Get Going with Goe - More Colors, More Possibilities

I've spent this past weekend reviewing PANTONE's newest color matching system called, Goe System. I'm not sure of the origin of the name they've chosen. Maybe I'll get more clarity on that question later. What I do know is that this new color matching system is a big leap forward for the graphics arts community in the quest for accurate color matching and communication.

The least of it is its cool packaging. I expect stylish packaging in most everything these days and certainly in a product aimed at the graphics arts community. Its clean, its organized and it looks cool. OK on to the real benefits.

For starters the Goe System has 2,058 spot colors. That's almost twice the number of spot colors in the previous PANTONE system. What I really like about these colors is how they are chromatically arranged in a much more logical order than the previous system. I was speaking with the folks at PANTONE about Goe and I got an interesting insight into the development of Goe. Going back to the origin of the PANTONE Color Matching System, I was told that the PANTONE color palette was first developed in 1963 to represent "popular colors." Colors that local printers and designers were using at the time and therefore the basis for making the standardized color system. Over time colors were added more or less on a by market request basis.

Now moving forward to Goe. Goe is developed on a broader spectrum based palette. When you view a fan of the old PANTONE Colors and the Goe Colors next to each other you will immediately notice that the Goe colors are more closely chromatically arranged and therefore provide better or more suitable gradations of color within one color family. To the left you see the new Goe colors fanned out.

A significant improvement in number of and arrangement of colors is the basis for the new system. Beyond this PANTONE has built an accompanying Goe Guide and the new Goe Sticks. Goe Sticks are an improved version of PANTONE Color Chips. The Goe Sticks are self-adhesive backed postage stamp sized color chips with a couple of handy tool ad-ons. The myPANTONE palette playground is a plastic sheet built into the Goe Stick binder. With the palette playground the designer can built color palette combinations and see how they look together on one surface. The adhesive backed chips are repositionable so you can go back and forth adding a removing color chips with damaging the chips. They also provide palette cards. The palette cards are a tool to adhere chosen palettes to and share them within the work flow of your project or for client presentations, really during any situation where you want to communicate the palette visually.

Lastly PANTONE has created a great software program to compliment this system. The software is an entire blog post itself so I'm going to leave that for later. I give a resounding two thumbs up to PANTONE's latest efforts at improving color matching. I think every print shop and design studio should have this new system in-house. As of this writing we offer the coated and un-coated versions as a bundle for an eye-poppingly low $765. The folks at PANTONE are quick to say that the Goe System doesn't replace the older PANTONE Color Matching System. That could be true and there is a lot of benefit from the older system. However, Goe is great and do it all. Go out a get one.

New Pantone Store

We're very happy to welcome our newest supplier Pantone to The Paper Mill Store. Pantone as you may know is the leader in color control and color communication. Given our volume and position in the market we're able to offer Pantone tools at very good prices and combine these prices with the top quality customer service our customers have come to expect from us.

HOW Show 2008

We're here in Boston for the HOW Show 2008. A reported 3,600 attendees had pre-registered making this the best attended HOW show to date.

We arrived into Boston on Friday night to take advantage of the town for a few days prior to the show. We stayed in Cambridge and enjoyed the great restaurants and museums of Harvard Square and Kendall Square areas.

The Sunday arrived and we set up our trade show booth to prepare for the onslaught of graphic designers and others in related graphics fields. Lot's of great companies are here and lot's of free stuff for attendees. To kick off our new Pantone products we are giving away a free ColorMunki tool. ColorMunki is Pantone's newest device. This thing is really cool. You can capture color from any surface and bring this color into your graphics program. As an example you can capture the color of an insects abdomen and the color of a piece of fruit and bring this into your MAC files. These devices retails for $499, we're giving one away free. Stop by and get a chance to win a ColorMunki.