The Journal

This is part twenty-seven of a series called One a Day in May, where we will review one wedding stationery term every day in May!

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Pantone is a universal color classification system used by graphic designers, stationers, and many other artists around the world. The system assigns numeric values for every color (there are over 1,800 colors in the Pantone system!), and their various shades, hues, etc., by stating their RGB (red, green, blue) values, and their CMYK (cyan, magenta, yellow, black) values so that anyone with those Pantone values can create the exact color they’re looking at on their own computer. It is a standardized system, kind of like the metric system but for color measurement, that provides uniformity and a sort of language across designers and artists. Since computer monitors can vary wildly in the way they display color on screen, Pantone color values can be used to confirm that you and your stationer are looking at the same color even if it doesn’t look “quite right” on your computer.

We like to view colors we are going to print on real paper so we have numerous Pantone color palettes (they look like the paint chip cards you get at the hardware store) printed on different shades of white paper so that our clients can skim through and find the perfect color to suit their needs and see exactly what it will look like on their chosen paper color.