Pantone's New Connect Platform Makes Designing Under COVID-19 Easier

To say that the novel coronavirus pandemic has impacted the way we all work would be an understatement. 

While some jobs are easy to accomplish at home, provided you aren’t under a barrage of distractions, some designers might be struggling with their projects because they lack some of the shared tools-of-the-trade found in many design shops. Airy and well-lit studios are a much different environment than the dinner table or the dark, closet-sized corner of the home office. Even in the best of circumstances, communicating color intent is a challenge, and attempting to do so virtually, and at-a-distance, only compounds the difficulty of getting everyone, from colleagues to vendors, on the same page, color-wise.

Pantone, the color experts 10 million designers and producers around the world rely on, have announced a set of tools to help creatives working from home easily capture and collect colors using an Android or iPhone. These collected colors can later be accessed on their computers and shared with others through the new Pantone Connect for Adobe Creative Cloud software, helping designers of all stripes streamline their decision-making processes. 

Additionally, they introduced the Pantone Color Match Card, a credit card-sized physical smartphone camera calibration tool that allows users to capture color from real life and incorporate it into your designs or workflow. Once the user’s phone gets calibrated, you can precisely measure a physical color that you can then match to its closest Pantone color.

“Our company has worked closely alongside creatives in the graphic, fashion, and product design industries to understand how color can become an enabler of performance rather than a hindrance,” said Adrián Fernández, Vice President and General Manager of Pantone via a press release. “They win with the Pantone Connect platform because their color choice reflects an informed decision made efficiently and communicated effectively,” he adds.

The Match card is available for order now, and Pantone Connect is free-to-use through July 8th. Additionally, they included six months of access to Pantone Connect with every new guide purchase.