Big Orange—The Color

The official UT orange is a specific color in the Pantone Matching System—PMS 151. In 1982 the official UT orange was standardized as Pantone Matching System 021. In the late 1990s, in order to be more consistent with colors used by the Athletics Department, the shade was changed to PMS 151. Prior to 1982 UT’s Graphic Services used three shades of orange in printing—a deep red orange, a brown orange, and a bright orange. Printers mixing the color from formulae found that they could not consistently get the same shade of orange, so a standard, premixed ink color was adopted. Big Orange is far different from the original UT orange, which was the color of the center of the American Daisy, a flower that grew in profusion on the Hill.