Pantone color chart

Ever wondered how companies go about picking the colors they do?  There's this neat New Jersey company called Pantone.  It has an official "matching system"  that is used by almost any industry you can think of to standardize color across platforms such as paint, fabric, plastics, etc. (Read more about Pantone on Wikipedia.)  What's cool about this for artists is that each color has a number and letter system.  You can download these colors schemes for use in a photoeditor such as Photoshop.  Then, when you send it off to get printed, the printer has the "official" color formula to create that same color.  The system makes sure you get what you want.

Pantone influences more than what you might realize.  Companies use this color system to decide the colors of everything from kitchen mixers to new cars (and sometimes years in advance).  I had my own little "discovery" with Pantone this week.  I just found out a couple of days ago that Pantone's official "color of the year" is Honeysuckle.  Does this look familiar to you?  It did to me.  I blogged a couple of weeks ago about my new booth design.  Although I didn't "consciously" know about Honeysuckle, I picked that color to be on the table in the center of my resin jewelry booth design.  I was amazed that I had essentially picked that Honeysuckle color. 

Coincidence??