All you need to know about Pantone

The Panton color model, developed by the American company Pantone, is considered a reference catalog with a rich palette of various shades. Having a lot of directories, it is designed for different printing conditions. The material in this article will help the reader understand what Pantone is, why its fan is needed and how to use it.

Under Pantone, it is customary to understand a kind of system that allows you to select the desired tone from a huge catalog system. This is a world-famous color model, which is considered universal and suitable for any kind of activity. Essentially, it’s the ubiquitous standardized color identification and selection system, or the generally accepted color standard for the world.

A color palette appeared when public printing began to switch to a color format. At this time, there was an urgent need to select a quality palette, but there was no single standard for the production of goods according to new criteria. To complicate matters, the fact that printing houses were scattered around the world. Pantone developed a single palette, assigning a specific code code to each color of the huge system. It consisted of Latin letters and numbers, due to which the same color could be used in any corner of the world.

This made it possible to order printing printing without fear of distortion of the final product. Each Pantone shade could be created using the specified CMYK base color ratio to produce a specific midtones.

The relevance and such importance of obtaining the exact shade was fundamental for the corporate identity of any company. The customer could choose a specific printing tone from the catalog, without fear that the artist will understand the color in his own way. In other words, the advent of Pantone made life easier for many. Today, printing houses require models in this system.

These are catalogs of various colors for orientation in the CMYK system. The system has not only a classification, but also special reference books called fans. Depending on what they are for, the manufacturer may offer them for various materials, for example, textiles, plastic, paper. For paper, reference books are divided into their subspecies: for offset, coated, coated and matte, as well as glossy.

However, the information is not limited only to fans, it can be presented in electronic form. This is convenient for designers who can export it to various programs.

In view of this, the printing design often acquires brightness and seems unusual.

Pantone's color palette is rich in hues that are reproduced through process colors. The use of such a palette is convenient for the development of printing design, because when printing on dies there will be no different shades. Moreover, you can achieve the desired color not in a few, but in one run. This fact indicates the savings, which is relevant when ordering printing.

The system uses digital identification of shades for printing with mixed and process inks. Reference colors are numbered in a fan-shaped book.

Noteworthy is the fact that the samples can be very different, but the manufacturer insists that the fan be updated every year. According to him, over the year the colors wear and fade, and therefore become inaccurate. Since August 2007, Pantone was purchased by X-Rite, a company engaged in the production of equipment and software for managing color reproduction.

Representation of colors in the Pantone table may be different. For example, it may be a code consisting of three pairs of hexadecimal digits, in which each pair has its own color value. In addition, colors can be classified using keywords (say, green, black, rose). If the browser does not understand a word, the spectrum of tones is reduced, choosing only the basic, understandable for all browsers.

The RGBa format is different from the previous format. It consists in the fact that the last value determines the level of transparency or alpha channel. It is set by a fractional value from 0 to 1.

The palette includes more than 8000 different color shades. In this case, one source color may have a different degree of saturation and vary in temperature. It can be cold or warm, bright, dull, bleached. Pantone is especially important for printing, where even a slight color change can ruin the whole work.

The mysterious table or the so-called catalog is presented in the form of longitudinal sheets of paper painted in specific colors.

This is very convenient for the user, since he has the opportunity to choose a specific tone of a certain color, having all the necessary shades in front of him in one place. No matter how many there are, this does not interfere with perception, but helps to reduce the time for choosing the right shade.

The taxonomy is such that the leaf is divided into zones of the same color, which change the degree of saturation, starting with a dark tone and ending with whitened. A conditional fan formed by panton flowers can start with yellow, followed by ocher, then orange, coral, pink, lilac, purple. So it can continue to almost black.

Each year, the company nominates a color for first place, considering it a favorite of the entire palette. At the same time, they do not choose color at random: company representatives monitor the state of the planet in the fields of economics, ecology, psychology and society. Based on the data they associate a specific color with them. For example, in 1999, sky blue was chosen as the color of the millennium, and a few years later (in 2005), purple became the best color of the year. After another 4 years, “mimosa” won, two years later - “honeysuckle”, in 2014 the victory went to the shade “radiant orchid”.

The Institute, which is engaged in experimental work with color, is sure that it has an impact on various spheres of life: not only fashion or printing, but also advertising, cinema, graphic, landscape design and other industries.

Due to this feature, fan layouts are printed in two versions - coated and uncoated.

As for the translation of RGB and CMYK, these color spaces are tied to a specific printing technique. RGB corresponds to the colors of the diodes on the monitor screen, CMYK - the shades of ink used in a particular printer or other type of printing equipment. However, colors never translate perfectly into each other. They have a rigid binding to a certain technique of creation and are practically not suitable for working with mixed paints.

Pantone shades calibrator allows you to select the desired color, eliminating minor inaccuracies and differences in tonality. The basis for any design or layout is the actual color nominated in this year for first place. This can be the font color in the print headings, some geometric shape in graphic design, an interior element or a clothing item, as well as an interface element, a font, highlighting significant information in the article.

In addition, it allows you to focus on ready-made clear colors, if you need to choose a harmonious companion for a specific shade. It is not difficult to determine this, besides, you can also navigate by the colors on the podium - they are always a kind of indicator of the latest color trends that will be used in all design industries.

For example, this season the emphasis is on color suggestion of confidence, a boost of energy and vitality. Today there is no clear division into male and female, which indicates gender independence. It is important that the current palette speaks of strengthening in society, this is expression, dynamics and energy.

This gives a special energy, allows you to achieve unique combinations while varying the degree of saturation of the two companions. The triad combination model is based on the principle of a triangle, while the colors that are on its conditional vertices are selected. The combination is unusual, but not without harmony, even if muted shades are chosen for the design.

In addition, the combination can be similar, in which two or three shades are used, located next to each other on the color wheel. Separately complementary combination is built on a different principle. In this case, the ideal companions for a particular color are adjacent tones to that which is located exactly opposite the given color.

If these schemes seem to the layman complex, you can pay attention to the compatibility of individual shades, for example:

• white the color is universal and goes well with all shades of the color palette;

• beige Looks harmoniously coupled with blue, brown, emerald, wine and neutral tones (black, gray, silver);

• grey acquires an emotional color when complemented by sand, wood, purple, burgundy, pink or blue;

• pink the color is a harmonious duet along with mint, white, olive shades, as well as a neutral gray tone;

• turquoise can be decorated with a shade of fuchsia, cherry red, brownish, cream, saturated purple;

• lilac It looks quite harmonious if you combine it with orange, pinkish, olive, gray or white;

• light green color in harmony with gray, brown, orange, sunny brown;

• Orange can be combined with red, blue, mint, as well as white or black.

Determining the number of the desired color is not difficult: as a rule, it is signed with the personal pantone code or has an HTML code. For example, “PANTONE Yellow 012” or the code “# FFD200” may appear next to the desired shade of yellow.

If the shade needs to be determined in the printing house, choosing the right option is even easier: just use the existing catalog. As for the electronic version, there may be differences in grayscale, which is explained by the backlight of the monitor. If the customer doubts the accuracy of the tones, he can take his palette and look at a sample of the color produced, checking the shades.

What is Pantone and how to use it, see below.