GoGoGolor rethinks color selection from first principles — matching how human perception works. Three dimensions. Two points dancing.
Try the Demo } gogogolor.com
For decades we have navigated color spaces built not for humans but for graphics cards. HSB and RGB are cages — mathematical constructs of the 1990s that force us to think in sliders instead of sensations. If you want a little more warmth, you adjust three knobs simultaneously and hope the lightness doesn’t silently collapse on you.
GoGoColor started in 2014 with one almost obsessive question: why is the tool we use to create beauty so ugly and unintuitive?
Two things mattered most:
- Think in instructions, not coordinates. We don’t reach for abstract color models. We reach for intentions: make it lighter, push it greener, a little warmer. The picker should speak that language.
- Soft colors deserve a direct path. Skin tones, pastels, fog grey — colors of enormous perceptual richness — are crammed into one hard-to-navigate corner of every HSB picker. GoGoColor makes them just as reachable as the vivid ones.
2014–2020: Searching for the Mathematics of Sensation
The breakthrough came in 2020, when Björn Ottosson published OKLAB — a rigorous, scientifically grounded model for perceptually uniform color. Its cylindrical form, OKLCH, gave GoGoColor exactly what it had always wanted intuitively: a space where moving a value by 0.1 feels approximately like moving 0.1, regardless of where you are in the space. The project became buildable.
The Experiment: AI as Bridge
I am a UX designer and enthusiast, not a software engineer. Transforming an artistic vision into a high-precision color engine was only possible through AI collaboration — what some people call vibe-coding, and what I prefer to think of as designing at the boundary of what I understand.
Complex questions — k-scaling to prevent gamut clipping, reversibility of saturation intent across the inner and outer rings, the dual-interpolation freeze — were solved in direct dialogue with the model. The AI supplied the computational reasoning. I supplied the aesthetic constraints and the geometric signature.
It was not delegation. It was a conversation.
The Signature in the Code
GoGoColor contains deliberate, almost authorial decisions that are not strictly necessary but are entirely intentional:
φ-based geometry. The core radius follows φ⁻³ ≈ 0.236, rounded to 0.24 in implementation. This is not functionally required. It is the aesthetic DNA of the system — a quiet nod to proportional thinking embedded where no one will look unless they read the source.
Dual-marker logic. Two points that dance together. One for hue, one for lightness and chroma simultaneously. No dead zones. No hunting in corners. The interaction model encodes a theory of perception: that color has two separable qualities of experience, and both deserve a dedicated gesture.
The forensic LUT. A 200 × 360 lookup table for Cmax values across the OKLCH gamut boundary — sRGB and Display-P3 separately. Approximately 285 KB of precomputed precision. This is the technical fingerprint of this particular implementation.
Over 200 years to late?
After more than 200 years of (one-sided) conflict between Isaac Newton’s “cold mechanics of light” and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe’s sensual theory of colors, gogogolor finally makes peace: a mathematical engine that precisely calculates what the human eye perceives.
Goethe regarded his theory of colors as his magnum opus and saw Newton as the “great deceiver.” When Goethe published his theory of colors in 1810, Newton had already been dead for 83 years.
What Newton and Goethe might have said, had they seen a color picker:
„For too long, light has been imprisoned in rectangular cells. Now the eye has its right: the circle.“
– Johann Wolfgang von Goethe (probably)
„Mathematics does not rob colour of its life — it guarantees its integrity„
– Sir Isaac Newton (probably)
Images: Wikipedia –Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, Sir Isaac Newton
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On Intellectual Property
GoGoColor is an open project, but not an open invitation.
I believe in open development. I want enthusiasts, researchers, and independent developers to experiment with this system, build on it, break it, and improve it. The CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 license exists for exactly that. This project is as much artifact as application — it should live in the world.
If you are building a commercial tool, a SaaS product, or an agency workflow that benefits from this system’s interaction design — I would like to speak with you first.
Technical record:
- Author: Wieland Kloimstein, Vienna
- First documented concept: 2014
- License: CC BY-NC-SA 4.0 (Non-Commercial). Commercial use requires a separate agreement.
- Portfolio: wieland-kloimstein.com
About Wieland Kloimstein
Trained as a photographer, he moved into media design and UX design. He published the idea in 2014 and wonders why many color pickers are ugly and clunky—even though designers use the tools. In the name “GoGoGolor,” the Go-Go reminds him of the two color markers dancing together around the gray axis.
contact: wieland@wieland-kloimstein.com
check out also: GoGoRembrandt colorpicker