We attended the Color of the Year 2022 webinar presented by Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute, where she talked about the new reference color and how this new color of the year, Very Peri 17-3938, was arrived at.
For 23 years, Pantone’s Color of the Year has influenced product development and purchasing decisions in multiple industries, including fashion, home furnishings, thereby influencing color trends used by designers throughout the world. world level.
In her talk, Laurie Pressman commented on the process of creating Very Peri. Unlike previous years, in which a color was chosen from the Pantone catalog, for 2022 it was decided to create a new color. Why? Laurie explained that the color of the year is chosen in a holistic way, uniting various edges both from design trends as well as the global feeling about the future.
Color And Context
The creation/selection of the color of the year is intended to deliver a message. In 2022, the message that Pantone wants to convey is that at this moment the entire society is re-inventing itself.
In Laurie’s words:
“We Are Rewriting Our Lives, With New Values And New Ways Of Relating In This New Digital World.”
It is also an invitation to re-imagine our environment given the new possibilities that await us, like the metaverse, for example. The trend in video games, virtual reality, digital art, and also in the tangible such as the fashion industry and interior design, make the new color one that embraces new technologies, but is also organic and brings us calm, it is a color that is found in nature, which is an interesting mix: we leave aside the relationship between technology and neon green/black tones (very aesthetic The Matrix, from the beginning of the 21st century) to delve into the dynamism of this color with a special touch that we explain below.
Very Peri
We could say that this color is similar to others chosen in previous years… but for those of us who work in design, this violet tone has something special: the precise touch of red. Almost imperceptibly, this exact presence of a red undertone makes this color so versatile. According to the Pantone Color Institute, it is a color that encourages creativity, inventiveness, and personal initiative.
The touch of red means that, in textures, the litmus effect can be achieved, which has been linked to the futurism of this new digital age. And its integration into different areas of design exemplifies how versatile it can be.
How Do You Get To The Color Of The Year?
The Pantone Color Institute each year carries out a “sweep” of both aesthetic and technical trends to find the color of the following year. Why is this year so linked to digital? According to Laurie Pressman, the Pantone Color Institute must analyze what is also happening in digital, video game design, the metaverse, virtual and augmented reality projects, “Immersive” projects… because that is where people are moving. The color selection is not at all random!
They developed 4 very versatile color palettes with which to play and color our projects (and we already fell in love with one): you can find them at this link
About the image that accompanies this new color, Pressman said: “we don’t know what the future holds for us, that’s why this year’s image is digital, but simulating organic components, such as the filaments that give movement and support to the shiny spheres, which give the character of the futuristic. It is a color that reflects the transition that the world is experiencing, based on trust”.
That is why it also reminds us of colors related to wellness, calm, lavender with a touch of red that invites us to combine it in new ways.
Since the origins of the design, (and of course, in art) Color is extremely important when it comes to communicating a message. Using color we can generate a feeling, we can highlight, blur, guide the eye between the elements. Without a doubt, it is very important and interesting to read about color theory! We’ll talk about that later 😉