A part-time chemistry graduate bought his bosses out and invented Pantone
In 1956 a New Jersey printing firm hired a young Hofstra chemistry graduate part time. Lawrence Herbert tidied its chaotic pigment stock so well that by 1962 his ink division made money while the rest of the business sank, and he bought its technology for US$50,000. He called it Pantone.
The firm belonged to two brothers, Mervin and Jesse Levine, whose commercial-display side was US$50,000 in debt when Herbert took over the technical assets. His insight was that a designer should be able to name a colour and get exactly that shade at any printer, on any equipment. The Pantone Matching System does this with numbered swatches, such as PMS 130, bound into palm-sized fan decks of card or plastic strips. As of 2019 the system held 2161 colours. The company advises buying fresh guides every year because the printed inks turn yellowish with age.
Most printing uses four inks, cyan, magenta, yellow and black, known as CMYK. Around 30% of Pantone's 1114 spot colours counted in 2000 cannot be imitated that way and must be mixed from 13 base pigments, or 14 with black. To stretch the range, Pantone once sold Hexachrome, a six-ink process adding orange and green, and in 2015 a seven-ink version adding violet that reportedly covers 90% of those spot colours, against roughly 60% for plain CMYK.
Pantone numbers have crept into law and sport. In January 2003 the Scottish Parliament debated a petition to define the blue of the national flag as Pantone 300, and Canada, South Korea, the FIA and states such as Texas specify Pantone shades for flags. Since 2000 the company's Color Institute has also crowned a Color of the Year, chosen at a secret twice-yearly meeting of national colour-standards representatives in a European capital after two days of debate. Tangerine Tango, the 2012 pick, became a Sephora make-up line.
Ownership has passed through several hands. X-Rite bought Pantone for US$180 million in October 2007, Danaher bought X-Rite in 2012, and in September 2023 Danaher spun the business off inside Veralto. Pantone treats its colour numbers as intellectual property, which is why they rarely appear in open-source software. In 2022 a row with Adobe stripped Pantone data from Photoshop, turning colours black in artists' files unless they paid a $15 monthly fee, and angry designers accused both companies of holding their work hostage.
Source: Pantone
