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The basics:

• New documentary, The King of Color, chronicles Pantone founder Larry Herbert‘s life
• Herbert created the Pantone Matching System, now a global color standard
• Film explores the intersection of creativity, business and color science

Larry Herbert’s favorite color?

Green.

“It’s on the back of every dollar bill,” he says in a new film dubbing him “The King of Color.”

Lawrence “Larry” Herbert is the former chairman and CEO of Pantone, the color authority based in Carlstadt. He created the Pantone Matching System, which is used as a standard in multiple industries, from printing and manufacturing to fashion, design and tech in more than 100 countries.

Since the turn of the millennium, Pantone’s color of the year announcement has been a year-end tradition. (Its 2026 pick, the foggy white Cloud Dancer, certainly got people talking.)

How, exactly, does one become the King of Color?

When Herbert met his wife, Michele Herbert, she wondered pretty much the same thing.

“You make money from the color blue?” she asked him. “I never heard of anything like that.”

Telling his story

Herbert, 96, sold Pantone in 2007. He wanted to make the documentary “The King of Color” to share his story and legacy. He financed the film and recruited director Patrick Creadon, who frames Herbert’s journey as a mix of creativity, business savvy and sheer boldness.

The film, which debuted in New York in December, is expanding to more theaters before it will become available on demand in March.

Creadon, who made his feature debut with the film “Wordplay” (2006) about New York Times crossword editor Will Shortz, met Herbert through a friend.

“Larry’s story is at the intersection of so many different roads,” the director says. “On the one hand, he’s a craftsman, he’s an artist, he’s an inventor, he’s a businessman. People who work in design and people who use his tool are creatives, but they’re also business people. They’re accountants. They are stockholders. It’s commerce and art and communication and the joy that people get from color. There’s all of these things that intersect with Larry and with the Pantone Matching System.”

Creadon had never been approached by a subject with funding to tell their story.

“I kind of wrestled with that a little bit,” says the filmmaker, who lives in Los Angeles.

Creadon, who interviewed Herbert at his home in Palm Beach, Fla., was guaranteed final cut.

“I don’t want my subjects in the edit room,” he says. “At the end of the day, I’m really a journalist first.”

A rose by any other color

Before Herbert could become a king of anything, he immersed himself in the printmaking industry.

He started his career at a time when “rose red” could mean many shades depending upon who you asked.

“What I find remarkable is that we all see color differently,” says Sean Adams, dean of art and communication at ArtCenter College of Design in Pasadena, Calif.

“Like, what I think is red might be totally different from what you think is red, but also, women tend to have a wider range of color vision than men, and so I just think, ‘Wow, someone out there is seeing more colors than I see,’” says Adams, who appears in the documentary.

In the film, Herbert recounts how people once used neckties as color swatches. At Pantone, he had a secret weapon in this line of work — a good eye. But not in the usual sense. His left eye cast a slightly yellow tone.

“It turned out to be a very profitable thing for me because I was able to judge how ink was going to dry,” Herbert says in the film. “When the ink dries, it’s going to shift a little bit to the yellow.”

“It’s almost like your left eye could see the future,” Creadon tells him.

Pantone Matching System

This ability, along with Herbert’s constant craving for organization, pushed him to envision the Pantone Matching System in 1957, a year after he began working as a color matcher for Pantone, which produced color charts for cosmetics brands. The system presented an alternative to separate books and standards for each ink manufacturer.

Herbert’s work with a split-fountain press allowed him to print a rainbow of colors for manufacturers. He felt he was “on the cusp” of something big. He took a gamble on his value to Pantone, then based in Manhattan and owned by brothers Jesse and Mervin Levine. He asked for a raise. When he was only given an incremental boost, he threw his keys and paystub on the boss’ desk and left. He waited for a phone call he somehow knew would come.

An accountant for Pantone called to ask what he wanted to return to his job. The answer: part of the business. The Levines ceded half of their printing operation, making Herbert the president of Pantone. After the other side of the business – an advertising firm – struggled, he used $50,000 from a friend to buy the rest of the company.

“The King of Color” is dedicated to that friend, Elsie Williamson, who carpooled to New York with Herbert (he lived with his family in New City, Rockland County). Later, Herbert wanted to pay her back and tried to buy her a Cadillac. She refused the car and turned down shares of the company when it went public. Herbert, who is Jewish, says that Williamson, who was of German American heritage, considered her support a form of restitution for the Holocaust.

Family business lesson

Herbert, who grew up in Brownsville, Brooklyn, watched his father work as a cabinet maker and movie projectionist.

A young Herbert, who would grow up to serve on the board of the American Film Institute, fell in love with the movies through his visits to the projection booth during the Great Depression. (His first movie was the 1936 release “The Charge of the Light Brigade,” starring Errol Flynn and Olivia de Havilland.)

The family struggled to make ends meet. It didn’t help that Herbert’s father was taken advantage of as an artisan and not paid for his work. Herbert would defend his dad and try to get customers to pay up.

“As a young kid, he saw his father be humiliated by a client,” Creadon says. “That happened a lot.”

Herbert resolved that he would never let anyone do that to him.

“Larry, at his heart, really is a creative,” Creadon says. “He loves color. He loved being a printer. He loved being a really good craftsman. But he wasn’t going to get taken advantage of.”

Larry, at his heart, really is a creative. He loves color. He loved being a printer. He loved being a really good craftsman. But he wasn’t going to get taken advantage of.
– Patrick Creadon, director and writer, ‘The King of Color’

Herbert adored his mother’s flair for making things beautiful — paying attention to color when setting the table, for example (even when they didn’t have much food to put on that table). He also drew inspiration from The Prankster, a villain from a Superman comic book. In the story, the character copyrights something everyone uses – language – so they have to pay him to write or speak.

Herbert earned a degree in biology and chemistry from Hofstra University, now home to the Lawrence Herbert School of Communication. He originally intended to pursue medical school but changed plans after getting married to his first wife and welcoming a daughter. The Korean War veteran believed he could find his niche in the printing business by making and selling color books.

Starting in 1963, he sold his Pantone books for $2.50, offering small and midsized ink manufacturers less of a hassle because the Pantone Matching System only required eight basic colors and black and white. The books took off, and designers began using the system.

Cerulean blue to ‘27 whites’

Decades later, Pantone introduced the Pantone Color Institute and anointed its first color of the year.

The color of the “new millennium,” rolled out in 1999, was cerulean blue, which became the subject of an iconic scene starring Meryl Streep in “The Devil Wears Prada” (2006). The scene speaks to the influence of color in fashion trends, from runways to everyday apparel.

The Devil Wears Prada clip, courtesy of HBO:

While the color of the year could be divisive, it showed Pantone both as a major player in industry – from Starbucks green (3425 C) to Tiffany Blue (1837 C) to UPS Brown – and part of pop culture as the company solidified its influence in digital spaces. (In 2022, Adobe users had to start paying a subscription to use Pantone colors.)

“It was an important marketing vehicle for all of our clients because they would use this to promote their products, or they’d come out with a product line that included that color, and that color, just by the fact that everybody knew about it, became successful,” says Herbert’s daughter, Lisa Herbert Winter.

Herbert Winter, former executive vice president of Pantone’s fashion and home division, now runs a business with her husband (“It’s just ironic that I’m dealing with tennis whites when I used to deal with hundreds and thousands of colors,” she says). She appears in the film with her sister, Vicky Herbert, and brothers Richard Herbert and Loren Herbert. Herbert’s children held key positions at Pantone headquarters in Moonachie (where the company moved from New York in the ’70s), then Carlstadt starting in 1992.

“There were so many possibilities and so many different industries that had asked us for new color ranges that really spoke to that industry, whether it was 27 whites for the interior design industry, or more reds and blues for the fashion industry,” Herbert Winter says.

X-Rite bought Pantone for $180 million in 2007. Danaher bought X-Rite in 2012, where Herbert’s company now operates as Veralto.

Adams, who provided color consulting for New Jersey Performing Arts Center, says that using a Pantone color chip can save untold dollars in situations where the customer questions the nature of any given hue.

“If I say ‘no, that’s not the right blue,’ you’re going to take it personally.”