What is Pantone?

Pantone provides a universal language of color that enables color-critical decisions through every stage of the workflow for brands and manufacturers. They work in three major streams, with more than 10 million designers and producers around the world.

Pantone Standards: Pantone revolutionized the printing industry with the colorful PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, an innovative tool allowing for the faithful selection, articulation and reproduction of consistent, accurate color anywhere in the world.

Pantone Lifestyle: The Pantone Lifestyle division celebrates modern designs, aesthetics and bold use of color, brought to life through collaborations with like-minded brands and licensing partnerships in categories including home furnishings, apparel, beauty, travel and desktop accessories.

Pantone Color Institute: It is a consulting service within Pantone that forecasts global color trends and advises companies on color in brand identity and product development, for application of color as a fruitful asset. Recognised around the world as a trustworthy selector of colors, it also provides palette recommendations for product and corporate identity.

Color of the year: Living Coral

Adweek described Living Coral as “an animated, life-affirming shade of orange, with golden undertones.” Pantone states that the Color of the Year is actually “…a color snapshot of what we see taking place in our global culture that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude.”

Similarly, Pantone says in an article that the reason 2016 was blessed with not one, but two colors of the year, Rose quartz (a light, rosy pink) and Serenity (a shade of blue/purple), was to show an intense and urgent need for gender equality. Associating pink and blue with feminine and male traits is not an uncommon representation. But interestingly, research shows that throughout history, the color pink (a shade of red, power, blood) was associated with males, while the color blue (innocence, the Virgin Mary) was associated with females.

It wasn’t until the 1980s, when we were able to tell the sex of a child while still in the womb, that the gender roles associated with blue and pink were truly reversed.

While Living Coral makes for a great aesthetic appeal, it’s cool undertone reminds us of the beautiful coral beds, a color that reflects nature at its most lively, tropical and magical form. Now that this has been decided as color of the year, some of us would love to see it around a lot more than we already have.

This is the perfect time to give that website a new look, or enhance your Instagram theme by starting a fresh one that engages even more with your audience. Pantone considers its choice for color of the year very carefully. What’s more, the winner is often inspired by larger design trends and cultural movements. Living Coral might be lifted from nature, but it has the potential to make designs and products more attractive in 2019 because it reflects well on wider cultural trends.

With a blend of cool oranges and soft pink, Living Coral is also a very romantic shade. Its subtle shade leaves us tugging at our heart strings, directly associating it with compassion and care for a loved one. This makes for a perfect peachy wedding card or wedding theme, evoking a genuine feeling of peace and belonging.

This year you can also redecorate your house with this absolutely welcoming and appealing shade. It’s time to spice up your house with some new home decor, owing to the fast changing trends and aesthetics. Imagine a comfy bed sheet or that special pillow that you hug at night, dressed in this tranquil shade!

Go head and get creative!

Sources: https://www.adweek.com/brand-marketing/living-coral-is-pantones-2019-color-of-the-year/

https://strategicfactory.com/about-us/blog/how-does-pantone-choose-its-color-of-the-year.html

https://www.pantone.com/about/about-pantone

By Naqiyah Hasan