Pantone has added 229 new colours to its matching system to support printers and designers, reflecting an “increased need for more nuanced shades”.
The new colours in the Pantone Matching System (PMS) include 224 mixed hues and five base inks, chosen after a review by Pantone’s colour scientists and trend and market experts to identify gaps.
Pantone added that the addition of more dark neutrals, blues, greens and purples allowed for “more variety throughout the design process while maintaining close proximity to upcoming trends”.
They join Pantone’s library of over 2,350 colours available across all of its Graphic System products including the flagship Pantone Formula Guide. It provides an even larger gamut of available colours and opportunities for standardisation for graphic and product designers, brands, printers, converters and ink manufacturers.
Launching the new colours, Pantone said they highlighted “the increased need for more nuanced shades across the library to help designers easily integrate with their evolving workflow”.
Elley Cheng, general manager and vice president of Pantone, said: “As the leading source of colour information, products and services including seasonal trend forecasts, palette recommendations, marketing and colour psychology, we are continuing to evolve our business, products and partnerships to ensure that we prepare our designers for the best solutions for colour accuracy and a seamless workflow across digital and physical spaces.
“Keeping in tune with not only trend research, market research and designer feedback, our scientific processes for colour creation allow us to build the most thoughtful and accurate colour libraries to provide the best outcome to our customers.”
The launch of the new colours followed the addition of 294 Pantone Matching System colours in 2019 for closer alignment with Pantone’s other colour system, the Fashion, Home + Interiors System, which now offers over 3,000 colours for textiles.
Designers can access all PMS colours in real time through Pantone’s digital application, Pantone Connect. To ensure no disruption to a user’s design workflow and creative projects, the appearance across Pantone products and services, including the Pantone Digital Master libraries, remains unchanged. All existing and new colours in the PMS system have been formulated using the 11 base inks in the colour library.
Pantone licenses ink suppliers around the world to communicate and match PMS colours to meet the needs of brands, designers and printers. This means that anyone who is collaborating within a creative workflow can be in separate locations yet the end result in the production process will realise colour consistency across substrates, ensuring the project will be aligned with Pantone’s global standards.
