Colour of The Year — an Annual Vision from Pantone

Be colourful within the right colour of 2017

Henry Hu
hngstrm
5 min readDec 27, 2016

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Greenery, the colour of 2017 (photo credit: Pantone)

The well-known “Colour of The Year 2017” is officially released by Pantone in early December 2016. This, definitely declaims that we are about to say farewell to 2016 soon.

Pantone has made a clear definition of Colour of The Year from its official site:

A symbolic color selection; a color snapshot of what we see taking place in our global culture that serves as an expression of a mood and an attitude.

Greenery, defined by Pantone, is the one colour standing out to make 2017 more hopeful and environmental. All those imaginations create the reason to make the one as the colour of 2017.

This fine notification is fresh to me, and that drives me feeling curious to dig and learn more of it.

Pantone: An Expert in Colours

Pantone, a corporation headquartered in Carlstadt, New Jersey, established in 1962. ‘Pantone Matching System’(PMS) is one of the reasons making it so remarkable in things involved with COLOURS — a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, and also the manufacture of colored paint, fabric, and plastics.

Vintage Pantone colour cards (photo credit: Dogs & Dice)

But Pantone may not be the same Pantone where it started. It’s sold.

X-Rite Inc. purchasedd Pantone for US$180 million in October 2007. Unsurprisingly X-Rite Inc. is a supplier of colour measurement instruments and software.

Pantone Color Institute: Where The Colour of The Year Began

When it is down to Colour of The Year, you should not ignore ‘Pantone Color Institute’(a.k.a. PCI) if you’re digging history of Colour of The Year from Pantone. According to the official page, PCI is:

The Pantone Color Institute helps companies make the most informed decisions about color for their brands or products. Whether it is color trend forecasting, brand color development, custom color solutions, or product palette selection, the Pantone Color Institute can guide you through the development of a color strategy that fits your company’s unique needs.

Pantone Color Institute, where you live with colours (photo credit: Pantone)

Plus, another great sense from this institute you have to know of:

When 80% of human experience is filtered through the eyes, we understand that the choice of color is critical.

There is no any difficulty to understand why Colour of The Year was brought up. They just dig too much to make colours more interesting and valuable to people today.

List of Colour of The Year: 2000 to Now

You will not find it hard to locate the past yearly colours from 2000 to 2016. I here sort these wonderful colours in list to catch your eyeballs more:

Fascinating, isn’t it? Let’s roll it faster to the Colour of 2017. Shall we?

Meet Greenery — Colour of Year 2017

Yes! We do need more active and positive attitudes to build up a better year 2017. Greenery signifies several expressions: fresher, healthier, and more hopeful. Undoubtedly, it also stands out for a better vision of “environment”.

Greenery Demo #1 (photo credit: deMilked)
Greenery Demo #2 (photo credit: coshamie)

You may not think the colour of Pantone’s pick is perfect to you, but you can follow their attitude for life: pick a vision of your own, and live with it! All, Happy New Year 2017.

At last, don’t miss out Pantone’s commercial conceptual video for the Colour of The Year 2017.

about the author
HeNRy Hu (a.k.a. HHF)

  • Virgo Male
  • Founder of CHIGYOSHA / Story Teller / Naive Dreamer
  • Well experienced in marketing
  • Digitaddict
  • Contact me via email

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Henry Hu
hngstrm

Co-Founder of Chigyosha Marketing Co. A content creator and digital marketer. Addicted in data mining and content marketing. Passionated by visions and dreams.