In 2022, artist Stuart Semple opened up his laptop to find that all his designs had turned black overnight. All the colors, across files on Adobe products like Photoshop and Illustrator, were gone. Who had taken the colors away? The story of what happened begins with one company, Pantone. Pantone is known for their Color of the Year forecasts, but they actually make the bulk of their money from selling color reference guides. These guides are the standard for how designers pretty much anywhere talk about color. On today's show, how did Pantone come to control the language of the rainbow? We look back at the history of Pantone, beginning with the man who made Pantone into the industry standard. And, we hear from Stuart, who tried to break the color monopoly. Share your thoughts — What color should we choose to be Planet Money's color? This episode was hosted by Sam Yellowhorse Kesler and Jeff Guo, and produced by Willa Rubin with help from James Sneed. It was edited by Jess Jiang and fact-checked by Sierra Juarez. Engineering by Debbie Daughtry with help from Carl Craft. Alex Goldmark is Planet Money's executive producer. Help support Planet Money and hear our bonus episodes by subscribing to Planet Money+ in Apple Podcasts or at plus.npr.org/planetmoney. Learn more about sponsor message choices: podcastchoices.com/adchoices NPR Privacy Policy
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The day that Stuart simple decided to become an artist, he was eight years old.
His mom took him to a museum in London, and from across the floor of the gallery, he saw this beacon of yellow.
Youve never seen color like that before.
The painting was sunflowers by van Gogh.
They just knocked me sideways, and I was literally shaking.
And I think it was the colors that were doing it.
To me.
Those colors are what inspired Stewart to become an artist.
These days, he makes giant installation pieces with bright yellow smiley faces made of steel.
Or he does these pop art collages with lots of neon colors.
Stewart often designs his art on the computer, which is why it was a big deal two years ago when all of his colors disappeared.
One day, I switched my laptop on, and all the colors in the files are black.
All the colors are gone.
And who had taken the colors?
A company called Pantone.