Numerous businesses, including printing, graphic design, painting, and the cosmetics industry, employ Pantone colour as a universal standard for matching colours.
The Pantone Matching System (PMS), which was developed in the early 1960s, enables designers to colour-match certain colours regardless of the method employed to create them. This helps businesses to give their brand a specific colour with the confidence that it will match exactly in every application. A precise match can always be made since each colour in the Pantone Matching System has a distinct number (PMS number).
By using Pantone colours in their logos and advertising, companies can make sure that their brands are consistent across all platforms.
Does My Printed Material Need to Be in a Specific Pantone Colour?
Simply put, no. The lithographic printing process can be used to match a Pantone colour. However, digital printing is currently used to create more printed materials. The most recent digital printing techniques can provide a close match to a Pantone colour, but they cannot create an exact match because digital printing employs CMYK (Cyan, Magenta, Yellow, and Key*).
What Are the Main Uses of Pantone Colours?
When a business has a basic colour, it is associated with it, such as the blue of Microsoft or the red of Coca-Cola. It is simpler to recreate with a digital printing machine, outdoor plastic signage, and paint. One of the main considerations is that different printing techniques will affect colour differently.
The material you are printing on should be another factor taken into account. When magazine printing, for example, the colour will appear differently on each stock of paper if you print the same colour onto two distinct types of paper. The same applies if you had a can of gloss paint; you can paint a wall, then paint straight on masonry, then paint directly on glass, and the colour will appear somewhat different on each surface.
Coated and uncoated colours from Pantone are available for use in printing. Despite using the same ink, two PMS colours often differ when printed on coated and uncoated stock. While some colours don’t seem to alter all that much, others do. This often results in two Pantone colours being used—one for coated paper and the other for uncoated stock.
If I do not print a certain Pantone colour will my brand be downgraded
You cannot get a Pantone colour precisely printed on a digital printing press if you need business cards made for a meeting in a matter of hours. Yes, you’ll come close, but you won’t match it precisely. It’s just not going to happen.
Only by mixing the ink and printing the colour independently from everything else, commonly known as a spot colour, can an exact Pantone match be produced. There will be a colour tolerance if your Pantone colour is not printed individually as a spot colour. You can see an explanation of colour tolerance in the example below.
Whenever you use a monitor, this colour tolerance will also be present. You can match up your website and printed materials with the utmost care, yet every monitor is different. The colours on a website will look different if you place two brand-new displays side by side from various electrical manufacturers. They will have a colour tolerance, so a red will still be a red and a blue will still be a blue. The colours will once more alter if the contrast or brightness is increased.
Do Pantone Colours Still Have Relevance?
Yes, even if you can’t match Pantone colours precisely with conventional litho techniques, they are still crucial. Traditional notions of marketers as being so tough are shifting along with the world. The use of Pantone colours must be flexible and not overly rigid given the variety of media that employ colour.
