The Pantone GOe System Explained

The PANTONE Goe System is the first completely new colour inspiration and specification system for the graphic arts industry since the introduction of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM 45 years ago. With more than 2,000 new PANTONE Colors, the PANTONE Goe System is designed "to inspire creativity and fulfill the requirements of a fast-changing, technologically advancing industry. PANTONE Goe is more than a single product with exciting new colours; the System includes modern tools and interactive software to drive collaboration and improve versatility in an increasingly global, multimedia environment." That's what the Pantone press release says about the GOe System.

There are 2,058 new colours in the PANTONE Goe System arranged in chromatic order. This works well for easy, precise, cross-media colour selection and specification. The PANTONE Goe System includes the PANTONE GoeGuide and PANTONE GoeSticks, a two-volume set of adhesive-backed chips, along with software for creating colour palettes that can be imported into applications, shared among coworkers and clients, and archived for future reference.

The software may work well on a Windows machine, but doesn't work well at all on Macs —which is odd, as Macs are still used most often in graphic design environments.

The PANTONE Goe System offers a significantly expanded colour palette, yet is based on a smaller set of 10 PANTONE Mixing Bases, plus PANTONE Clear, that are readily available anywhere in the world. This ensures color consistency on a global basis while keeping ink inventory to a minimum for printers. The new ink mixing bases were created with Pantone’s deep understanding of color science to deliver technically sound color standards that are compatible with aqueous and UV coatings. The colors have also been designed for printing uniform ink film thicknesses to allow for equal drying times and more control when matching color on press. This enables press operators to run jobs at the same ink settings, providing significant production efficiencies. Pantone is ISO 9001:2000 certified and the Goe System has been manufactured under these stringent, quality control guidelines.

Things to watch out for when using the GOe System

Pantone sent me a GOe System a couple of months ago. A printing industry group in Flanders had already warned colour management users all over the world to watch out for GOe, as Pantone failed to mention the colour chips are in sRGB, and not RGB, as you would conclude from looking at the values on the chips (and the strips in the GOeGuide). Bakc then, the GOe Systm was still in beta, so Pantone had plenty of time to put things right. Apparently, the company didn't, and the chips and strips all carry the "RGB" label.

So, the first thing you must be on your guard for is the RGB label. It is not RGB, it is sRGB, and this makes a difference.

The second thing to watch out for is the software. MyPantone Palettes is now at version 1.5 and it still doesn't work the way it should. IT Enquirer, our general cross-media publishing, authoring, and design web magazine asked Pantone a couple of weeks ago when a fix for the bugs would be ready, and they didn't answer our question —they don't reply to any of our questions, in fact. MyPantone Palettes may work on a Windows machine, it doesn't on a Mac. The colour pipette doesn't work properly, and the whole software is a laugh with regards to performance. It takes ages to launch and to switch panels. Useless, in one word.

So, what can you do well with the GOe System? You can use the (paper) colour chips to find colour combinations, send those to a client and have them sign off your work. For print designers, the GOe System may be better than earlier Pantone products, but only when considering the remarks made by Hagen and his group. Web designers —one of the target audiences according to Pantone's European VP— won't be pleased if they are working off a Mac as the MyPantone Palettes are useless to them.