Years ago, Pantone sold a physical set of cards, much like the cards for paint colors you see at Home Depot. Same idea: If you called out a specific Pantone color (by its number), you were sure of an exact color match. We built retrofit displays for aircraft cockpits. Often our display would sit side-by-side with the competitor's display we were replacing, so the colors of any symbol on our display had to be a darn good match with theirs, or the customer wouldn't accept it. We'd get a competitor's display, keep trying cards till it looked like a good match, then specify colors (by its number) to our software engineers.
mlcarter_ga t1_iufx2ng wrote
Reply to ELI5: what are Pantone colours and how can they charge you for them? by jambo5600
Years ago, Pantone sold a physical set of cards, much like the cards for paint colors you see at Home Depot. Same idea: If you called out a specific Pantone color (by its number), you were sure of an exact color match. We built retrofit displays for aircraft cockpits. Often our display would sit side-by-side with the competitor's display we were replacing, so the colors of any symbol on our display had to be a darn good match with theirs, or the customer wouldn't accept it. We'd get a competitor's display, keep trying cards till it looked like a good match, then specify colors (by its number) to our software engineers.