Let's stop keeping Pantone relevant. Adobe can disappear along with it.
Redundant systems must be made redundant. Destroy the industry standard and the idea that any corporation is necessary to be an authority of colour in the digital age.
For those of you who may not know: in real life, I am not only low-fi socialist junk. I am also a former design student who now does UX for a tech company. So obviously, the news that Pantone colour libraries now require an additional $15 subscription, on top of the ever more ridiculous prices the Creative Cloud already charges, cannot be left unaddressed by me.
The political relevance feels obvious: the fact that people will accept whatever these corporations do to their work, and especially to their wallets, can be connected to capitalist realism, the belief that there is no alternative to it all. That we worship the annual message of the Great Holy Emperors of Colour and eagerly await which shade of purple they decide to be a meaningful addition to the trajectory of our upcoming year, every year, is pure ideology, reminiscent of religion or astrology.
Adobe has got to be of the most hated companies since the invention of software. People love to talk about their “corporate greed” at every turn, while appearing to be completely convinced that there is nothing they can do to help the situation, as if there was no alternative to the design convention that places Adobe at the top, slowly and consistently pissing on us plebs until we hand over that sweet monthly subscription fee.
The Pantone news is arriving just shortly after the announcement that Adobe is acquiring Figma. Designers who thought they were untouched by the financial torture of unreasonable pricing for mediocre features from Adobe were entirely up in arms about it. Which action will they be taking in consequence? They will continue using Figma, most likely. It looks a lot like the thousands of people regularly visiting r/latestagecapitalism to share memes about how terribly everything is going for the working class, without wasting one singular thought on getting themselves organised, analysing the current state of things and how we can move past it, or engaging in anything else meaningful to overthrow the system they (rightfully) complain about.
In the world of design tools, there could be simple solutions if we didn’t live in a society that believes so strongly that capital rules, and that there is nothing us “small guys” can do about it. Solving the problem of Adobe and Pantone existing is much easier than solving the great political and economic struggle of our time, and yet nobody is doing it, while everybody is collectively suffering. For what, an industry standard? The thing about standards and systems is that they can and should be changed as soon as they have run their course. This applies to economies just as much as it applies to tools used to work within these economies. It may be inconvenient to transition to new systems, but sometimes great pain is needed to achieve a high reward.
No reasonable person wants Adobe to be the standard, so why not do away with it? Just like all Adobe products at this point can be replaced by other tools such as Affinity or Sketch, the same could be done for Pantone. Why isn’t anyone coming up with new systems and conventions for colours? Why does nobody question what it is that Pantone actually does, and whether they are still even needed today? Where’s the outrage about a corporation literally laying legal claim to colours simply because they made useful little reference books in the time of print? Why aren’t we doing away with an outdated standard and deflating these design overlords’ overblown egos in the process?
“God created the world in 7 days, and on the 8th day, he created Pantone to add colour to it.” – Pantone founder Larry Herbert
Seriously? God is dead, Pantone. Please enjoy your fast slide into irrelevance.
In a moment of absolute disbelief that we give so much authority over colour itself to a dusty corporation, I spent a brief few minutes with a friend, researching the history and development of Pantone. Who are they, what do they do, and should they still be a thing at all? We quickly concluded that their relevance is entirely based on historical precedent with a lot of hot empty air being blown up big corporate’s behinds, and that we, as well as most other people with an affinity for design, could do better. We are in no way dependent on anything Pantone does. Neither do we need shallow socio-political horoscopes every damn January such as “a reminder to modern times and everything that has been going on with pollution, environmental problems, and man-made disasters (..) living coral represents the need for authenticity and optimism to carry on with our life.” (x)
So up we came with shades like “Basic Red”, “Basic Blue”, “GOLD”, and “Agreeable Green” as staples for any print and production facility, and since this is what Pantone does for their Colours of the Year, we even invented revolutionary shades of social, cultural and political significance - colours that reflect “what is taking place in our global culture, expressing what people are looking for that color can hope to answer” (x).
On the social commentary side of things, we have a “Controversial Yellow” reminding us of previous debates about blue and gold dresses, “Jacobin Blood” as a strong political nod to the French Revolution, while “Zelenskyy” provides a daring statement about the war in Ukraine. Especially controversial due to its possible imperialist implications: “Democra-Sea”. My personal greatest achievement is “PERIOD” - not only is it inspired by a bright pink and red shower curtain, because as a colour expert, I have my eyes in all places, it also comments on the action that I do behind it multiple times every month: forced to hide from the disgust of the world, I retreat into the shower to empty my menstrual cup. I can never do this at a public place, like the gym, because people are going to give me weird looks, when in fact, menstrual blood is a perfectly normal substance and bleeding a regular bodily function like any other. Periods must be destigmatised! “PERIOD” is a statement about the pervasive misogyny of our time. Our sense for the world of interior design is reflected by “Lampshade White”. It’s all covered!
The point is that you can do the same. Invent your own shades, invent your own libraries to share with others that may or may not resemble those trademarked by Pantone, like the people who quickly released and distributed “Freetone” did. Sure, if you work for a 30 year old brand with 400 products produced in 70 different places, it might be convenient if printers can quickly grasp what you’re talking about when you say you want Pantone 3546 C, but is so much harm really going to be done to your communication and design by using #CD001A / rgb(205, 0, 26) / C0 M80 Y70 K20 instead? Let’s not pretend this isn’t more or less the same shade, if there is any discernible difference at all, you absolute nerds.
At this point in time, people are simply prevented from using colours that are explicitly linked with Pantone libraries without paying, while approximations of the same colour are permissible. But with the subscriber-model-fication of basically everything we use, do we want to leave the door open for them to lay full claim to colours and shades that can be “reasonably associated with their brand” (one necessary requirement for trademarking) in a Telekom and Lemonade-type of way?
Do we really want to keep worshipping at the altar of the self-proclaimed Gods of Colour instead of being the Prometheans of design that we know we can be?
In this day and age, with any individual having digital access to any colour that can be displayed on a screen along with the associated colour codes, I think we’re keeping Pantone artificially relevant for the sake of design tradition. It is time to embrace modernity, embrace the idea that everything that can be infinitely reproduced without cost should be free, and start questioning what we want intellectual property to mean in the world we wish to live in.
Maybe abolishing intellectual property entirely is a bit of a hot take, but maybe it’s exactly what we need to move humanity forward and truly drive the innovation capitalists love to advocate for, but continue to stifle through copyright, monopolies, and property rights? These questions remain to be answered, and they’re much more interesting than the next disappointing move of Adobe or which shade of feminist pink Pantone is going to use to express solidarity with the protests in Iran.
It is not the end of history, which means that it is not the end of design history.
No more Pantone. Society has progressed past the need for Pantone.
Ignore their low-effort astrology meme also known as Colour of the Year when it comes out, define and share your own colours with useful purposes and interesting meanings if you want to, burn your reference books, get an Affinity account or any non-Adobe application of your choice, definitely do not buy the Pantone subscription. It is time to stop conforming to the standard in large numbers, which will make it.. well, no longer standard, and if Adobe and Pantone are no longer standard, there isn’t much of a reason to use them anymore. Maybe we will be able to witness their downfall within our lifetime. Wouldn’t that be great?
Let’s start a design revolution to warm us up for the real one. Design workers of the world unite! You have nothing to lose but your bad outdated overpriced software.