Feeling Peachy?

Each year Pantone, a leading source of color expertise, chooses a Color of the Year for the following year. The upcoming year, 2024, they have announced the color of the year as:

“PANTONE 13-1023 Peach Fuzz captures our desire to nurture ourselves and others. It’s a velvety gentle peach tone whose all-embracing spirit enriches mind, body, and soul.”

Why Peach Fuzz for 2024?

“In seeking a hue that echoes our innate yearning for closeness and connection, we chose a color radiant with warmth and modern elegance. A shade that resonates with compassion, offers a tactile embrace, and effortlessly bridges the youthful with the timeless.” States, Leatrice Eiseman Executive Director, Pantone Color Institute™. 

In an interview with Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute, she tells the behind the scenes of Pantone Color of The Year history, reasoning, and what the color of the year represents stating; “That’s the difference between a more short-lived fad and a lifestyle trend. Pantone Color of the Year is reflective of a lifestyle trend. It’s about what’s happening in the zeitgeist at a macro level. It’s not going to represent a singular trend that you can only find in the US or only find in Asia. It’s global.”

“The emotional aspect of color is also a large aspect of our decision making. We want to ensure that the colors we select reflect what is taking place in our global culture at a specific moment in time. With color and context so intertwined, there really are reasons why a color family or individual color comes into prominence when it does. For the most part, the popularity of a color is symbolic of the age we live in. So, while each year is unique, and we look at each year separately, we also do look back to where we have been since we began this program in 1999.”

How does the selection process work? How does Pantone decide the Color of the Year every year?

The Pantone Color of the Year selection process entails thoughtful consideration and trend analysis. It is a culmination of the macro-level color trend forecasting and research that the global team involved with the Pantone Color Institute conducts year-round that informs this selection, as well as the colors that get included into our color trend forecasting products.

What’s especially fascinating to me about the Pantone Color of the Year selection process is that although our Pantone Color Institute members reside in disparate locations and are involved in differing areas of design, we are always able to come to a consensus.

We approach our color selection in a very pure way. No one on our global team comes to any Pantone Color of the Year discussion with a commercial agenda or personal preferences. Instead, we each approach our Pantone Color of the Year color selection in a very pure way. As we like to say, “we love all of our colors equally.”

In 2024, Pantone Color of the Year turns 25!

Laurie Pressman, states that “Through the years the Pantone Color of the Year program has become a globally iconic cultural touchstone, capturing the imagination of so many designers, brands, and consumers.  As we celebrate the 25th year of our Pantone Color of the Year program and the fundamental role color plays in our shared human experience, it is our hope that we have inspired you to look at color in a different way — that color and its connection to emotion and the expression of human feelings will take on a new significance, causing your eye to linger a little longer throughout the day on the tints and tones that surround you, as history unfolds from moment to moment.”

These influences and colors chosen every year are what help shape over 10 million designers and producers, including MMG. We use Pantone to match logos, websites, and print media. Color is an icon in the design industry and sets the mood for a whole project, MMG relies on Pantone for vibrant and distinct color matching that is universal all over the world.

Serena Ahlquist, Media Manager at MMG tells her thoughts on the Color of The Year; “With any new year, is a new beginning and to me, new beginnings are bright, beautiful, warm, and exciting and I think Pantone nailed it with the 2024 Peach Fuzz. It represents more than just warmth, it represents the self-care, nourishment journey that we have all been trying to get back to since 2020. It is a reminder that we can keep going and keep showing up for not only ourselves, but for others.”

To learn more about Pantone and The Color of The Year, please visit: https://www.pantone.com/articles/color-of-the-year/choosing-the-pantone-color-of-the-year