The 44-page PDF is bilingual in German and English, and can be downloaded free of charge from Beuth Verlag, which distributes the DIN standards in Germany, after a short registration.
Click here to download DIN SPEC 16699.
Who needs a DIN SPEC?
Of course, it is not to be expected that every printer and every advertising studio will immediately start working with CIELAB HLC colours and our HLC Colour Atlas, as we suggest in the DIN SPEC. But we would like to point out, also to very professional circles, that free mathematical colour models lying dormant in every computer are an exact and sensible, often better alternative to the commercial solutions and manufacturers' collections. Technical progress makes this possible at an acceptable cost.
Areas related to standardisation are often found in the public sector. In this sense, it would be conceivable, for example, that at some point, at our instigation, the European flag would no longer be in Pantone (Reflex Blue and Yellow, cf. here), but in a mathematical model that is freely available everywhere. It would make sense in any case, just think of the fact that a private company could change its products at any time, or of colour definitions for non-Pantone implementations, or of systematic variations of colours for corporate design purposes, or of passing on colour values. All these common problems are no more with CIELAB HLC colours according to DIN SPEC 16699.
Thanks again to DIN e.V., especially Mr Lamm, for the perfect cooperation!
1 comment
I'm very thankful to have found this as I stuggled with matching colours across different private companies colour systems some of which I had no access to because of extreme prices. Even the old standard Munsell system is over priced as it's the most known of the standard colour systems. I always disliked the fact alot of colors were matched to pantone or whatever else and then had to be converted to another. We can only hope this system will eventually become the standard across all mediums.