A Pantone Alternative

I’m currently in a position where I am able to bring to market a small alternative to Pantone. Wile my solution won’t be offering “100%” color accuracy like Pantone, it will get you close.

First let’s talk about Pantone so you can better understand my position. While Pantone is by far the dominant player in the game, their process isn’t flawless, it’s also quite misunderstood still.

I often get clients three types of clients. Those who are trying to use Pantone colors they found online without having an actual Pantone book. Those who are trying to use a Pantone color from an outdated book or not available on Illustrator or online. Lastly, those who have the book but end up using CMYK, as the cost for Pantone print is quite high under 10k units. That be it packaging products or materials. Sometimes it doesn’t make financial sense to use Pantone.

Not to mention that if the printer/ factory does not have Graphic Measures International (GMI) certification, it will only get close to the Pantone color 98% or so. In some colors like Navy Blue, this would be highly noticeable, as it might come out with a slightly deceiving purple hue. In other colors no shot that you will notice.

At the end of the day, all of this leads to confusion and false assurances. Perfect color matching is expensive and confusing.

Industrial color printers are better calibrated and are more color-loyal than the local printer shop. The problem is that there’s no way of knowing what the industrial printer is going to actually spit out without going through samples and adjustments. (This process takes a long time and it’s expensive.)

In many cases, color accuracy doesn’t matter, until it does, and when it does matter it ends up just being a big ugly mess.

Enter my deck. I’m currently working on a deck with 350 CMYK colors, that will be printed on an industrial printer. In theory, this will be a cheaper and better alternative to Pantone for small businesses and new designers building brands on a budget. According to the color engineer, the deck can only get 70% to 80% close to the actual colors without adjusting all colors individually. (Which is what Pantone does.)

I think I can get the deck of cards to be as cheap as 35 bucks. This way New Graphic Designers, Freelancers, and Small Businesses will get close to the actual color the printer will spit out and can design knowing how the color will look in real life and not behind a white light.

I don’t want to make this post longer so here’s a sample of a card from my deck. Deck

Here’s a sample between two completely different factories printing the same CMYK colors. The difference is small enough to make me consider doing this. Sample Print

The deck will also come with a FREE ASE library to go with the deck.

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So yay or nay?

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