TPI Solutions Ink Blog: Pantone Color; did you know . . .?

Truly, you learn something new every day. Over the past three days I was reminded of just that.  

On November 3rd & 4th TPI Solutions Ink had the pleasure of being a sponsor at Margie Dana's 5th Annual Print & Media Conference held in Westford, MA . This was our first year participating in the event and we found it to be a great networking opportunity as well as a terrific educational opportunity. One of the sessions that I attended during the conference was titled "Tools for Design from Pantone". The speaker was Matt McDowell, National Sales Manager at Pantone.

Heading into this session I didn't have very high expectations of finding out anything new about Pantone, PMS (Pantone Matching System) or color for that matter. I guess I kind of figured that I knew all I needed to know, having grown up in this business and all. Fortunately, I was wrong, I learned quite a few things that I didn't know about Pantone! Thanks Matt for the eye opener!

Did you know . . .?

• The shelf life for a Pantone Color Bridge is one year.
  A new Color Bridge should be purchased every year. After one year the colors do begin to change or fade. So, if you have a guide that has been kicking around for say, five years - time to get a new one!
• Pantone has created over 8,000 spot colors.
• Pantone does not manufacture ink, paint, paper or anything of the sort. They produce the tools and offer the services to create and match colors.
• There's an app for that! myPANTONE for iPhone and iPod
• Pantone adds additional colors to the guides every two years
• Pantone colors are never retired, you will always find them in the guides.

Hope you found this information as fun and interesting as I did! Please pass it along to your favorite graphic designer, print or color enthusiast! And, for even more information visit http://www.pantone.com .

Is any of this news to you too? I'd love to hear your thoughts.