Destroy Your Pantone Swatchbooks And Film It For Prizes

Pantone does­n’t want you to just dis­card your old swatchbooks—they want you to anni­hi­late them. Do it in a spec­tac­u­lar way and you may get some cool prizes.

Pantone real­ly wants you to replace your swatch­books (called “PANTONE FORMULA GUIDES”) annu­al­ly. They are offer­ing the PANTONE COLOR INSPIRATION/2007 and COLORIST soft­ware to make the deci­sion eas­i­er. If that isn’t enough for you, how about an oppor­tu­ni­ty to destroy your guides and get an Apple® iPhoneâ„¢ and Apple TVâ„¢ for your trou­bles?! Here’s the sto­ry: Pantone just launched the PANTONE Color Kill Contest on YouTube, where you can view peo­ple destroy­ing their swatch­books in all kinds of cre­ative ways: hang­ing pages on the Christmas tree and shred­ding are pop­u­lar. Post your video on YouTube and you get a 35% dis­count off the pur­chase of a new guide (you’ll need one, since you destroyed your old one…).

The con­test will be going on for most of the year—the dead­line is November 30, 2007—and there are prizes for the most cre­ative and unusu­al meth­ods of destruction:

  • Apple® iPhoneâ„¢ and Apple TVâ„¢ for the Grand Prize Winner
  • Apple iPhone and Pantone Essentials six-guide set for the First Place Winner
  • QuarkXPress® 7 and Pantone Color Bridge for the Second Place Winner
  • Pantone Essentials six-guide set for the Third Place Winner

There’s a few entries at Pantone​.com already, but only a few. This will be going on for sev­er­al months so we will sure­ly see more as the year pro­gress­es. I’ll be tun­ing in, because I know design­ers’ appetites for destruc­tion can be pret­ty fierce—my own entry will prob­a­bly involve some pyrotech­nics and a sound­track by P.O.D.…