Co.Design | business + design: A few minutes into the Wizard of Oz, Dorothy opens her eyes and surveys the Technicolor world around her. Dorothy follows the Yellow Brick Road, she arrives at the Emerald City, and she clicks her Ruby Red slippers. Those vivid hues are seared into your memory. And guess what? Pantone has names for all of them. If you wanted to explain the precise colors to anyone, anywhere around the world all you have to do is dial up Pantone 14-0957 (Spectera Yellow), Pantone 16-6339 (Vibrant Green), and Pantone 17-1664 (Poppy Red).
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I’m honestly surprised that Pantone is considered the leading brand of color manufacturers. I didn’t know this company existed, and for about half of the article I thought that the author was talking about Pantene the hair product company. Color is such an interesting industry to me as I love painting and the use of color. There is always a lack of consistency between paint colors and fabric swatch colors which have the same name. Even within both individual industries, there is no consistency. It would be really nice if there was a standard and all colors were named the same thing, but that is kind of impossible due to the Collinridge dilemma. Even if there was a number standard to correlate all colors across fields, that would be helpful. Sometimes you really just want a painting and costume color to match, and it’s practically impossible to find a perfect match.
Color is an interesting topic because it has been around forever and always will be. Marketing and commercializing color, then, is especially intriguing because there are a unique set of opportunities and challenges that come with such an unconventional idea. I thought this article was a good look into some of those points.While I had obviously heard the name Pantone before, I had no idea they had a veritable monopoly on color and its uses in the commercial and domestic world. Monopolizing the color industry seems to hinge on being considered the foremost authority on color but also making that easily accessible to most people. As the article states, Pantone is present in everything from color chips to makeup, making it widely recognized as a trustworthy authority when choosing and categorizing colors. I have always been interested in the psychology behind color choice and brand recognition, which the article briefly touched on when talking about why a brand name like Pantone is so important in marketing. I also have heard of the concept the color of the year, and have followed each year's color since about 2012, so I enjoyed that section of the article as well.
What's most interesting to me about this article is Pantone's innovations over the course of their more than fifty year history. The $10 app that takes pictures and analyzes the colors within them is astounding to me, and if the app wasn't so expensive I would certainly think about buying it. There is so much use to having a universal order of color; like written language or currency, Pantone has given a standard for comparison to people all over the world. If you're in a design meeting, for example, with a bunch of Italian designers, you'd be able to pull up a Pantone light yellow and everyone would understand the shade you were talking about. I also really like how the brand has become iconic, like pictures and polaroids. Pantone, through merchandizing and social media, has kept up with the contemporary audience and not lost its integrity to the design community.
My father is a graphic designer, and I grew up with pantone color chips literally littering our house, so for me Pantone has always been synonymous with professional color. However, since there was such a saturation of information about it in my life, I had no reason to believe that this was in anyway unique or special. It wasn't until I was older and was trying my own hand at art and design that I fully began to appreciate the purity and range of the color mixes. Color is a completely universally recognize language (Has anyone seen the art exhibit of Pantone chips being matched with various skin colors? It is completely gorgeous and very moving). We have emotional responses to colors and tones, even if the effect is subconscious.
As to the brand saturation, I say that as long as the work is good, no one can touch you. Pantone is an internationally lauded brand. I don't feel much doubt that it will remain so for a long time.
In my opinion, color is probably one of the most challenging things that one can talk about. Just think about it, how many different words can you use to just simply describe the color blue? While writing this sentence I have already thought of five, and who knows how many I could think of if I really put my mind to it. I think what makes talking about color so challenging to talk about is not only the fact that there are so many descriptive words that can be used, but also the fact that they evoke a wide range of emotions and other fun stuff that are very specific for every single person on this planet. To me red is a bold color, but to you red is not a bold color because green is that. And that is exactly what I love about the human race! We all have different reactions!
Pantone’s success was based in 3 necessities. The first being: perfect timing, this leads directly into the second one in that when the president acquired the company he was position in the perfect place in time to step in with a better system. That was the second necessity, improvement. There had to be a change to the way things were happening, good or bad anything different was in a position to be accepted, he had perfect opportunity to take a risk. The third necessity was and still is: blanket marketing, from the beginning Pantone had its hands in every pot; its initiatives and campaigns only helped to increase their hold on the color industry. They have in essence and absolute monarchy when it comes to color commerce. This doesn’t seem to bother anyone, and I suppose as long as they continue to put out top tier work, nothing really needs to change.
I really enjoy what pantone is doing for color. Having a standardized labeling system makes life infinitely easier for designers. It also allows people to have conversations about color that they couldn't previously have. It allows us to put words (or in this case, numbers) to something that in a way, defies words. The one aspect of this article that is slightly off-putting is just how commercialized this company is. It makes sense because they're trying to become the only standard of coloring, but to see just how far their company reaches is a bit strange. As Sasha said, it's strange that I've never heard of this company, but suddenly they're all around. They're trying to monopolize color which I never thought as something that could really be an industry. So overall, what they're doing is working, it's creating a language that allows people to discuss color in ways they couldn't before, but it can be strange to think about how much monetary value exists in the color industry. I never feels right when companies silently take over an industry.
Pantone is valuable in that it sets a universal standard- through their blanket marketing and universal spread, one color’s code will produce the same color worldwide. As they demonstrated with their Coke example, getting the color exactly right is crucial because color can connote very different things. Brands, designers, and creators of all kind struggle to find the exact color that isn’t too pink, or too blue, or too orange: and Pantone lets them keep their color exactly the way they want it. Its universal language about color is a huge part of its success. Thinking back on the Monet last year, it was nearly impossible to communicate to my classmates that the chip I was looking for was a variation on “baby poop green” or something like that. To each of us, a different color came to mind, and finding the exact chip I wanted was proven impossible. In the end, a mixture of colors provided something close, but a universal language of color would have made the process so much easier.
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