PANTONE explained
This post is for designers, creatives and business owners. I’ll do a deep dive into explaining when and why you should use Pantone and how to match them to cmyk and rgb.
PANTONE / SPOT COLOUR / (PMS - PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM)
Pantone is a standardised colour matching system which printers and designers use to ensure colour consistency across everything from packaging, clothing, flyers, business cards across the globe.
When to choose Pantone / Spot Colours:
You should use Pantone colours when your desired colour, cannot be achieved using CMYK when printing. This is because CMYK doesn’t have a very large spectrum when it comes to the colours it can produce. So if you need a bold/bright colour, a neon, a pastel, a metallic or a fluorescent colour; you would need to print using Pantone.
Pantone can be very expensive to print as the printers need to make an individual printing plate for each colour in order to get the desired colour. When printing using Pantone, they use the 4 colour plates of CMYK then they use a 5th or 6th Pantone colour plate to achieve your bright, metallic or neon colour. If you’re a designer, make sure you let your client know that printing using Pantone will be expensive. Try and choose between 1-3 colours for your logo projects.
When choosing a Pantone colour for your brand or product you should use a Pantone colour book as reference. The most popular Pantone book is the Pantone formula guide. For graphic designers the best book to use is the Colour Bridge as it shows you the CMYK equivalent adjacent to the Pantone. If you require a metallic, neon or pastel colour you would need to use the metallics guide or the pastels and neon guide. If you’re a fashion or interior designer you would need to use the “Fashion, Home + Interiors colour guide book”.
If you have the Adobe suite, you should install the Pantone plugin called: Pantone Connect. It allows you to design using all 15,000 Pantone colours in every library, ensuring consistency and accuracy in branding, fashion, and product design. It also has a phone app for you to choose colours with your clients while you’re in meetings.
Here’s a fun video you can watch if you want to learn more about Pantone:
CMYK
CMYK prints using these four colours: Cyan, Magenta, Yellow and Black. When printing in CMYK it uses a subtractive printing method which means it uses various amounts of these four colours dotted onto paper to mask a white background in order to achieve your desired outcome. More ink on the paper means less light that reflects back. If you were to keep applying more dots of colour it would eventually turn black. Which is why CMYK colours are always slightly darker or more muted than RGB or Pantone.
When selecting a CMYK to match your chosen Pantone, you should use your Pantone colour bridge guide and choose the adjacent colour. However sometimes it can look completely different (especially greens and pinks), this is where it is ok to look up and down the swatch panel or even onto other swatch panels to try and find a CMYK that matches your chosen Pantone better.
If you are creating a brand style guide for your clients. Make sure you include the Pantone version not just CMYK and RGB. This way if years down the track they need to print something in Pantone then they have the details (and they don’t need to reach out to you to go back through your files). Also make sure you explain to your clients the difference between the three colour styles and when and where to use them.
RGB
RGB stands for Red, Green & Blue. RGB is an additive colour process which means when all three colours are added together on screen it creates white. Which enables colours to be brighter and lighter than CMYK colours. The colour codes range from 0-255, which describes the intensity of a colour. You use RGB colours when you are designing in the digital space: websites, social media, digital adverts.
When you’re choosing an RGB colour to match your chosen Pantone, you should use a Pantone colour bridge book. You should read the code below the Pantone you are using, where you will see the equivalent RGB/hex codes. If it looks way off when viewed on the screen to the Pantone colour, then you can try other hex codes on the same swatch panel or others until you find one that is a closer match. However, be careful when viewing on your screen (each screen you use, whether it’s your phone, laptop or your clients screen, they are all going to be different). If you want it to be as close and correct as possible, then you should make sure you have an RGB screen or you can get your screen to be RGB calibrated. Always remind your client that the colour they are seeing on their phone or monitor may be slightly different.
