Pantone Is Going With an Old Classic for Its 2020 Color of the Year

It’s the color of gentility, Pepsi cans, and a cloudless sky. It
also happens to be the color of the Democratic party, Miles Davis’s
most famous album, and a three-year period in Picasso’s career. But
according to Pantone, the authoritative color experts, we’re not
meant to read too much into those references.

For the 21st Color of the Year, Pantone has picked classic blue,
which, according to Leatrice Eiseman, the director of Pantone’s
Color Institute, is a “solid and dependable hue we can always rely
on. Classic blue encourages us to look beyond the obvious, to
expand our thinking, [and to] increase our perspective and open the
flow of communication.”

Perhaps one (ironic) reason we’ve been inhibited from such
boundless, free-flowing communication is because of the rise of
technology. Classic blue, as opposed to the promises of Facebook,
denotes, as the company says, “honesty and the promise of
protection.”

It may seem like a lot of pressure to put on one color. But it
makes sense that Pantone would air on the side of caution after the
backlash that followed last year’s announcement
of “Living Coral” as the color of 2019. Living coral died very,
very quickly.

The company has a history of choosing blues as colors of the
year. In 2000, it was cerulean; in 2003, aqua sky. Two years later,
it was blue turquoise, then blue Iris in 2008 and “serenity” (along
with rose quartz) in 2016.

Another company chiming in is Shutterstock, which sells stock
images and music and provides editing tools. In its recently
released Color Trends 2020 report, which looks at what
colors are cropping up more and more, it says the hottest colors
are lush lava, aqua menthe, and—what else?—phantom blue.

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Color of the Year appeared first on artnet News.