Pantone Chose Two Pastels as Their Joint 2016 Color of the Year

For the past 16 years, the color experts at Pantone have selected a shade to be their official Color of the Year. For the first time ever, the company has chosen to blend two shades, PANTONE 15-3919 Serenity and PANTONE 13-1520 Rose Quartz, and are calling it the official Color of the Year for 2016.

Both colors selected are from a pool of 210 new shades that Pantone introduced this past summer. For the team at the Pantone Color Institute tasked with selecting the color each year, the soft pastel shades of pink and blue together "embody a mindset of tranquility and inner peace." The video announcing the selection (above) uses chaotic quick cuts and footage of war and destruction to represent the past year, and contrasts it with soft music, slow motion, peaceful imagery, and floating text (words like "wellness," "duality," and "compatible") that illustrate what the colors mean to Pantone.

Pantone

Pantone

In a press release, Pantone Color Institute Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman spoke more about this year's choice and contextualized the shades as a reflection of the world:

"In many parts of the world we are experiencing a gender blur as it relates to fashion, which has in turn impacted color trends throughout all other areas of design. This more unilateral approach to color is coinciding with societal movements toward gender equality and fluidity, the consumers’ increased comfort with using color as a form of expression which includes a generation that has less concern about being typecast or judged, and an open exchange of digital information that has opened our eyes to different approaches to color usage."

Also as a part of the Color of the Year 2016 campaign, Pantone partnered with street artists Werc, Man One, and Marka27 to create murals inspired by the shades in Miami, New York City, and Venice, California, and used Instagram to reveal the color selection and artwork to the world. Progress photos of each mural will be shared to the @Pantone Instagram account, as well as the artists' individual accounts.