Via my Facebook page, I incorrectly predicted the color that Pantone would select as their color of the year for 2019. I predicted blue. As you can tell, Living Coral is NOT blue. Before I get too deep into my opinion on this particular color, you should know that I dislike pink with a hatred that runs deep. For me the color pink stands for everything that I am not, which is girly.
My favorite color is orange, and while many like to argue with me that coral is orange, I like to say that it is a shade of pink that wishes it was orange; and I will stand by this opinion until the day I die. Do I think that Pantone made a good choice this year? No, but my opinion is biased because I came into this already hating the color pink. So, in the following paragraphs I will give it a review that will try to stay objective and opinion free, because I have already stated my opinion, which is summed up in one word: "yuck."
The Pantone of the Year is Pantone 16-1546, or as they named it (and I have already stated) Living Coral. Pantone says the following about their choice: "Vibrant, yet mellow PANTONE 16-1546 Living Coral embraces us with warmth and nourishment to provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment" (Pantone.com). Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute says: "Color is an equalizing lens through which we experience our natural and digital realities and this is particularly true for Living Coral. With consumers craving human interaction and social connection, the humanizing, and heartening qualities displayed by the convivial PANTONE Living Coral hit a responsive cord." While watching the fishies on the Pantone 2019 page swim around their coral filled home I see the environmental tie in, which is a nice relief from the usual green. However, considering the fact that I hate pink, there is no "equalizing lens."
Hopefully next year Pantone will pick a winner, but I would not get my hopes up. Pantone's annual choices have been off the mark for a long time; if this continues much longer, Pantone will become irrelevant for anything other than a unifying universal color language. If they want to pick a winner next year, I would suggest that they leave Pantone head quarters and look for the true trends out in the real world... and maybe ask some designers what the colors their clients are requesting in their graphic work; because I can tell you this: none of mine are asking for Living Coral.
The Color Psychology of Pantone 16-1546 (According to Me)
"Color psychology is the study of colors in relation to human behavior" (source). So what does a pink that wishes it was orange envoke in humans? According to Nicole Ferreira, pink is a color that is typically reserved for brands that serve a primarily female audience. In the same article she writes that orange represents: creativity, adventure, enthusiasm, success, and balance (source). So one can conclude that a pink that wishes it was orange could be the color for creative females... but not this particular creative female. I will always prefer an orange that does not have to wish it was orange, it will always be #FF6600 for me.
Back to Main Blog Page