Pantone Case Study

CASE ASSIGNMENT: Pantone

This Year’s Color: Honeysuckle

On December 9, 2010, Pantone, which specializes in color management and professional color standards, made an important announcement: the color of the year for 2011 would be “honeysuckle.” The announcement was made by the Pantone Color Institute, Pantone’s color forecasting and consulting division, which under the direction of Leatrice Eismen scours the globe to determine which emerging color trends will be prominent in the coming year. According to Eismen, this complex shade of bright pink with a hint of red and orange, or more specifically Pantone 18-2120 TCX, evokes a sense of summertime. It’s a warm, catchy color, conveying a sense of optimism. Having Pantone’s blessing on “honeysuckle” and the other colors built into its annual pallet, fashion designers, cosmetic producers, makers of home furnishings and appliances, and many other style- and image-conscious businesses will begin to plan their product offerings based on Pantone’s color recommendations.

While the color reports from the Color Institute have become critical reads for product designers and marketers across many industries, only recently has it developed beyond being a mere service of its parent company. For almost half a decade, Pantone has literally provided the industry standard on color management across the whole spectrum of business sectors, from printing to manufacturing to industrial and beyond.

Pantone was founded by Lawrence Herbert in 1963. Herbert, a color-matcher in a New York City print shop, having no industry-wide standardized method of communicating color beyond verbal descriptions, created a code of 500 colors that could be produced through formulas for combining inks. Herbert’s color-matching system was adopted by printers, but it quickly became obvious that this systematic approach to color management could be applied to numerous other industries as well. Pantone’s products were soon being utilized in cosmetics,...