How Pantone Chooses The Colour Of The Year
By: Dom Hennequin
Tags: Pantone, Design, Trends, Colors, Design Inspi

Every year, in December, the worlds of design, marketing and branding become abuzz with a conversation about colour. Sometimes it’s one colour. Sometimes it’s two. It’s a big conversation that can have a large economic impact. And it all starts with the choice of an iconic little swatch.

You’ve probably seen one before. They’re made by a company called Pantone.

Founded in 1963 by Lawrence Herbert, it began its life as a paint company.

Its mission soon became creating a system of identifying, matching and communicating colour, in a way that would be standardised across the print and textile design industries.

The result was the Pantone matching system - abook now standard across these fields.

Some know it better as a digital swatch on programs like Photoshop and Illustrator but people still use the book and the physical swatches the company makes.

There’s another way the colour company asserts its relevance. Their yearly announcement of “The Colour of the Year”.

Sometimes it’s influential. Sometimes it’s controversial. But each year it makes an impression.

First done in the year 2000, Pantone’s would have you believe their choice helps guide the decisions designers, brands and regular people make in the colours they use over the next twelve months.

So how does Pantone actually choose the colour of the year?

Identifying Trending Colours

Each year in around March, Pantone’s Colour Institute starts the process of identifying candidates for the next year’s choice.

The decision-making committee travels to London, Paris and Milan with extra trips tacked onto the side to get a sense of the colours appearing a lot in these influential cities.

Pantone Colour Institute Vice President Laurie Pressman tells Glamour they look at “certain colours getting more attention in the fashion field first”.

“We look at films coming up. What colours are being used? Is there a new effect being used? We look at upcoming cars, [because] when you talk about technology, you have to look at the finishes on cars because they are light-years ahead in the technology they use to create those colours,” Pressman says.

The committee then studies the psychology of those colours to discover their influence on human thought processes, emotions and physical reactions.

They analyse how those colours interact with other colours. They look at the art world and take into account certain colours being shown in collections that will travel the world. And they observe the colours being used for products produced by notable brands.

Interestingly, the committee’s choice is rarely a new colour. Pantone updates its colour library every two and a half years, which helps them stay ahead of trends.

Trending though they may be, the colour institute’s annual choice is often controversial.

In 2013, when it picked emerald green as the colour of the year, people either liked it or hated it. The previous year’s choice of Tangerine Tango prompted an orange-averse woman to call Pantone to express her distaste, according to the company.

“Even if you have a knee-jerk reaction to it, if you see it appearing on a website or in a store window or an anchor wearing it on television, you start to pick up on it and think, ‘OK, hmm, maybe I need to get something with emerald green in it’,” Pressman says.

More Than Just A Colour Choice

The choice of colour of the year is more than just a reflection of the colours we’re starting to see. It can reflect what’s needed at the time.

The company’s 2016 choices of Rose Quartz and Serenity was a response to the rising use of “millennial pink” and a reflection of society’s increased blurring of gender norms - with pink and blue being worn interchangeably by a younger demographic.

2017’s choice of Greenery was a reaction to the 2016 U.S. presidential election and the need for renewal. And 2018’s choice of Ultra Violet continued in that vein “communicating originality, ingenuity and visionary thinking pointing toward the future,” according to Pantone’s website.

Influence Hard To Determine

While it’s hard to define how tangibly Pantone’s colour of the year affects the choices designers and brands make in the long-term - particularly knowing there’ll be some other colour chosen in another twelve months - you will see it popping up on products, at least on the day it’s announced.

In recent years, Pantone has partnered with several brands to help market its chosen colour.

Advertising agency Sub Rosa has worked with the colour company since 2013 to market the colour of the year, primarily through the press and the creative community. A lot of that marketing comes through partnerships with brands that will often release limited runs of products in that year’s chosen colour, which sometimes out-perform a brand’s regular hues.

From time to time the colour even pops up somewhere mainstream.

Cerulean - Pantone’s very first colour of the year, from the year 2000 - even gets a mention in a pivotal scene of 2006’s The Devil Wears Prada. Uttered by none other than Meryl Streep.

A Chicken And Egg Question

How much influence the world has on the company’s yearly choice, and how much the choice has on the world is still hard to define. The chicken and egg question remains.

Either way, 21 years on, each year, December finds us talking about a former paint company called Pantone.

Something that surely makes other brands emerald green with envy.