Seth Meyers - Pantone Reveals "Cloud Dancer" as Color of the Year - Monologue 12/8/2025

[GiqueCee]

1. I've been...

... a PMS (Pantone Matching System) user almost since its introduction in the early 60s. It was originally limited to specialty printing inks for situations where a designer wanted a 5th, unscreened spot color in addition to the standard CMYK mixtures. And in the early days before computers got into the design game, they produced a large sheet of paper and adhesive-backed films with many PMS colors represented for the creation of comps. To the best of my knowledge, they've never had a white ink in their swatch books, since 99% of the time the inks were applied to white paper.
PMS introduces new colors every year, and their hefty swatch books – there are three for coated stock and three for uncoated, plus a range of special colors and swatches for CMYK equivalents – provide designers a nearly unlimited choice of subtle variations of every color the human eye can perceive. Pretty cool stuff, and, in my experience, they've always been exceptionally pleasant and helpful to deal with.
Granted, the palest blues and grays come pretty close to "Cloud Dancer", But it's neat to see a shade of white in their vast selection.Go for it, Pantone!