Pantone has been the industry-standard color language for 60 years. Its tools ensure that color looks the same, no matter where in the world it's printed. If you design or print physical products, there's no escaping Pantone. But its products are expensive; some cost over $1,000. Now, designers frustrated with Pantone's level of control are asking if there's a better way. So, why are Pantone colors so expensive? And after decades, can anything replace them?
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00:00Take a look at this cereal box.
00:02No, a closer look.
00:04Even closer.
00:06Thousands of tiny dots create the illusion of solid color.
00:12But it's just an illusion.
00:14For pure color, like this yellow, get ready to pay.
00:18This is a Pantone color.
00:21The company's products cost hundreds to thousands of dollars.
00:26But Pantone doesn't sell ink.
00:29It sells these.
00:31Standardized color guides for designers and printers.
00:35So this one was around $1,000.
00:38But the entire set is about $8,000, I think.
00:41It's actually over $9,000.
00:44And Pantone recommends replacing its products every 18 months.
00:49I find that suggestion convenient for them.
00:54For 60 years, one company has dominated color standards.
00:59Now some frustrated designers seek a better alternative.
01:03Pantone becomes a necessary evil because it's such a mainstream language.
01:09So why are Pantone colors so expensive?
01:14And how does a company make a fortune on color without selling a drop of ink?
01:22Most printing is like that cereal box.
01:25You might have heard it called CMYK, or half toning.
01:29It's a process that's been around since the 19th century.
01:32But CMYK can only produce a limited number of colors.
01:37Pantone gives designers a shared palette way beyond that range.
01:42And these colors are solid.
01:44See, no dots.
01:46They look brighter, cleaner, and more consistent.
01:50You might know Pantone from its color of the year.
01:54But you actually see it every time you go to the grocery store.
01:58Its colors are everywhere.
02:00To understand why Pantone became the industry standard,
02:04we have to go back to the 1950s.
02:08Before computers and Adobe, design was a physical process.
02:13You'd have these little tweezers, and you'd have to kind of move things around in your composition.
02:17You would use a lot of chemicals.
02:19There was a lot of rubber cement, exacto knives.
02:21Getting things to be really precise was really hard.
02:24And getting colors to look the same around the world was challenging.
02:29Color matching really wasn't something that people could do when working with different printers.
02:35One of the famous examples is of Kodak.
02:37Some printers would print the yellow a little darker.
02:39Some would print it a little brighter.
02:41When the customers saw those side by side on the shelf,
02:44they'd often go for the brighter box thinking that that film was fresher.
02:48Solving this problem was a huge business opportunity.
02:52And one man was ready to capitalize on that.
02:56Larry Herbert started working at Pantone in 1956.
03:00Back then, it was a printing company.
03:02So Larry knew how frustrating it was to communicate color.
03:06If you say green, it's like, great, what kind of green?
03:09Brat green.
03:10Oh my god, it's Shrek.
03:12Well, if you wanted to have a specific color,
03:14you often had to bring an example of that color in with you to the printers.
03:18And then the printers might have their own formula guides or recipe books
03:22that they could match colors to, but they didn't share those with other printers.
03:27Larry realized that a shared standard would streamline communication and prevent mistakes.
03:32But he wasn't the first to come up with this concept.
03:36There were other color references, like the Munsell color system, developed in 1905.
03:42Or this 1922 book for textiles.
03:45Even before that, scientists worked to standardize color names.
03:50Although this author might not have appreciated Pantone's color of the year, mocha mousse.
03:56More than just a color, mocha mousse is a treat.
04:00He denounces fanciful and nonsensical names.
04:04But there wasn't a system used across industries.
04:08To duplicate exactly the subtle shadings and tone combinations conceived by the artist
04:13require the services of an expert, chief colorist.
04:16Larry was determined to change that.
04:19His key innovation was the Pantone matching system.
04:24Pantone chooses a bundle of colors and assigns a numerical code to each one.
04:30Every color has a specific formula, like a recipe written by Pantone.
04:35The company distributes its system through guidebooks like these.
04:39So instead of saying Royal Blue, you'd say Pantone 300.
04:44Then you'd specify if you're printing on coated or uncoated paper.
04:49Printers anywhere in the world instantly know what you want.
04:53And they have a repeatable way to recreate that color.
05:00As long as they also own a guidebook.
05:03Numbers matched two colors.
05:05It's sort of that simple.
05:07Pantone released its first guides in 1963 with about 500 colors.
05:13219?
05:15That's eight parts rubine red and eight parts white.
05:18And the system was a hit.
05:20Selling over 200,000 copies in about five years.
05:24By 1971, it was used in 42 countries at hundreds of printers.
05:30Two years later, it was up to 58 countries.
05:35It was such a needed product as branding and corporate identity was getting larger.
05:40As people were starting to pay more attention to how brands were presenting themselves.
05:46Color consistency just became incredibly important.
05:49And Pantone fit the bill perfectly.
05:53In less than a decade, Pantone became the industry standard.
05:58Superman or Batman, even states, they have PMS colors associated with their flags.
06:06The company expanded into textiles and plastics.
06:10And in the 1980s, Pantone was quick to license its colors to software companies.
06:15We have over 10,000 colors at this point.
06:20In 2001, Pantone referred to itself as the world's only universally accepted color communication language.
06:29And one reason Pantone stayed dominant is that its system is proprietary.
06:34Property, Pantone, registration mark.
06:37Before you get to the colors, you're greeted with a trademark and copyright notice.
06:42But Pantone's near monopoly has caused some designers to feel like they have no choice but to pay.
06:49Pantone don't own anything.
06:51The only thing they actually own is the code that they associate with that color.
06:56So they don't own the color.
06:58They just own the language that we use to describe the color.
07:03And it's gone to court to protect that language.
07:06In 1968, Pantone sued a competitor called Paratone, saying that it copied Pantone's intellectual property.
07:15And Pantone won.
07:17The judge determined that Pantone's system had sufficient originality and uniqueness to qualify it for copyrightability.
07:24There's no corporate headquarters for CMYK.
07:27There's no corporate headquarters for RGB.
07:29But there is a corporate headquarters for Pantone.
07:31Does Pantone have a serious competitor?
07:34That's a good question.
07:39Everyone can be a competitor.
07:44But at the same time, there's only one Pantone with such a dedicated team.
07:49For printers, Pantone is a fact of life.
07:54The whole 38 years I've been here, we've been using Pantone.
07:58If we went away from Pantone, a lot of our higher-end clients, I don't think they would want to do business with us anymore.
08:05Kevin uses Pantone guides to verify that printed colors match client orders.
08:11If they have a book and they pick the color, then we have our book and we know exactly what they want.
08:17They're one of our most valuable tools that we have in the printing industry.
08:22Allied Printing mixes each Pantone color in-house using a set of base inks.
08:30If you mix to the formula, you're getting the Pantone color.
08:34Where if you're just shooting in the dark, you can be mixing ink all day long.
08:39Anthony is Allied Printing's resident ink mixer.
08:43Just go to page 65, find your color.
08:46This is 7-Eleven right here.
08:48So we want a six-pounder.
08:51Usually I do my six-pounders in a one-gallon.
08:53This fits up to like eight pounds.
08:55This is my recipe right here.
08:58So I have transparent white, which is clear.
09:01We have yellow.
09:04We have warm red.
09:11This one calls for 4.6 pounds.
09:19And then we have black.
09:21All right.
09:22So that's the last ingredient.
09:24Ready to throw it on the mixer.
09:26But Allied Printing doesn't buy ink from Pantone.
09:32It works with a licensed manufacturer.
09:35And to access color formulas, Anthony uses third-party software that's, again, licensed by Pantone.
09:43The only thing Allied Printing buys from Pantone are the guidebooks.
09:49After mixing, Anthony tests every batch to ensure it's consistent.
09:54I'll put down my sample first.
09:56And then this is my batch.
10:01Draw it down.
10:03And here's your color.
10:06It looks good.
10:07The formula looks good.
10:08And that's it.
10:09That's a typical ink order for Phil.
10:13Because Pantone colors are premixed from 11 base inks, they look brighter and cleaner compared to CMYK, which uses just four colors.
10:25Pantone has a huge gamut of colors that you'll never be able to achieve with CMYK.
10:33You can try to imitate Pantone colors through a four-color process, but in my opinion, you never do.
10:40They get dingy and dirty.
10:45CMYK is useful for something like this photo, with hundreds of slightly different colors and shades.
10:53Pantone excels when you need one solid color to look exactly the same every time it's printed, like with a logo or a brand color.
11:02We could run a part of a project here in Connecticut, and someone else could run a part of a project in California.
11:07And if you're running Pantone, they're gonna match.
11:10But depending on what you're printing, Pantone is often more expensive.
11:14Besides the effort of mixing colors, Kevin says the ink itself costs about 15 to 25 percent more than CMYK.
11:22Some of our customers don't care about price.
11:25A lot of big corporations, if that's their corporate color, they want their corporate color to be perfect.
11:30But some designers are frustrated by Pantone's level of control.
11:40Pantone becomes a necessary evil because it's such a mainstream language.
11:46These frustrations took center stage in October 2022.
11:49I woke up one day, opened my laptop, and there were a load of black squares where there were colors because Pantone wanted additional money for me to access the color palette.
12:00Pantone colors used to be accessible in Adobe software like Photoshop.
12:05But to access them now, designers need to pay a subscription fee to Pantone.
12:09This added cost has festered as a point of friction between Pantone and its customers.
12:16If I'd been asked three years ago if I had any issues with Pantone, I would have really, really struggled to answer that question.
12:22But now we were being asked to pay $15 on top of that Adobe fee, and it's not as intuitive of a system.
12:29Pantone says the old colors were outdated, and its new plugin offers more features.
12:33But not everyone is happy about the change.
12:37The Adobe plugin has a one-star rating.
12:41What we used to have used to be really easy.
12:44It's a tool, and I want it to be easy.
12:46Of course, having its own plugin also gives Pantone a space to advertise new products.
12:53That's just reality in the world, right?
12:55There's a lot of subscriptions out there.
12:57If you're a serious designer, that cost will be nothing.
13:00They can put the prices up whenever they want, and the whole world has to agree.
13:06They can charge whatever they want for the color books because there's no competition.
13:10And that's not right.
13:11We need healthy competition.
13:15But how do Pantone's customers feel about there being only one Pantone?
13:21You don't really have a choice, especially if you want to be on par with industry.
13:25You're at a competitive disadvantage if you're not aware of this.
13:31Rotami is an industrial designer, so having a three-dimensional color reference is invaluable.
13:39But when he and his wife Candace started their own studio, the price of Pantone was shocking.
13:45When I tell people I spent $1,000 on a color set of grays, they look at me like I'm crazy.
13:52Rotami really likes gray.
13:55I like white and I like black, and so gray is just like right in between.
13:59There's quite a bit of variation.
14:02This one skews more blue, more purple, whereas this one skews a little bit more neutral.
14:08There's just so many variances in gray or even white.
14:11One replacement chip is $20, and the complete set costs over $9,000.
14:20Unfortunately, Rotami's has started to yellow.
14:24This is the original color.
14:26You can see how bright that is.
14:28It hurts a little bit.
14:30Pantone recommends replacing its guides every 12 to 18 months.
14:35Although Kevin is the only person Business Insider spoke to who actually does this.
14:42These are the ones, the older ones.
14:45A lot of these are from, this is 2016, and from new to old.
14:50It's how much yellower the old one is.
14:55But for many designers, paying hundreds or thousands of dollars every 18 months is unrealistic.
15:01It's maybe not super necessary, but there is definitely an expiration date on those things.
15:07We probably update them every couple years.
15:10This is a good example of when it's time to buy some new Pantone books.
15:16The Pantone system, it definitely does really well in corporate America with the larger business structures.
15:24Your freelancers and your small studios, it's not optimal for us.
15:29The barrier to entry is high.
15:33If you want access to Pantone's tools, you have to spend at least a few hundred dollars.
15:39The set of these binders costs $561.
15:43It lets you rip out swatches.
15:45Useful for collaboration, but also destructive.
15:49Replacement pages are $13 each.
15:52You can tell this whole row is missing, so then this becomes essentially useless because you can't compare colors.
15:59Richa is a graphic designer.
16:02She works with brands like Hershey and Keebler.
16:05I feel like I'm building a grocery store over here.
16:07Her favorite Pantone color is taxicab yellow.
16:13I think it might be 132.
16:15132 is not right.
16:17It is what I would define as a baby poop color.
16:20I take it back, not 132, but 130.
16:24Look at that. Look at that beauty.
16:26Richa uses Pantone guides to translate her digital designs to print.
16:30Making sure that what they're seeing on their screens matches the color that they experience in real life.
16:38This is my baby.
16:39This is my Pantone bridge guide.
16:42We have our Pantone colors, and then over here we have our CMYK values.
16:48It's pretty beat up because they use it a lot.
16:51Thankfully, that's one of the more affordable guides.
16:54Just $265.
16:56We have like 30 of them or something.
16:57So that's like, that adds up.
17:02But for a lot of designers, access to Pantone's shared language is worth the cost.
17:07Pantone shapes our world.
17:10Anything that is being printed, especially for larger brands, is likely using a Pantone.
17:16Like Target Red, Tiffany Blue, and of course, Minion Yellow.
17:21I think for the functionality within our industry, it makes sense for there to be one big player.
17:29It's such a dance because there are so many partners involved in producing things like this.
17:34You're sort of creating the design intent, handing that off to another partner that's going to then make sure that they use the same design intent.
17:42That partner is often a printer.
17:45If there were three different types of guides and designers got a hold of them, they would make printers' life miserable.
17:53Every printer in the world would have to go to three different standards.
17:58A designer today can definitely work without a Pantone.
18:01There's millions of them that do, but they're missing out.
18:03Eddie works at Pentagram, a premier design agency with locations around the world.
18:10My favorite Pantone color is black.
18:14It is, it is a color.
18:16But you always have to have a hint of color somehow.
18:21This particular yellow, I would say, is like a corn yellow.
18:25It wouldn't be a sort of sunflower yellow.
18:27It's not warm enough.
18:29At Pentagram, an abundance of Pantone guides are always within arm's reach.
18:37This bundle costs over $1,000.
18:40Having a Pantone system is an investment.
18:44It definitely is.
18:46But you should pay for that.
18:48When you're dealing with Pantone, what you see is really what you get.
18:51You cannot print this at home or go to Kinko's and believe that you're actually going to get that color.
18:58It's never going to happen.
19:02Color experts at Pantone work hard to ensure that every guide is consistent.
19:07That's essential to the company's reputation and its bottom line.
19:11Pantone says it earns about half of its revenue from the guides.
19:15The first guide that I purchased was around 2005, 2006.
19:24I had started my own studio.
19:26So before, I would borrow it from friends or try my very best to go to the printer.
19:33And then I would pick there.
19:34Just like any other tool, you upgrade your software on subscription.
19:41Why wouldn't you do the same thing with Pantone?
19:44I don't see Pantone as a tool, actually.
19:47I see it as a language and part of a process.
19:52But because they have such a vast monopoly, it becomes a language that we're all forced to speak.
19:59And sadly, it's a language that we need to pay to access.
20:01Most of the designers Business Insider spoke to said, despite their frustrations, it's worth the cost.
20:12Pantone delivers on its promise of consistent color.
20:16We produce thousands, maybe even millions of times that color would look different each and every time, especially on a global scale.
20:25That's why systems like Pantone are around to keep that consistency, to keep that quality control.
20:34And that's the reason why you spend that money.
20:39Despite how much design has changed in the last 60 years, the system Larry Herbert developed back then still works.
20:46X-Rite, a large color science company, bought Pantone in 2007 for $180 million.
20:54Not a bad return for Larry and his family.
20:57And remember the Munsell system? One of the earliest color standards.
21:02X-Rite owns that too.
21:06After 62 years, it's hard to imagine a new system replacing Pantone.
21:10But Stuart thinks there's a better way.
21:14An open source model makes complete and utter sense for a color standard.
21:19If enough people used it, it would easily eclipse Pantone overnight.
21:24The idea of something replacing Pantone, something that is cheaper, potentially could.
21:30But I doubt that it's going to be happening, you know, anytime soon.
21:39Pantone touches nearly every project Richa works on.
21:43But she says she's not thinking about Pantone.
21:47She's thinking about color.
21:49Color is a part of our world.
21:52It's critical to what I do, but it also inspires emotion and connection and happiness.
21:58I think Pantone helps us identify and produce those colors.
22:04I don't think they own the colors.
22:06Seeing your work in the wild, it's a great sense of pride.
22:10It just feels great to know that all the effort that you put in has come to life the way that you intended.
22:16And is now something for people to connect with.
22:18And again, amazing bragging rights.
22:20You can tell your family, go to the store, pick up this pack.
22:25I made this.
22:27Takes what we do and makes it tangible.