Pantone Colors of the Year, 2001-2013

( Pantone / December 6, 2012 )

Pantone's color of the year for 2013 is Emerald, shown in the center. It is surrounded by previous colors of the year, clockwise from top left: Tangerine Tango (2012), Honeysuckle (2011), Turquoise (2010), Mimosa (2009), Blue Iris (2008), Chili Pepper (2007), Sand Dollar (2006), Blue Turquoise (2005), Tigerlily (2004), Aqua Sky (2003), True Red (2002) and Fuchsia Rose (2001).

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David Brooks1 at 3:28 AM December 10, 2012

Interesting choices.    All seem to be very bright, quite saturated midtones.     They're almost all too unsubtle--   too candylike and "merry" in a circuslike way---   for me to get really excited about their beauty,   but hey,   what do I know from public tastes.    They seem geared to please young children or the extreme color novice adult.

Interestingly, it's a challenge appreciating just one color when it boldly is tapped thus as the year's star color;   Josef Albers and others have well demonstrated that colors only "mean" anything,    have any cachet,     when they are juxtaposed against some other color or colors.

Apparently,   very few Americans can pick out the trademarked "Coca-Cola red" when a swatch of it appears amidst other similar reds.   We humans tend to have bad "color memory",    mainly because,   again,   colors only have "identity"...     when they're abutted up against other colors.

Is PANTONE implying that these selected colors somehow adumbrate a national zeitgeist, divined a month or two before their actual star year?

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