articulation and reproduction of consistent, accurate color anywhere in the world.” Design professionals rely heavily on the Pantone system because it is indeed, universal.
Why is Pantone this month’s teaching moment? Well, there’s a word in the description above that tends to be glossed over (pardon the pun) and it’s very important. That word is “printing”. Pantone was designed for ink and printing. We often get requests to match a paint or powdercoat color to a Pantone color and while the paint industry can get pretty darn close, they simply do not crossover perfectly. It’s always best to use Pantone as a starting point but choose paint and powdercoat colors from the actual manufacturer’s selections.
