4 ms·

When you need to be right about color, you pay for it. I've paid close to $1000 USD for official Pantone color guides over the last few years.

johnward 10y ago
I'm not sure I understand. What do you have to be right about? I would assume if a brand has a registered pantone color they know the code? Why do you need a book? I'm no designer but it seems like Pantone created a solution then convinced everyone else there was a problem.
- Zikes 10y ago
  Decisions about color are made all the time in some industries.
- pjc50 10y ago
  The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man with three watches knows what time it really is. Similarly, it's possible to say "these printed things and signs are different colours", but only with a reference can you say which one is the wrong colour, authoritively enough to complain to whoever forgot to colour-correct their part of the process. And of course a brand has to pick a Pantone colour in the first place, for which they will want a reference book.
  - ghaff 10y ago
    It may also be worth pointing out that designers tend to be pretty fanatical about fine gradations of color to a degree that can seem a bit silly to non-designers. I still remember when I was managing a small school press shop way back when, you'd get in these jobs from serious designers that would be printed in two shades of a color that I could barely tell apart.
  - stdbrouw 10y ago
    > The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man with three watches knows what time it really is. I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it really is. So having two watches really is better than just one, and three watches provides no guarantee of perfect accuracy.
    - wolfgke 10y ago
      > I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it really is. This only holds under additional assumptions, as for example that the errors of the watches are independent and normally distributed. In general this is not a good idea.
      - stdbrouw 10y ago
        If you know that errors are dependent or if you know the distribution of the error, you can make an even better guess, but that certainly doesn't make averaging "in general not a good idea." You're going to make assumptions whatever way you do it, e.g. using confirmation (two watches indicating the same time) to indicate truth assumes that error is fairly rare (out of 3 watches only 1 will be wrong at any given time) and that it's discontinuous rather than a smooth drift over time. No assumptions, no conclusions. Main point: more watches is always better, and three is not a magic number.
- louprado 10y ago
  When a company's brand matures and color consistency matters, their commercial printer or graphic artist will recommend the Pantone Matching System (PMS). Any graphic artist that doesn't invest in a Pantone color fan/swatch-book will lose promising accounts. Also a good press operator will at times use the PMS to mix existing colors in their inventory to closely match the target color. Ideally you would use the exact ink, but this isn't always possible given the tight constraints of running a commercial print business.
- ghshephard 10y ago
  Color is important (obviously) in the design process, and, honestly, in the whole scheme of things, a $1500 pantone reference per design shop (or more if you have a lot of designers), is round off error when you have staffing costs in the 7 figures.
- mattkevan 10y ago
  Back when I did a lot of print design, the Pantone colour books were some of the most useful tools I had. Pantone were around long before design went digital, starting as a method for printers to systematise the production of coloured inks, and the Pantone system is still the way printers manage and talk about colour. Pantone only moved into the digital space fairly recently with the advent of DTP. Colour management for print is complex - colours appear very differently when printed on different paper stocks, especially coated or uncoated paper. And it's almost impossible to get an accurate preview until you're on the press itself - when it's way too late to make changes. Having the Pantone books which show what the colours look like on different stocks at the start of a project is enormously helpful. Also CMYK print has a much narrower colour gamut compared to RGB - greens and oranges are especially hard to reproduce - so it's not unusual to specify extra colours where colour accuracy and vibrancy is important - such as on a logo. These colours will be Pantones, and often specified to the printer with a torn-out colour chip. High-end printing is done using the Hexachrome process, which adds orange and green to the standard CMYK. This gives a much wider colour gamut - and is developed by Pantone. It's a shame it's not an open standard.

johnward 10y ago

I'm not sure I understand. What do you have to be right about? I would assume if a brand has a registered pantone color they know the code? Why do you need a book? I'm no designer but it seems like Pantone created a solution then convinced everyone else there was a problem.

Zikes 10y ago
Decisions about color are made all the time in some industries.
pjc50 10y ago
The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man with three watches knows what time it really is. Similarly, it's possible to say "these printed things and signs are different colours", but only with a reference can you say which one is the wrong colour, authoritively enough to complain to whoever forgot to colour-correct their part of the process. And of course a brand has to pick a Pantone colour in the first place, for which they will want a reference book.
- ghaff 10y ago
  It may also be worth pointing out that designers tend to be pretty fanatical about fine gradations of color to a degree that can seem a bit silly to non-designers. I still remember when I was managing a small school press shop way back when, you'd get in these jobs from serious designers that would be printed in two shades of a color that I could barely tell apart.
- stdbrouw 10y ago
  > The man with two watches knows that one of them is wrong, but only the man with three watches knows what time it really is. I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it really is. So having two watches really is better than just one, and three watches provides no guarantee of perfect accuracy.
  - wolfgke 10y ago
    > I realize it's an off-topic nitpick, but that's not actually true. You take the average of all watches, and this will be your best guess for what time it really is. This only holds under additional assumptions, as for example that the errors of the watches are independent and normally distributed. In general this is not a good idea.
    - stdbrouw 10y ago
      If you know that errors are dependent or if you know the distribution of the error, you can make an even better guess, but that certainly doesn't make averaging "in general not a good idea." You're going to make assumptions whatever way you do it, e.g. using confirmation (two watches indicating the same time) to indicate truth assumes that error is fairly rare (out of 3 watches only 1 will be wrong at any given time) and that it's discontinuous rather than a smooth drift over time. No assumptions, no conclusions. Main point: more watches is always better, and three is not a magic number.
louprado 10y ago
When a company's brand matures and color consistency matters, their commercial printer or graphic artist will recommend the Pantone Matching System (PMS). Any graphic artist that doesn't invest in a Pantone color fan/swatch-book will lose promising accounts. Also a good press operator will at times use the PMS to mix existing colors in their inventory to closely match the target color. Ideally you would use the exact ink, but this isn't always possible given the tight constraints of running a commercial print business.
ghshephard 10y ago
Color is important (obviously) in the design process, and, honestly, in the whole scheme of things, a $1500 pantone reference per design shop (or more if you have a lot of designers), is round off error when you have staffing costs in the 7 figures.
mattkevan 10y ago
Back when I did a lot of print design, the Pantone colour books were some of the most useful tools I had. Pantone were around long before design went digital, starting as a method for printers to systematise the production of coloured inks, and the Pantone system is still the way printers manage and talk about colour. Pantone only moved into the digital space fairly recently with the advent of DTP. Colour management for print is complex - colours appear very differently when printed on different paper stocks, especially coated or uncoated paper. And it's almost impossible to get an accurate preview until you're on the press itself - when it's way too late to make changes. Having the Pantone books which show what the colours look like on different stocks at the start of a project is enormously helpful. Also CMYK print has a much narrower colour gamut compared to RGB - greens and oranges are especially hard to reproduce - so it's not unusual to specify extra colours where colour accuracy and vibrancy is important - such as on a logo. These colours will be Pantones, and often specified to the printer with a torn-out colour chip. High-end printing is done using the Hexachrome process, which adds orange and green to the standard CMYK. This gives a much wider colour gamut - and is developed by Pantone. It's a shame it's not an open standard.