PRINT is Proud to Share a First Look for the New Documentary, The King of Color, the Untold Story Behind Pantone’s Color Revolution
It’s hard to pinpoint the exact moment a creative revolution begins, but in the case of color, it started with one man who refused to accept that chaos was simply part of the job. Before the Pantone Matching System existed, color was unruly, inconsistent, and governed mostly by guesswork. Designers, printers, and manufacturers all spoke their own color dialects, which meant a red selected in a studio could just as easily show up on press as a rusty orange or land on a production line looking like something entirely foreign. There was no shared vocabulary, no reliable standard, only crossed fingers, crossed wires, and a whole lot of disappointment.
Enter Larry Herbert
The 96-year-old subject of the new documentary The King of Color grew up in Depression-era Brooklyn, finding his way into the print world at a time when color communication was more alchemy than science. He understood the tension intimately—the thrill of working with color, and the maddening inconsistency that came with it. But while everyone else seemed resigned to the mess, Herbert saw something others didn’t: color didn’t need to be mysterious. It needed a language.
That simple, radical, and profoundly practical insight became the Pantone Matching System. Herbert wasn’t chasing a scientific breakthrough; he was solving a human problem. By creating a universal standard, he gave designers in New York and manufacturers in Tokyo the ability to point to the same color and know, with absolute certainty, that they were speaking the same visual truth. “Pantone 186” stopped being a suggestion and became a promise.
Patrick Creadon’s documentary, premiering December 12 in New York and Los Angeles, pulls back the curtain on the man behind the swatches. Through rare and intimate conversations with Herbert himself, The King of Color reveals a portrait of a quiet revolutionary—a creative thinker with an entrepreneurial backbone and a work ethic that never seemed to tire. It’s a story not just about how Pantone changed global design, but about how one person’s clarity of vision reshaped the way we see, describe, and ultimately understand color.
First Look: The King of Color
PRINT is proud to present an exclusive sneak preview of this unique film.
Opening night screenings will take place in NYC at Angelika Village East, followed by a Q&A with director Patrick Creadon, moderated by PRINT’s Editorial Director, Debbie Millman; and in LA at the Regal Paseo Pasadena, followed by a Q&A with Sean Adams.
If you’d like to attend either opening, use this link to request a reservation—we have a limited number of seats for each event, so first-come, first-served.
The post A Life in Color: The Creative Visionary Who Changed Design Forever appeared first on PRINT Magazine.