*** From the Archives ***
This article is from September 12, 2008, and is no longer current.
Get Ready for Spring with These ASE Swatches
Here in the great American Northwest, I’m still trying to get ready for Autumn, 2008, but apparently other folks are looking ahead. If you’re trying to prepare documents for Spring, 2009, you’ll be happy to note that Pantone has already announced the official colors of that season, including Super Lemon and Dark Citron (named, we think, after Scott Citron‘s mood).
Even better, our colleague P. S. Burke has provided these spot colors in EPS, AI, and (best of all) ASE — Adobe Swatch Exchange — files that you can easily import into InDesign. You can find his article and those files here.
In the meantime, I’d also like to ask why Pantone gets to pick these colors? Just because they’re experts doesn’t mean they should get to have all the fun. So in the spirit of the season, I hearby proclaim the official color of Summer, 2014, to be: Uncomfortable Green, which I spec in CMYK as 25/20/80/25. This specious and paralactic color just makes me uncomfortable. And the official tone of Winter, 2009, is D#. Stay tuned for more pronouncements as they come in.
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David, did you say “paralactic?” LOL! However, if I were to define that word, your CMYK callout does a good job. Thanks for the info.
David meant parallactic, as in “parallax”. The definition of parallax is:
parallax |?par??laks|
noun
the effect whereby the position or direction of an object appears to differ when viewed from different positions, e.g., through the viewfinder and the lens of a camera.
? the angular amount of this in a particular case, esp. that of a star viewed from different points in the earth’s orbit.
Actually, no, I meant paralactic, as in a type of lactic acid (too much of which causes the same sort of feeling as looking at that color). That said, I very much appreciate your reference to parallax, which is one of my favorite words (and — very little known fact — is actually the trade name of my company here in Washington… Parallax Productions).
I agree whole-heartedly! Why the hell should they get to choose all the colors? But I have to ask…
“Uncomfortable Green” looks a lot like avocado.
Do you dislike guacamole? Or Mexican food? Perhaps it is a bit spicy? Could this possibly be the root of your discomfort? ; )
John, I love fresh guacamole and avacado! (Best guacamole ever: restaurant called Gabriel’s, just north of Santa Fe.) I think either your screen is really off, or your guacamole has been sitting out on the table too long.