ISCC–NBS system.

About ISCC–NBS system

The ISCC–NBS System of Color Designation is a system for naming colors based on a set of 13 basic color terms and a small set of adjective modifiers. It was first established in the 1930s by a joint effort of the Inter-Society Color Council (ISCC), made up of delegates from various American trade organizations, and the National Bureau of Standards (NBS), a US government agency. As suggested in 1932 by the first chairman of the ISCC, the system's goal is to be "a means of designating colors in the United States Pharmacopoeia, in the National Formulary, and in general literature ... such designation to be sufficiently standardized as to be acceptable and usable by science, sufficiently broad to be appreciated and used by science, art, and industry, and sufficiently commonplace to be understood, at least in a general way, by the whole public." The system aims to provide a basis on which color definitions in fields from fashion and printing to botany and geology can be systematized and regularized, so that each industry need not invent its own incompatible color system.