Those "little color swatch thingies" are an international color matching standard for print. Every prepress shop and printing press on the planet has those swat

Those "little color swatch thingies" are an international color matching standard for print. Every prepress shop and printing press on the planet has those swatch books so they can communicate spot colors consistently. However, the rise in recent years of cheap 4/C digital presses and ICC profiling has made Pantone systems less indispensable.