Today I received an email in which PANTONE asked how it should orientate its products and services in the future. The users were asked which countries, industries and company sizes they come from, but also what PANTONE products should look like in the future and what customers would be prepared to pay for PANTONE services in the future.
Question: How much can PANTONE services cost?
PANTONE appears to be orientating itself on the PANTONE Connect prices: All price queries have the lowest price category < $ 7,- / month, i.e. the PANTONE Connect price in the annual contract. It doesn’t get any cheaper, but it does get more expensive: more than § 31,- / month is the highest price category.
PANTONE also asked how users communicate colours:
Q: How do you currently communicate color palettes?
– Pantone Codes
– RGB Values
– Hex Codes
– LAB
– Other
Exciting: as PANTONE I would definitely have asked for spectral data here, after all CxF was not invented just yesterday, but is already a standard in many industries. However, PANTONE does not seem to see any great need to enquire about the demand for these spectra.
Where does PANTONE see future demand for its services?
It was particularly important for me to get an idea of what product strategies PANTONE is planning for the coming years. The most important questions from PANTONE from my point of view
Q: How helpful would it be to be able to align your color palettes between tools?
– Very Helpful
– Helpful
– Somewhat Helpful
– Not Helpful
Q: How much would you pay on a monthly basis to have your color Pantone palettes in your creative design tools?
– Under $7
– $7 – $14
– $15 – $20
– $21 – $30
– $31+
The prices were requested in many places, so PANTONE is clearly planning to include more fee-based services in its portfolio in the future.
Q: Please rate your interest in having your digital assets seamlessly integrated into your entire design workflow.
– Very High
– High
– Medium
– Low
– Very Low
– None
This question could indicate that PANTONE could exchange other things beyond colours, such as images, fonts and more, between software via its tools. I was a little surprised that such a question was asked.
Q: What Al tools) do you currently use?
– ChatGPT
– Dall-E
– Microsoft Co-Pilot
– Midjourney
– None
– Other
Of course, all questions about AI are absolutely relevant at the moment. It is also clear that PANTONE may not want to let Adobe have sole dominance over the integration of AI tools in design software. This is shown by the next question:
Q: Please rate your interest in having your Al work tools seamlessly integrated into your entire design workflow.
– Very High
– High
– Medium
– Low
– Very Low
– None
Q: If Pantone offered a tool that could give you color recommendations for your product based on your target audience, how interested would you be in that product?
– Very Interested
– Quite Interested
– Somewhat Interested
– Not Interested
A future product direction also seems to be emerging here: PANTONE could use AI to suggest colours and colour worlds for products and product development, as a paid service.
Q: Which of the following do you specify in your workflow?
– Color
– Material
– Both Color and Material
– Neither
Q: Is gloss or texture important in the success of achieving your intended design colors?
– Very significant
– Significant
– Slightly significant
– Not significant
– Not sure/NA
The two questions above are clearly aimed at potentially expanding the products and better reflecting gloss and substrate or the “appearance” of colours in their products.
Q: How likely would you be to purchase Pantone products that use one or more popular recycled substrates in order to better understand color achievability in design?
– Almost certain
– Likely
– Possible
– Unlikely
– Not at all likely
Here too, PANTONE is exploring a product addition to its range: A colour fan on recycled papers for coated and uncoated, which I could certainly imagine selling, especially as the formulations of the new colours would not change.
It will be exciting to see where PANTONE sees the future of its fans, colours, colour representations and services. And the pricing of future products will certainly only go in one direction: More expensive… that’s always possible!
You want to take the survey yourself? https://yoaznev2hms.typeform.com/PantoneVOC24
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