Paying Attention: For years, a collection of Pantone color swatches marked the difference between highly professional art directors, designers, and painters and their amateur counterparts. Pantone is a company in the color business, and, early on, they were smart enough to provide a quantitative component to the qualitative judgement of “color”. This is done through the PMS (Pantone Matching System), which provides the precise amount of different pigments required to produce a certain color. The PMS system is the standard used by printing firms (and those who specify colors) throughout the United States and what it is does is–as with all magic–deceptively simple: it insures that the rainbow yellow you print in New York will match the rainbow yellow you print in California. Last year was their best year ever. A very nice piece from Bloomberg.com will fill you in on how we spec the wonderful world of color that surrounds us.