I finally looked up the original Pantone color count and was shocked

Found out there were only 10 colors in the first 1963 guide, which is wild compared to the thousands now. Anyone know other design systems that started super small?

3 comments

3 Comments

anna_carter535mo ago

The original HTML color names only had 16 options. It's funny to think about that now with all the hex codes we use.

the_sean5mo ago

My buddy tried to build a website in the late 90s and got so mad about the color "green." He wanted a forest green but the basic one looked like neon lime. He spent a whole weekend trying to mix colors with table cells, like a weird digital paint mixer, just to get a darker shade. It's wild we used to have to hack around just to get a decent color.

jenny_fox2mo ago

The 90s web design struggle was real but I actually miss the simplicity of it. You had to actually learn how things worked instead of just dragging and dropping everything.