The King of Color | movie | 2025 | Official Trailer - video Dailymotion

At 96, Lawrence Herbert reflects on his life, from his Depression-era Brooklyn upbringing to creating the Pantone Matchi | dG1fVHZITDBBVkhNWDQ

Transcript

00:01In the 1950s, the color world was a mess.

00:04I was doing color matching, dealing with cosmetic colors,

00:07all kinds of reds for lipstick and nail polishes.

00:10That's really hard stuff.

00:12Designers, ink manufacturers, printers,

00:15all made their own versions of whatever color they needed.

00:19My pitch was simple.

00:21If you stock eight basic colors and black and white

00:24and buy my color book of formulas,

00:26you'll have access to 500 colors at the tip of your fingers.

00:30The genius of the Pantone system was consistency,

00:34and that makes color incredibly valuable.

00:38I had a grand vision of Pantone taking over the world.

00:42But where was I going to get the money?

00:45And then along comes Elsie Williamson and $50,000.

00:49It was a massive investment in me.

00:53It was something I never expected.

00:58Pantone was really taking off.

01:00I flooded the market right away.

01:01Pantone became an international language.

01:05He had a blast.

01:06He took us to Studio 54.

01:08So much fun.

01:09I was having a lot of fun.

01:11I was making money.

01:14The Larry Herbert story is incredibly interesting.

01:17Everything you see and everything you touch

01:18has got a Pantone color on it.

01:20Pantone has come as close as is possible

01:22to create a shared understanding of color.

01:26It's how we communicate.

01:28It's as strong as the story of inventions that changed the world.

01:32He gave the world a new language.

01:37Language of color.

01:38The biggest problem for me is when they come to me,

01:44they say, who picked that color?

01:46We like it.

01:46And then another person says, oh, it's a terrible color.

01:48Ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha, ha.