Pantone Announces the Colors of the Year 2021
No, that wasn’t a typo in the headline! Pantone has announced its color of the year for 2021…and there’s two of them! Ultimate Gray and Illuminating (a solar shade of yellow) were chosen by Pantone to reflect the current mood of a world facing an unprecedented crisis.
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The 2021 dual colors of the year duplicates a similar move that Pantone made for its 2016 color of the year. The pairing that year was Rose Quartz (a pink) and Serenity (a blue).
Pantone explained its selection of dual colors as reflecting the inability of a single color to embody the current world reality:
“The selection of two independent colors highlight how different elements come together to express a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting, conveying the idea that it’s not about one color or one person, it’s about more than one. The union of an enduring Ultimate Gray with the vibrant yellow Illuminating expresses a message of positivity supported by fortitude,” said Leatrice Eiseman, Executive Director of the Pantone Color Institute. “Practical and rock solid but at the same time warming and optimistic, this is a color combination that gives us resilience and hope. We need to feel encouraged and uplifted, this is essential to the human spirit.”
Let’s look at the colors one at a time!
Illuminating
It’s not too surprising to see a yellow tone in Pantone’s Color of the Year palette for 2021, since yellow has been quite a trendy shade in recent seasons. I was a bit surprised that the tone selected was a more lemon-y tone. Based on what I’ve been seeing in products, I was expecting a color of yellow more on the mustard side. However, this more lemon color coordinates better with gray and since Pantone is creating a set for color of the year, that may have been a factor in the selection of the tone.
Illuminating is described by Pantone as “energetic”, “warming” and “optimistic”, among other positive terms. It’s a forward-looking color, embodying the dream of a better life post-Covid. From a design standpoint in papercrafts, it’s a fairly widely used tone already. Yellow tones similar to illuminating commonly appear in more brightly colored “graphic” style lines, and in child-themed lines.
For graphics professionals, here are the key color codes for Illuminating:
Pantone 13-0647 TCX
sRGB: 245 223 77
Hex: #F5DF4D
Would you like to create papercrafts with Pantone Color of the Year 2021 Illuminating? Here’s some product ideas that are close in tone to get you started!
Ultimate Gray
The uncertainty of covid has companies looking for safety - and that includes retreating to the safety of time-tested classics in their products. Abandoning last year’s navy-as-a-neutral, fashion turned instead to gray (eclipsed only by black) as an almost ubiquitous neutral on the runways for spring/summer 2021.
Pantone describes Ultimate Gray as “solid” as well as having “fortitude” and “endurance” in their announcement. This color reflects the weight of the current covid challenges on the mood of designers and consumers.
Will scrapbooking follow the turn to gray as the dominant neutral ? I doubt it. But we may seem more incorporation of gray in patterns and embellishments, as an accent or base color. But I doubt we’ll see gray become a a neutral backdrop like kraft is routinely used for.
For graphics professionals, here are the key color codes for Ultimate Gray:
Pantone 17-5104 TCX
sRGB: 147 149 151
Hex: #939597
Here’s some product ideas for creating with Pantone Color of the Year 2021 Ultimate Gray. (Grays are very hard to match, so I tried to find products that were close in tone to the right color. Some may be a shade lighter or darker than the Pantone selection but hopefully they are close.)
