Pantone owned by X-Rite

A member of PPF has posted a thread that I think will have a far reaching effect on some software and PrePress in general. Pantone has been bought by X-Rite.

I’m thinking about licensing for a ‘Pantone’ Library in your software. I haven’t even got a clue who owns that, probably Pantone/Dupont. This will get interesting as I know a lot of shops that simply don’t manage colour.There’s been a big change with Pantone Bridge And I have no idea how the look up tables (the data that generates what they are composed of) are sold to the likes of Adobe and Quark.

Many thanks again to Mjetz

More wonderful type

Creativepro is currently running a series of retrospective articles concerning type that is very well illustrated, even including items from Rick Griffin an icon in many ways, but his use of type/letter forms is amazing.

Part one of creative pros overview is here

Part two is here

Biff Bash

In my previous post I mentioned how much I love the good use of type, and the inference was that I am dismayed when I see type used badly. So here is something that I saw today via the Serif. I like onomatopoeia, words that sound like what they’re describing. When I saw this today I was delighted.

Even the physical form of the type is almost onomatopoeic. If it evokes any childhood memories as well, then that is an added bonus. Enjoy.

One ugly clock

I like type, I really do. Beautiful use of type is wonderful, whether it be decorative or functional

Type should be unobtrusive, it shouldn’t stand out. Type is only part of the design and not the design itself in the majority of cases – unless you are truly talented.

It’s the same with functionality. Things should work so well that they’re intuitive and not intrude or cause inconvenience to operate.

Sadly this clock has the worst of both worlds.

The combination of fonts is eye jarringly ugly, the type has become the design, and far from the functionality being inconspicuous, I should think that it makes a horrible ‘Clack, Clack’ sound as the numbers flip over. Nasty and astonishingly expensive.

UPDATE:

Thanks again to DD for the link to the clock. You’ll be hearing more directly from DD later all being well.

More Vapour Ware – Update

Some readers may remember me being annoyed that Pixelmator would supposedly ship in July and didn’t. It still hasn’t shipped, but there’s a closed beta available if you’re a member of the test team. I’m not. It’s not the same as a proper ship and thankfully they haven’t gone down the route of a Public Beta – that would be a proper ship. It’s either released or it’s not. Get a 1.0 out soon and an update shortly after.

Not being part of the beta team I don’t know if it’s taking advantage of any forthcoming Leopard features (unlikely for a beta – most testers won’t have access to dev releases of an OS) or changes to core image. I hope it ships before Leopard and a Leopard update isn’t far behind, assuming of course that Leopard isn’t delayed…