OCS Action Plan

I've worked up a bit of a strategic plan for the future of the Open Colour Standard, based on conclusions from the research report mentioned earlier.

Areas outlined in the action plan: major problems, low-hanging fruit, actions that can be taken to advance the Open Colour Standard and actions to support Open Source for designers.

Download the action plan as a PDF

Research Report: release 1.0

After yesterday's post of the beta version of this report, it's now time to roll out version 1.0. Changes since the last version include a newly added bibliography and table of contents, changes to the inline citation style and new content added to the section on Open Source and designers.

Download version 1.0 as a PDF

Research Report on Colour, Open Source and Designers

A taste of the report:

"The purpose of the following research report is to create context for the Open Colour Standard project. To that end, this report discusses issues of colour, commercial and non-commercial colour spaces, the use of colour in industry, the Pantone colour space and the business behind it, Open Source projects, their adoption and the possibility of Open Source design."

Full report, as a PDF

Problems with Open Source Adoption Among Designers

I've been hunting around, trying to figure out just why it is that more designers don't use Open Source software. I've isolated a few candidates:

• Designers are set in their ways: Most designers already know some permutation of the Adobe Creative Suite. Why bother learning something new?
• Employability: Creative Suite is taught in design schools, most every job a design grad can hope to get post school will involve Creative Suite. It just doesn't make sense to learn anything but Creative Suite if Creative Suite is what employers install on their computers.
• Print shops: Because Creative Suite is the industry standard, print shops take the proprietary Adobe file formats. Sure, you could just send them a .pdf, but what if something goes wrong?
• Open Source optics: Most designers see Open Source programs as poor cousins to proprietary equivalents. They view programs like The GIMP as Photoshop clones instead of programs in their own rite. As long as the Creative Suite monopoly exists, it will be quite difficult for Open Source programs to gain traction.

In short, Open Source is faced by a cyclical problem: Everyone learns Creative Suite in school because the whole industry uses Creative Suite. Printers use Creative Suite because their clients do and their clients use it because the printers do. Because Creative Suite is an industry standard, snobbish or blinkered designers continue to perceive it as something hobbyists use. If designers never start using Open Source software, it will be a self-fulfilling prophecy: Open Source graphics programs will be for hobbyists.

How does this impact Open Colour Standard? Replace the words Creative Suite with PANTONE. Replace Open Source software with Open Colour Standard. Gaining a foothold in such a closed industry is going to be difficult.