01 of 36Blue dye that will be applied to cotton

02 of 36Testing and matching a shade

03 of 36The blue spectrum

04 of 36Print run for blues that will go into Pantone’s fan deck

05 of 36Fan deck quality control

06 of 36Shade of blue for fan deck print-run being mixed by hand

07 of 36Different shades ready for the fan deck

08 of 36Team Pantone

09 of 36Yep, even the machinery is blue

10 of 36Pantone colours get applied to paper – and fabric

11 of 36Feeling the heat

12 of 36Making sure dyed fabric is crease-free before it’s cut off-site

13 of 36Pantone fabric swatches

14 of 36It’s a messy business

15 of 36Stacking finished graphic fan decks

16 of 36Mas Subramanian with YInMn blue structure model

17 of 36Grinding the pigment pellets to a powder

18 of 36 YInMn blue pigment as powder

19 of 36Weighing the pigment powder on precision scales

20 of 36Graduate student weighing YInMn blue for analysis

21 of 36High-temperature furnace used in the synthesis of the pigment

22 of 36YInMn blue pellets coming out of the furnace

23 of 36Painterly patterns in Lisbon’s Intendente Square

24 of 36Sign in Olival Street pointing to the Constância ceramics factory

25 of 36Geometric shapes in São João da Praça Street, Lisbon

26 of 36One of the numerous tile paintings displayed at Royal Delft

27 of 36Delft tile painting reached their peak in the late 19th century

28 of 36Finished product ready to emerge fro the kiln

29 of 36Cables in the cleanroom adjoining the painting tunnel

30 of 36BMW i in Protonic Blue

31 of 36Painting robots wrapped in protective stocking

32 of 36Hazard signs at the entrance to the painting tunnel

33 of 36Smiling staff manually check painted parts for blemishes

34 of 36Product and process specialist Heidi Fiedler; her colleagues call her “the paint expert”

35 of 36Freshly painted part in Protonic Blue

36 of 36All jackets, coats and overalls at BMW are the same shades of light blue