Artist Stuart Semple recounts how all his designs turned black overnight due to Pantone's monopoly on colors. The episode explores Pantone's history and control over the color industry, with insights into their revenue generation and impact on design. It also discusses the power of Pantone's color standard and the challenges faced by competitors, including a recent incident where Adobe lost digital palette rights.
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Quick takeaways
Establishing a color standard through meticulous research and collaboration is crucial in industries like printing.
Challenging a dominant color system to promote fairness and sustainability in global color representation.
Deep dives
Pantone Standard Creation
Larry Herbert observed that it was difficult to communicate about colors accurately in the printing industry, leading him to create the Pantone Matching System (PMS). He meticulously researched and selected 500 commonly used colors, developing ink formulas for each color for consistency. By collaborating with small ink manufacturers, he gained initial support before expanding his standard globally, demonstrating the importance of thoughtful standards.
Color Standard Monopoly
Pantone established a monopoly as the industry standard for color communication, with artists, designers, and industries relying on their system for precise color representation. A copyright lawsuit over knockoff books affirmed Pantone's ownership of its color system, cementing its control over how colors are referenced and reproduced worldwide.
Pantone's Business Model
Beyond physical color books, Pantone commercialized digital color palettes used in design software like Adobe Photoshop. When Pantone ended its agreement with Adobe, causing colors to disappear from designs, artists like Stuart Semple rebelled by creating 'Freetone' to restore colors for free, challenging Pantone's color monopoly and prompting a debate on the fairness and sustainability of a single company controlling a global color standard.
In 2022, artist Stuart Semple opened up his laptop to find that all his designs had turned black overnight. All the colors, across files on Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, were gone. Who had taken the colors away? The story of what happened begins with one company, Pantone.
Pantone is known for their Color of the Year forecasts, but they actually make the bulk of their money from selling color reference guides. These guides are the standard for how designers pretty much anywhere talk about color.
On today's show, how did Pantone come to control the language of the rainbow? We look back at the history of Pantone, beginning with the man who made Pantone into the industry standard. And, we hear from Stuart, who tried to break the color monopoly.
Share your thoughts — What color should we choose to be Planet Money's color?
This episode was hosted by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Jeff Guo, and produced by Willa Rubin with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Debbie Daughtry with help from Carl Craft. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer.