Standardised Colors
PMS colors are standardised colors, meaning that a specific colour is the same everywhere in the world. For example, PMS 021 is the orange colour you probably recognise from ING and Nationale Nederlanden. These brands use PMS colors because they want to ensure that their brand colour is consistent across all materials.
Thanks to this color consistency, PMS colors are often used for corporate stationery printing. The colors will always be the same, but they may appear slightly different on various materials. This is due to the type of paper used. For instance, uncoated paper absorbs more ink than coated paper, which can cause the color to look different, even though the exact same ink has been used.
For this reason, the coding system also includes a letter code to specify the type of material. For example, ‘C’ stands for coated paper, and ‘U’ stands for uncoated paper.
