Pantone
Lawrence Herbert bought Pantone and developed the first
colour matching system in 1963. Pantone is an international system for matching
colours to specific printing inks, allowing accurate colour reproduction and
consistency between printers and manufacturers. It is mainly used for digital
printing however it has branched out and is now used for fabric and plastic
matching. The system uses a specific mix of pigments to create new colours
which are called spot colours. There are 1867 solid spot colours for digital
printing, with special colours such as metallic also available. Pantone uses a
small amount of inks to produce each colour, creating spot colours which are
much cleaner and vibrant than if they were produced using CMYK printing methods,
as well as allowing a wider range of colours. The Pantone guide is made up of
strips of card with colour swatch variations of the eighteen basic colours.
Each colour is allocated a number making it easy to specify which colour is to
be used. In digital printing the spot colours also have a letter suffix at the
end of the number which refers to the paper stock it will be printed on, with
‘C’ being coated and ‘UC’ being uncoated. By using a Pantone name or number
this means you will always get the correct colour even if the screen is not
correct. Not all Pantone colours can be matched across to CMYK or RGB, so the
‘colour bridge’ swatch book is used which contains colours that work across all
media. The Pantone ‘colour bridge’ matching is particularly useful in branding
and logo design where colour consistency across various media is important.
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