Posted by Olivia dela Rosa on October 14, 2014
It’s amazing how something so ordinary gets to be transformed into a work of art. With a keen eye for detail and a wildly imaginative mind, your daily life can be your canvas. One guy proved just that and the evidence is all over Instagram. The world eventually caught on.
Paul Octavious started a photo series called Pantone Project (#pantoneproject, and not to be confused with The Pantone Prose & Pictures Project), and it is now making the rounds on the photo-sharing app. Octavious is a Chicago-based freelance photographer and storyteller, having worked with clients like New Balance, McDonald's, Wired and Threadless. He took his fascination with Pantones to another level with the Pantone Project series and we took some of his and other Instagrammers' works and posted them below.
Pantone, a standardized color matching system, has been a significant part of the print and design community for some time now. It is a provider of color systems and allows different manufacturers from different locations to match the colors of their materials. Pantones have been usually associated with printing companies, but today they found another niche on Instagram.
Octavious background lies in graphic design, but instead over the years he found comfort working behind the camera: for years, he's been using a Canon 5D Mark II and his iPhone to take photos. Just like any photography enthusiast, the fascination started early during his childhood, when he received a Polaroid as a gift from his parents. As of writing, his Instagram account boasts of at least 500K followers and growing. Same thing for the #pantoneproject, as we find that his followers and contributors from all over the world are buying their own pantone postcards and matching swatches to their surroundings.
In his interview with Wired magazine, he says that so far he only found 12 or 13 matches he liked. "When it happens, it happens," Octavious states. He is always waiting for the right opportunity and the right color match, always ready with the postcards in his backpack and his iPhone in his pocket.
You can see the rest of the project on his Instagram account.
If Octavious was the master of color matching, these people are his students. Taking cue from Octavious' works are other Instagrammers who delight in these color swatches, and there are currently over 1,300 Instagram posts tagged as #pantoneproject so don't be surprised if you see someone holding up a piece of card over some inanimate object. New hashtags are being used along with the photo series such as #iseepantoneeverywhere, #colorinspires, #pantonechallenge and #colorcharted. The project also gets to be shared on another photo editing/sharing app VSCOcam, and sometimes posts take a comical turn especially when the color swatches do not match the objects at all. Here's what the rest of the world thinks of the photo series.
If you find #pantoneproject to be amazing, head over to Instagram to check out the latest posts. How about you, what is your favorite photo project so far? Share your thoughs with us through the comment form below!
Im not impressed by Vistaprint at all. Their product pricing is competitive but their shipping prices are extremely high. On top of that it took almost 3 weeks for my order to arrive. Everything looks good and cheap with Vistaprint, but at checkout the negative experience begins. I will never use Vistaprint again.
We had a wonderful experience with Overnight Prints. My husband and me wanted a new business card design, and after creating the perfect design with their online design tool we decided to give them a go and placed an order.
Unforunately we had made an error in the design that we noticed a couple of hours after ordering. We gave them a call and spoke to a friendly person who immediately corrected the error for us.
Our new business cards do make a good impression, and we are impressed by overnight prints good old fashioned customer service.
Inkgarden offers the most flexibility with their design tools. You can actually save your design to complete it later, and their tools allow you to exactly position where the design is located on the product that you create. Adding text is easy, you can use multiple designs, choose if you want to use single or double sided, etc, etc.
Product quality was satisfying, and customer service was helpful.
I will definately use them again.
InkGarden is my go to site whenever I want to get a gift for my friends or want to personalize something for myself.
I usually tend to buy products that have a design they come up with as my photos somehow never look that good printed. Probably becourse I use an older camera. Last month I ordered a baby blanket for my cousin that just gave birth and she cried when she saw it, it was a perfect gift!
I didn't know about MOO until i read this site, ordered double sided business cards with them and im very impressed! Great looking quality cards, not cheap but well worth the price.