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That Pantone book at the print shop in Akron was 4 years out of date

A local printer told me my greens looked muddy because I was eyeballing from my monitor. Handed me their Pantone book and said pick from here. I did. Then the actual shirts came back a totally different green than the swatch. Turns out their book was from 2019 and the inks they use now shifted. I went home, ordered a new book, and now I just ask them for a physical proof before I pay for a full run. Has anyone else had a shop swear by old swatch books that are clearly stale?
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joseph_lewis92
Is it just me, or does everything have a quiet expiration date that nobody tells you about? Like, your buddy swears by a coffee roaster that changed owners in 2022, or the hardware store still mixes paint from a chip that's faded. You can't really blame the print shop if they don't track every ink shift, but it's wild how much we trust physical stuff as "the truth" when it's just as temporary as a monitor. I mean, even my bathroom scale is probably lying to me by two pounds. The real lesson is that anything with a date on it, even a swatch book, is a snapshot of a moment, not a forever promise. Idk, it's like we all want one solid answer in a world that keeps moving.
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