{"id":297,"date":"2018-02-13T13:00:44","date_gmt":"2018-02-13T18:00:44","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.vispronet.com\/blog\/?p=297"},"modified":"2025-04-04T15:04:12","modified_gmt":"2025-04-04T19:04:12","slug":"pick-right-pantone-color-designing-print","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.vispronet.com\/blog\/pick-right-pantone-color-designing-print\/","title":{"rendered":"How To Match The Right Pantone Color When Designing For Print"},"content":{"rendered":"

Designing with the right color in mind is of utmost importance when it comes to ensuring that you have a top-notch production run. What do I mean by the right color<\/em>, though? Well, on Thursday I talked about the difference between CMYK, RGB and Pantone colors<\/a> and that distinction is even more important here when it comes to designing for print.<\/p>\n

When you look at a color on-screen, it looks entirely different than a color printed on a piece of paper using ink. Why? Because the RGB color spectrum and HTML hexadecimal model are used only on screens. They work by adding light to a dark screen. CMYK and Pantone work by subtracting the light reflected off a white piece of paper. Since you\u2019re printing your design on paper (or cloth or whichever material you choose), it\u2019s important to design using CMYK or a Pantone color right from the start.<\/p>\n

The history of Pantone colors<\/h2>\n

Pantone colors came out of the commercial printing arm of a company called M&J Levine Advertising. The two brothers that owned it, Mervin and Jesse Levine, had a problem. They had many different styles of pigments and inks that they could offer their customers, but no standardized system to ensure that they were giving customers the same shade of a color every time.<\/p>\n

Here\u2019s the solution they found:<\/h4>\n

In 1956, the brothers hired Hofstra University graduate Lawrence Herbert as a part time employee of the printing division. Herbert used his chemistry knowledge to standardize and systematize the company\u2019s stock of inks and pigments. The beginnings of the Pantone Color Matching System as we know it was born.<\/p>\n

But the company still didn\u2019t have the name \u201cPantone\u201d. That didn\u2019t happen until 1962. By that time, Herbert had been running the ink and printing division at a profit. He decided to purchase it for himself: subsequently, he bought M&J Levine Advertising\u2019s technological assets for $90,000 and renamed it all to \u201cPantone\u201d.<\/p>\n

Why are Pantone colors important?<\/h2>\n

Pantone colors are hugely important for color consistency. They allow designers to color match specific colors when they have designs that are beginning to enter the production stage \u2013 no matter what equipment is being used to produce the design.<\/p>\n

How do they do this?<\/h4>\n

The secret to the Pantone system is the fact that each color can be found in the Pantone Guides that Pantone puts out: these guides are made up a large number of small (6\u201dx2\u201d) cardboard sheets with a series of related color swatches. Each color swatch is given a Pantone Matching System (PMS) number. In this way, designers can refer to a color by its PMS number and ensure that they\u2019re getting the exact same color every single time.
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Not only are Pantone colors important for designers, but they’re important for buyers, too. When people are looking at colors for branding, packaging or other products, they often find a “golden color” — a color that they completely fall in love with. So they want the colors of their products to match this golden color as exactly as possible. That’s where Pantone color swatches come in. By taking a picture of the product next to a Pantone color swatch of the color in question, buyers can look for slight color differences that might only be visible to the naked eye.<\/p>\n

When it comes to getting Pantone swatches for use in print projects, there are two big things to keep in mind:<\/p>\n