Pantone recommends that PMS Color Guides be purchased annually, as their inks become yellowish over time.

This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers and reproduction and printing houses. The idea behind the PMS is to allow designers to 'color match' specific colors when a design enters production stage, regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. For instance, a particular 'page' might contain a number of yellows of varying tints. The company's primary products include the Pantone Guides, which consist of a large number of small (approximately 6×2 inches or 15×5 cm) thin cardboard sheets, printed on one side with a series of related color swatches and then bound into a small 'fan deck'. Herbert used his chemistry knowledge to systematize and simplify the company's stock of pigments and production of colored inks by 1962, Herbert was running the ink and printing division at a profit, while the commercial-display division was US$50,000 in debt he subsequently purchased the company's technological assets from the Levine Brothers for US$50,000 (equivalent to $450,000 in 2021) and renamed them 'Pantone'. In 1956, its founders, both advertising executives, hired recent Hofstra University graduate Lawrence Herbert as a part-time employee.

Pantone began in New Jersey in the 1950s as the commercial printing company of brothers Mervin and Jesse Levine, M & J Levine Advertising. X-Rite, a supplier of color measurement instruments and software, purchased Pantone for US$180 million in October 2007, and was itself acquired by Danaher Corporation in 2012. The company is best known for its Pantone Matching System (PMS), a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, notably graphic design, fashion design, product design, printing and manufacturing and supporting the management of color from design to production, in physical and digital formats, among coated and uncoated materials, cotton, polyester, nylon and plastics. Pantone LLC (stylized as PANTONE) is a limited liability company headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey. For other uses, see Pantone (disambiguation).

This article is about the corporation and its color space.

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