You are here : Home > Latest Information >

Amazing Color

An Exclusive Interview With Ron Potesky, Pantone’s Senior Vice President and General Manager

Pantone is famous for color in almost all the industries. Ron Potesky, Pantone’s Senior Vice President and General Manager is in his visit in China now. Recently our journalist from Printing Technology of Publishing and Commercial Printing had an exclusive interview with him and had a nice talk about color market trends and its new digital creative technologies, especially the situation of China printing market. Let’s see which new “color” information he shared to us.

Printing Technology: How do you view their current global markets and the potentialities, especially the situation of printing market? And how about China printing market?

Ron Potesky: It’s a very important question for China and the rest of the world,because printing industries in most markets，like American，Europe，have been terrible. printing industry have been very bad there，printing volume has gone down quite a bit。But China has been continued，I think，to see grows over the last years，although it slows for a little bit，we see the Chinese market， specifically as a very big area of opportunity for additional print value and print technology。Digital printing is a very big growth area around the world，so does China of course，because of its on demand print capabilities，lower volumes，but local printing is obvious very important。Packaging is another area we see big growth opportunity all over the world，especially in China， the packaging industry is very important.

Pantone is the most widely used color communication device for printing，from creative design through the QA quality assurance presses to output，and we believe that the opportunity in China are great. I heard that China printing industry growth 2010 estimated in 15%, it’s really a nice data. For Pantone，we treat packaging，digital printing and of course regular production printing (publishing and commercial printing) as key markets，and Pantone standard is used for textile，hard goods manufacture and color specifications. Printing is really the foundation，is the core of our business exactly Pantone started 40 years ago。So we see China as an area that continues to grow，and of course we think using Pantone as a communication device，because it is understood all over the world, China can delivery printing products and packaging certainly around the world better，we believe we have great opportunity to expand in China.

Printing Technology: We’ve heard that you are leading Pantone to develop some new digital creative technologies, could you tell us some details about that?

Ron Potesky: As we can see in American and Europe, Adobe creative suite is popular, so does China。I think Adobe creative suite has 60 million users worldwide. Pantone Color libraries are part of Adobe creative suite and we believe that maximize the using effective for our designers. It’s very important.

For example, iPhone Apps is part of our new digital creative tools for designers. iPhone can add digital tools like the iPhone Apps to give designers more inspirations, to help them share color palette and color ideas(which is part foundation of myPantone), we think this can be a great tool for designers to share creative ideas. We also have cross reference guides between our Pantone matching system and goal system, so People can actually utilize full gamut of Pantone colors. We still have given designers a way to bring Pantone color data into goal system, so we have actually introduced iPhone Apps to do that(sharing digital data from Pantone, and relating to our systems). That give a new opportunities for designers not only use 1,100 colors in matching system, but also use 1,900~2,000 colors as well.

Even taking pictures of your inspirations, iPhone Apps can snap it to Pantone color. As a designer in Beijing, you see something that inspired you, you take a picture, it is a natural color palette, and you can go back and design, we think that’s really great for inspiration.
Up to present, iPhone Apps is very popular. We got 35,000 downloads in the first 3 months. And the price is 10 dollars, that’s very expensive, while most iPhone Apps are 1/2/3 dollars. It is a good sign, a good reorganization at Pantone brand.
Another creative technology of Pantone is about color consistency. Pantone has value and digital data for each color, we think we can help designers and printers to get the right color on different substrates. We know for packaging, you have cardboards, some metallic materials, different papers,  and with different staffs, different inks, we think that by creating a digital database of color, we will be able to get the right color on the right substrate every time, so for the printing and packaging in the future, Pantone has created a digital database of color corrections, no matter what you printing. This especial meets the needs of large companies. Printing is processing in everywhere around the world now, so it is very important to get the right brand color on different substrates and different printing shops. Coca-Cola Red is a good example, We know we help them to achieve that, but today we can offer them digital tools to make it much easier, to get Coca-Cola Red exactly the same on different substrates and different presses, we can help to get that.

Printing Technology: We know that myPantone is very popular in China, may I ask what “my” stands for? What benefits do you think it brings to user? How it meets customers’ demands, especially Chinese customers? How many users now?
Ron Potesky: “My” means “Mine”, so it just means making Pantone personal to me，So I share my color palette，my ideas，my creative inspiration to other people. It’s Personalized Pantone，it’s personalized my new creation with you. You can create color to share with others.

Right now, myPantone is really almost become a social network site (like MySpace, YouTube) with all the people who care about color. Most designers, print users, printing shop owners need to share color information, new color trends, color inspiration, color palette, so it really what a social networking help.

I think there is consistency among designers, designers are really the same no matter where you go. The same issues, the same concerns, it happens almost in every industry and everywhere around the world. So I think for Chinese customers, the most interesting part of myPantone is the same for other parts of the world, is just sharing color information and inspiration, learning how is the color trends like in U.S., Europe, or other parts of China(in different cities). It’s really about sharing color information.
I think this is why myPantone is so popular today. We’ve got 390,722 users and 22,766 users on network since 2007. So we need to work harder for them.

Printing Technology: About the economic crisis, what do you think it impact printing industry now? What new strategies and methods do you suggest to Chinese customers on how to deal with it?
Ron Potesky: Unlike U.S., Europe, Japan and many parts of Asia which have very bad outlook for printing, China has a very good outlook, its economy is still growing, the economic engine is still moving forward, and has even benefit a bit more. It’s great news for China. The printing environment around the world is not good. For the rest of the world we have too much capacity, the demand is low. But China has good upside potential.
I personally think digital printing is much more effective in the long run, so I prefer digital printing in China, the opportunities to do lower volumes but much more cost-effective, to do variable data printing are so attractive and seems effectively. So I think China has an opportunity not only book up commercial printing equipment which is only good for long production runs, but also focus on new digital technology which is much more effective. Traditional printing technologies in U.S., Europe and Japan have had too much capacity.
But commercial printing is still very important in China, and there is also plenty of opportunities，especially for packaging. Commercial printing is still very important, you have companies coming to China for massive volumes for printing, packaging and other contents, it’s a very big market. Heidelberg, Komori etc. are our good customers, we think they are very important. Pantone of course wants to be a big part of that kind of communications that you have to do with international customers who come to China for printing and output, and in domestic as well.