Thursday, March 10, 2011

Incredible workflow enhancement tool

[The following is a "guest post" by my friend Ed Klemz from Central Coast Solutions.]

There is an incredible FREE web tool you need to know about – Wolfram|Alpha: Computational Knowledge Engine. Its a color selection and analysis tool, and so much more!

This web site brings together certified information from EVERYWHERE - all scientific, statistical, mathematical, political, medical, all of it. And this isn't "wiki" data that has no basis in fact, only certified and highly scrutinized data gets to be referenced. See About Wolfram|Alpha to learn more about this tool, and how it came to be.

You present equations or terms to Wolfram|Alpha, and it gives you the answers. The depth of information here is nothing short of ridiculous, and this should be the home page for any research person, marketing trend guru, or anyone who wants to know the most common baby names in the US...

What about color you ask?
Since the entire knowledge base of human experience has been made available us in this tool, what happens if you enter something like "html green"? Why it tells you everything you want to know about it, including complementary colors, values of RGB, HEX, HSB, nearest web and Pantone equivalents...very handy.

Now enter "RGB 249, 86, 2" and see the stats, and note that it is Pantone 1655 - my favorite orange. On the "Representations" block, click the "More" button and see its CMYK value as well. Now we are getting somewhere!

Wolfram|Alpha is a lot more than just information
Its computational, meaning it can do math with your inputs. So red + green = olive. You get the picture.

Its all about workflow
Many top designers, art directors and brand managers have a set of colors worked out for developing their client's branding guidelines that show the RGB, CMYK, HEX (web) and Pantone values of each, and restrict the color set to colors that have equivalents across all four color spaces. This one simple thing streamlines your workflow and makes color perform from print to web with no variations.

Now go and Explore! To say this is the tip of the iceberg is a gross understatement.

-Ed

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