What's with the Pantone Color of the Year?

You may have heard of the Pantone colors before. If not, allow us to share a little bit about the Pantone Color System and why it is important in the color printing industry.

The Pantone Color System was created in 1963 to solve the complex problem of color matching in the printing industry. With this system, Pantone gave a number to classify every color, in every tone and tint. It became the easiest way to communicate and match colors.

The Pantone Color Institute is globally recognized as the leading source of color expertise. They help their clients “strategically address color challenges and develop a color and design approach consistent with their brand vision”. Source

Fast forward to the year 2000, the Institute created the ‘Pantone Color of the Year’ as a trendsetting concept to reflect the global “mood” of a particular period in time. For example, the color of the year for 2022 is “Very Peri”. As quoted from Pantone, “displaying a carefree confidence and a daring curiosity that animates our creative spirit, inquisitive and intriguing PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri helps us to embrace this altered landscape of possibilities, opening us up to a new vision as we rewrite our lives”.

The announcement of the Pantone Color of the Year has become a cultural phenomenon within the global design industry, brands, and color enthusiasts.

From a brand perspective at People of Color, it’s fun to see what the color of the year is, just to see if we’ve offered a color exact or close to it in one of our previous collections. However, we don’t use the color of the year to dictate color selections for our collections. We strive to be authentic to our mission of telling the stories of people of color from all over the world through our nail polish collections. We let those collection themes and stories dictate which colors we choose. 

This part of our curation process is most important as we strive to respectfully and authentically share cultures and experiences through our collections. It is important then for us not to be driven by what is “popular”.

Color is such an important part of our world and it’s such a great honor to be part of the nail industry and use color to impact the world in a special way.

Do you follow color trends? How do color trends affect your shopping habits?