of Thrilling Tales of Modern Capitalism, Slate’s new podcast about companies in the news and how they got there.
Pantone’s founder once said, “God created the world in seven days. And on the eighth day, he called Pantone to put color into it.” That seems a little presumptuous. Who put Pantone in charge of color? And why should Pantone decide the Color (or Colors) of the Year? What is Pantone anyway?
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It started out as a commercial printing company. In the 1950s, a man named Larry Herbert was working there. One of his biggest frustrations was how to communicate with his clients about their color choices: Which blue exactly did they want to use in their printed materials?