pantone-announces-its-color-of-2020

Each year, at this time, Pantone nominates a color — or colors, in the case of 2016 — to represent humanity’s hopes and aspirations for the coming year.

At least, that is what its PR department sends out. In reality, it’s a rather obvious — if highly effective — marketing gimmick to keep the print-design company relevant to design news year-on-year. It’s an arbitrary bit of self-promotion, that does an excellent job of reinforcing Pantone’s position as an authority on color.

This year, Pantone has selected Pantone 19-4052, or “Classic Blue” to give it its colloquial name. It’s described by Pantone as: “Instilling calm, confidence, and connection, this enduring blue hue highlights our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era.”

pantone_classic_blue

Critically speaking, it’s one of the most mis-judged decisions in the short history of this promotion, and significantly mis-reads the zeitgeist.

At a time when the climate is approaching — or may have passed — irreversible breakdown; when global political debate is moving out of our institutions and onto the streets; when the baby-boomer generation is slowly losing its grip on the reins, and millennials are realizing they’ve reached middle-age; Classic Blue is a color that harks back to a time when we hid our head in the sand and pretended everything was fine. It’s the color of the pre-2008 crash, the color of Facebook pre-privacy scandal, the brand color of your parents’ bank. Classic Blue is about as 2020 as Helvetica.

(There’s only one color that effectively represents 2020, and that’s Cyberpunk Pink, a neon hue that is both retro and forward-looking, cross-cultural, irreverent, and even better in dark mode.)

pantone-launches-a-whopping-294-‘trend-relevant’-colours

New Pantone colours

(Image credit: Pantone)

You might’ve thought that we’ve discovered every single colour under the sun by now. But no, colour expert Pantone has stumbled across 294 new shades and added them to its popular Pantone Matching System.

The new spot colours are the first additions to Pantone’s world-renowned chromatic system in three years, and together they bring its total number of colours to 2,161. We’re looking forward to how these shades play into what we know about colour theory.

What’s more, artists and designers can use these colours digitally thanks to Pantone’s colour libraries, which can be stored and accessed as an extension across Adobe Creative Cloud applications. If you’re not already a subscriber, you can sign up to Creative Cloud here.

According to the description on Pantone’s formula guide page, these new shades are “trend and market relevant graphics colours.” Fancy.

New Pantone colours

The colours are also available as fan decks

(Image credit: Pantone)

“We are always attuned to the changing market and the needs of our creative customers,” said Adrián Fernández, vice president and general manager of Pantone. 

“As a result, we are excited to create an even more efficient workflow as we roll out new colours for the graphic arts and improved cross-referencing between Pantone’s PMS and FHI colour systems.

“Adding the launch of the Pantone Extension for Adobe Creative Cloud to this mix will enhance the ability to identify, communicate and verify colours both physically and digitally in the Pantone universe.”

If you want to get your hands on the 294 new colours physically, you can also buy them as a swatchbook.

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