The Color of the Year 2022 is a Blue-Purple Periwinkle
Trends capture the spirit of the times and for 23 years, forecasters at The Pantone Color Institute, which sees contemporary life and culture through color, have had fun identifying the color of the moment.
And for 2022, it’s a dynamic periwinkle flower blue with vibrant violet-red tones. This evokes the glowing touchscreens of the digital world yet is still in touch with nature. It reflects everyone’s wish for a fresh start and the exciting creative possibilities of the year ahead.
Introducing the Pantone Color of the Year 2022, PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri, a dynamic periwinkle blue hue with a vivifying violet red undertone blends the faithfulness and constancy of blue with the energy and excitement of red. Learn more: https://t.co/eNIwkTq2K8 pic.twitter.com/hBfiDusFKU
— PANTONE (@pantone) December 9, 2021
More about the significance of Pantone’s “happy” periwinkle shade
The gorgeous Very Peri shade has been specially created as a brand new color by the Pantone Color Institute, reports artnet, its first new shade since the new millennium.
“It was really important for us to come up with a new color, because we have a very new vision of the world now,” Pantone Color Institute executive director, Leatrice Eiseman, told CNN.
For Eiseman, as Pantone’s website shares, this Very Peri shade reflects our social moment. It’s a time when we are emerging from a challenging period with a more blended physical and digital life, with the drive and daring to make change happen.
What does Very Peri make you think of?
How about positive thoughts for a post-Pandemic world, the promise of exploring possibilities, rekindling connections and gratitude, and launching into our new lives with courageous inventiveness and creativity? In essence, a Goodnet-style positive transformation!
Or as Pantone outlines on YouTube: “Very Peri, the happiest and warmest of all the blue hues, introduces an empowering mix of newness… Very Peri helps us to embrace this altered landscape of possibilities, opening us up to a new vision as we re-write our lives.”
This is a perspective, Time elaborates, colored not only by our desire to overcome the Pandemic, but also by concerns about our environment and the larger injustice and flaws in our current social structures too.
Trendsetters on a mission
To arrive at their color of the year, analysts at the Pantone Color Institute comb the world in search of new influences, adopting a global perspective to decode the science and emotion of color.
As can be expected from trend forecasters and branding strategists, inspiration comes from multiple sources. Everything from new artists to fashion, socio-economic conditions to new technologies and design and leisure trends, even captivating sporting events.
Pantone’s choices make waves in home furnishings and interior design, fashion and cosmetic color directions, and product development. Graphic designers take their cues from the Pantone chosen shade as it enters the public conversation for the year ahead.
It’s time to get Very Peri. By @andrew_andrew__ https://t.co/q9xyNp5gM0
— Review Geek (@reviewgeeksite) December 10, 2021
The tentacles of the Very Peri shade are already reaching our lives. Microsoft, for instance, has issued some beautifully reimagined Windows bloom wallpapers using this new shade, now free to download. It’s also appearing in software like PowerPoint and Teams.
Color standards are still the Pantone mainstay
While it has branched out into color strategy and branding, Pantone’s key product continues to be its Pantone Matching Systems. These are standardized color reproduction systems with thousands of shades, each identified by a number. These serve as a guide for brands, manufacturers and designers to ensure that their color choices are reproduced consistently across various products and mediums, online and in the real world.
For 2022, Pantone has created four different color palettes featuring Very Peri interacting with other shades to inspire designers. One, “Wellspring”, shows how it can blend with nature-infused shades, greens especially, to underline harmony, health and nourishment. The “Star of the Show” palette, by contrast, lets Very Peri stand out in a sea of understated, neutral shades.
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For the third year in a row, Pantone is working with New York’s Artechouse to offer an immersive installation of digital projections inspired by next year’s shade, opening in early 2022. Artechouse is both a space for exhibits and an incubator for new talent, inspiring artists to use technology to push the boundaries of creative innovation.
