Pantone Announces Color of the Year 2022

Pantone unveiled Very Peri as the color of the year for the year 2022. The company described the color as “A periwinkle shade of blue”.

The company Pantone, best known for its Pantone Color System provides a universal language of color during every stage of the workflow for brands and manufacturers.

Every year since its foundation in 2000, the color experts at Pantone analyze numerous color trends, influences from the art, entertainment, fashion, design, and lifestyle industries to come up with a color that highlights the top global trends.

Laurie Pressman, vice president of the Pantone Color Institute said in a statement: “As society continues to recognize color as a critical form of communication and as a way to express and affect ideas and emotions and engage and connect, the complexity of this new red-violet-infused blue hue highlights the expansive possibilities that lie before us.”

Introducing the Pantone Color of the Year 2022, PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri, a dynamic periwinkle blue hue with a vivifying violet red undertone blends the faithfulness and constancy of blue with the energy and excitement of red. Learn more: https://t.co/eNIwkTq2K8 pic.twitter.com/hBfiDusFKU

— PANTONE (@pantone) December 9, 2021

Very Peri: Color of the Year 2022

The color Very Peri is supposed to be a dynamic shade of periwinkle blue with a vibrant, violet-red undertone designed to complement the glowing touchscreens of the digital world and the creative possibilities of the future.

The shade created by the company – PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri – belongs in the blue color family but has a violet-red undertone.

While the blue part of the color is an organic hue found in nature, the red undertone is nearly impossible to be seen in the low-resolution graphics and displays. The color’s iridescence needs higher fidelity 3D-rendered texture and quite possible a good pair of eyes to be seen properly.

Inspiration for the Color

In the 22 years since the company started, this was the first time they actually created a brand new color for the year rather than picking a color from their pre-existing colors in the archive.

This year the company was inspired by technology, NFTs, and the increasing reliance of humanity on technology. Creating a new color was symbolic of the changes that occurred this year, an intense duration of loneliness, uncertainty, and isolation.

Very Peri was mostly influenced by the lockdown and the greatest desire to overcome the Covid-19 Pandemic. To represent this all, the company decided to institute blended blue that represents faithfulness and consistency and a tiny hint of red that conveys energy and excitement.

Both combined form a blue hue that conveys a fresh start and innovation, the two most needed elements for the coming year.

Colors of the Previous Years

Following are some of the previous Colors of the year:

• 2019- Living Coral
• 2020- Classic Blue
• 2021- Ultimate Gray and Illuminating

Pantone is partnering up with organizations and brands like Microsoft to launch Very Peri as a series of wallpapers, filters, and even non-digital objects like sneakers. Very Peri is also being commemorated as Tezos NFT.