Etsy Announces ‘Berry’ As The 2024 Colour Of The Year Promoting A Romantic Shift From Pink To Maturity

In a deviation from the vibrant pinks that took center stage in 2023, Etsy, the online marketplace known for its unique and handcrafted items, has declared ‘Berry’ as its Color of the Year for 2024. Described as a color deeper than pink yet softer than red, Berry embodies a mature and romantic shade that resonates with the overarching theme of celebrating romance and a more sophisticated approach to life.

Designer: Etsy

The announcement of Berry as Etsy’s Color of the Year comes on the heels of the Barbie pink craze, since the release of the movie, that dominated 2023. While the bright and bold pink hues were widely embraced and loved, the shift towards Berry reflects changing consumer preferences. Etsy reports a 58% drop in searches for hot pink decor items, signaling a desire for a more nuanced and versatile color palette.

Berry’s appeal lies in its ability to offer a grown-up version of the popular pink trend. The color seamlessly blends rich reds and soothing blue tones, creating a deep yet soft hue that exudes elegance and romance. This sophisticated pop of color makes Berry a versatile choice, suitable for year-round use and integration into various aspects of life, including home decor and personal fashion.

Etsy anticipates that Berry will become a staple favorite, finding its way into a lot of handmade items showcased on the platform. From home decorations to fashion accessories, the color’s adaptability allows it to serve as the perfect backdrop for both subtle and statement pieces. This versatility ensures that Berry can effortlessly elevate any space or wardrobe with a touch of romance.

Etsy’s Color of the Year announcement aligns with a broader trend for 2024, celebrating the romanticization of life. The website encourages users to embrace this new romantic era by transforming their spaces into self-care sanctuaries or incorporating ballet-inspired flats and soft silky fabrics into their wardrobes. Berry becomes the symbol of this romantic shift, inviting individuals to infuse a sense of sophistication and depth into their lives.

As Etsy officially ushers in the romantic era of 2024 with the introduction of Berry as the Color of the Year, the marketplace’s global community of sellers and buyers is expected to embrace this charming hue. The transition from hot pink to Berry reflects evolving tastes and preferences, offering a fresh alternative that captures the essence of romance without compromising on maturity and versatility. Whether incorporated into home decor or personal fashion, Berry is set to leave its mark on the world of handmade and unique creations throughout the year.

The post Etsy Announces ‘Berry’ As The 2024 Colour Of The Year Promoting A Romantic Shift From Pink To Maturity first appeared on Yanko Design.

The big problem with Pantone’s Color of the Year… and why it desperately needs to be fixed.

Colors, for Pantone, are their entire life. They’re literally what the company’s foundation rests on, and I’m sure people who work at Pantone are extremely passionate about the intricate nuances of hues, shades, tints, balance, saturation, palettes, pigments, HEX codes, or any of the jargon associated with colors… but colors, for Pantone, also present an incredibly lucrative business model (the company was valued at $180 million in 2007); and therein lies the massive problem.

Another year, another hue, more merchandise…

Pantone unveiled its Color Of The Year 2022 this week – a fine shade of “dynamic periwinkle blue hue with a vivifying violet-red undertone” called Very Peri, meant to represent humanity embracing an “altered landscape” after an intense period of isolation, and “opening up to a new vision as we re-write our lives”. The tradition dates back to 2000, in a practice that Pantone conducts with representatives from various nations’ color standards groups. Every December, Pantone unveils its new color for the year moving forward, effectively instructing creatives and companies around the world of what their experts believe should be the new year’s palette. Creatives will base their designs off the colors, fashion industries will market new collections based on these palettes, and companies will push out merchandise with Pantone’s licensed hues to a hungry audience in what can best be described as a coordinated market effort to create demand and to fuel a cycle of consumerism… the kind of consumerism that conveniently renews each year and is associated with art and creativity so it feels less market-ey and more art-y. Cyclical consumerism is bad, but art is good… so the results lie in a massive grey area (Grey was ironically one of the colors of the year for 2021).

A brief history of the Pantone Color of the Year

Words from a Quartz article in 2019 perfectly sum up Pantone’s selection process: “Pantone’s color prediction is, in part, a self-fulfilling prophecy”. The selection of a hue isn’t based on an empirical survey or an analysis of a running trend. It is, for the most part, selected by a committee through creative intuition and debate, following which, the color is then propagated by an elaborate marketing campaign. It’s no coincidence that as soon as Pantone announces a Color of the Year, like clockwork, companies release merchandise in the same hue. Pantone doesn’t predict a trend, it simply orchestrates it. “Months before the unveiling in December, it enters into licensing agreements with various companies—from nail polish to hotel suites”, the Quartz article points out. “Suddenly, the color of the year is everywhere.”

The idea is absolute genius, since it creates anticipation, injecting excitement into an otherwise boring color business… After all, it’s not like Pantone is constantly “inventing” new colors – colors have existed for millennia – although the Very Peri hue is new to Pantone’s catalog and was specially developed for the year 2022 (former editor-in-chief of ELLE Decoration UK, Michelle Ogundehin, has some strong thoughts on this year’s choice of color). The issue, however, is that you can’t possibly pre-emptively hype a color’s prominence into modern culture. Even a “global authority on color” can’t possibly make a hue go viral… society is much more complicated than that. It (sometimes) works for fashion, but not colors. Although both act as channels for expression and communication, fashion is personal and subjective… colors, however, are much more universal. This also opens Pantone up to further scrutiny when the color “doesn’t work out”. Pantone picked a shade called “Greenery” as its Color Of The Year for 2017, a year when California saw massive wildfires; its color pick for 2019, Living Coral, seemed quite foot-in-mouth when the Great Barrier Reef Outlook Report of 2019 predicted a grim future for corals off the coast of Australia.

What the Color of the Year really symbolizes… for Pantone, and for everyone else.

Each year, the Color of the Year is announced amid fanfare, along with a press release from Pantone that provides a lengthy explanation of what the new hue of the year is supposed to represent. However, the Color of the Year means two very different things to both Pantone and us, the consumers of color. For Pantone, the Color of the Year represents an annual effort to ‘market’ a color and earn revenue based on merchandise and licensing… for us, however, the color represents what Pantone tells us, and almost inevitably, like a fortune cookie message gone wrong, the events of the year can prove to be Pantone’s very undoing. 2021’s colors, Hope and Illuminating Gray, came at a time when numerous countries experienced the deadly blows of the Delta variant wreaking more havoc in the pandemic’s global second wave, while others experienced great political and economic turmoil, and the entire world suffered the wrath of a supply chain crisis that experts estimate will last well into 2024. Colors are a business for Pantone, but for us humans, they’re still vessels for moods, feelings, and emotions.

That’s where the somewhat foolish idealist in me raises objections. The term “Color of the Year” in itself sounds misleading. It isn’t like a Best Actor award, or Sportsman of the Year award, where accolades are given based on performance or a track record. Contrary to what the phrase is ideally supposed to represent, it’s less of a color of the year and more of a trend or guideline of the year. The color is predictive, rather than reflective, and that’s where the problem really lies because you can predict trends, you can’t predict emotion. What the color tells us to feel for the entire year can sometimes wholly differ from what we end up feeling for the entire year. The symbolic message behind 2021’s Hope Yellow and Illuminating Gray would be painfully ironic to a Palestinian or an Afghan or a Uighur.

In retrospect, here’s what the real Colors of the Year looked like for 2020 and 2021, based on headlines and global sentiment.

2020 – Pantone Deep Water – Hospital Beds, Surgical Masks, Clearer Skies, Democrat Victory, WFH Softwares.

2021 – Pantone Storm – Ever Given, Chip Shortage, Squid Game, Greenery in the Arctic, Afghan Withdrawal, Palestine Protests

Things get tougher when the symbolism of the Color of the Year ends up being more literal than metaphorical – like in 2017 when Pantone chose ‘Greenery’ as their Color of the Year, or 2019 when they settled on ‘Living Coral’. In these cases, colors aren’t representative of a global mood or zeitgeist but are quite literally taken from nature, making the hollowness of the entire yearly charade much more apparent. One could argue buying a Living Coral edition of the 2019 Google Home Mini did absolutely nothing to raise awareness for coral bleaching, nor did it actually materially help the conditions of marine life in any way. Not that it’s Pantone’s job to fix the environment or heal the corals in the first place, but what is it if not ‘color appropriation’? Like cultural appropriation, ‘color appropriation’ is nothing more than borrowing a color and its emotional aspects and marketing it for economic gain.

How to fix it?

At the risk of sounding like a hypocrite, I don’t believe in getting rid of the Color of the Year. As ultimately meaningless as it may be in the long run to most of the population, it’s a fun little annual exercise that, at least for the creative community, gives us a little excitement and sparks our inspiration/imagination. That aside, maybe it’s time Pantone devises a new, more publicly inclusive way of picking their yearly colors instead of relying on an out-of-touch boardroom of executives and marketing heads. Maybe that way, the colors will actually mean something to us all, rather than being a woke marketing effort to broadcast messages of ‘hope’, ‘positivity’, and ‘exploration’ while companies make money off merchandise that’s only good for that particular year. The Pantone Color of the Year has the potential to be much more meaningful and impactful than simply being a revenue stream for global corporations… or conversely, embrace it for what it currently is and rebrand it to the Pantone “Trend Prediction of the Year”.

How about fixing it from a media perspective? After all, design, culture, and news websites like ours play a significant role in pushing these trends and their subsequent products. Truth be told, the reality probably won’t change unless Pantone decides to change first. It’s still in our nature to fawn over delicious hues and color palettes (because our aesthetic-driven minds are trained to), and as a blog, we’re still required to report on the intersection between design and news, which means blogs like ours will continue to showcase designs drenched in Pantone’s Very Peri. That being said, the purpose of this piece is to reflect on the 2-decade practice and propose a better way forward with the hope that Pantone realizes that the powers and capabilities of the color spectrum are far more than being simply drivers of consumerism.

The post The big problem with Pantone’s Color of the Year… and why it desperately needs to be fixed. first appeared on Yanko Design.

Ten products that showcase the Pantone 2019 Color of the Year in full CMF glory!

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Named as Pantone color of the year for 2019, Living Coral is an animating and life-affirming coral hue that signifies light-heartedness and positivity. The color is the kind that instantly makes one happy, with its touch of vibrance and warmth, and the minute you add it to a product, it stands out. Companies have, for long, used the coral color to make products look and feel youthful, and to make them add a splash of color to a space. Living Coral’s beauty especially lies in the fact that it goes well in any domain, fashion, interiors, consumer electronics, or even appliances. Heck, I’d wager that a Ferrari with a Living Coral paint job would look absolutely dope too. Almost a month into 2019, we’re here to take a look at ten of our favorite products that have wholeheartedly embraced Coral as a hue, using it wholly, or in part, to create a product that stands out, and looks great while doing so!
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01. Apple Watch Series 4 Nectarine Sports Loop
The Nectarine Sports Loop (along with the Watch Series 4) came just weeks before Pantone debuted their color of the year, and it’s almost as if Apple either knew, or they had some spectacular CMF Designers who just happened to feel that the color absolutely did justice to the Watch. There’s a silicone version of the Nectarine band too, but we prefer this woven nylon loop that’s breathable yet sweat-resistant. And it’s compatible with all versions of the Apple Watch!

Click Here to Buy Now

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02. Google Home & Home Mini (Living Coral Edition)
The coral version of Google’s smart speakers were released shortly after Pantone announced the color of 2019. While the Mini comes completely coated in the Living Coral hue (with a rather remarkable contrast between the woven texture on top and the hard plastic at the bottom), the Google Home does a dual-tone, with white on top, and the addition of a detachable coral fabric grille at the bottom. Don’t make me pick favorites. I like them both.

Click Here to Buy Now (Coral Google Home Mini)
Click Here to Buy Now (Coral Base for Google Home)

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03. Urbanears Plattan Coral On Ear Headphones
The tragedy of these headphones is that Urbanears only produced the Coral edition as a limited run. I still maintain that the Plattan headphones look absolutely heavenly in their coral color, treading a fine line between sporty and fashionable with a color that isn’t as red as the Beats headphones, but is the perfect hue to look absolutely dapper. Yes, dapper’s the word.

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04. Retroduck Q Wireless Charging Dock
Unlike its previous, wired version, the Retroduck Q comes with two changes. Firstly, the dock works wirelessly, charging your phones simply by placing them on the retro TV-esque stand… and secondly, the Retroduck Q ditches its ancestor’s more orange-heavy color for a delightful coral version, or as they call it, Carmine Red. The Retroduck Q just finished its round of crowdfunding and is still under development at the time of writing this article. We’ll be sure to drop a link when they’re ready to buy online!

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05. Kvell Pop Clock
Rather strangely titled Pop, the Kvell clock actually comes in a single color, making it quite the opposite of pop… but it makes up for that with the use of such an incredibly rich hue that I’m sure it’ll pop off any wall you mount it on. I’d recommend a white or light teal colored backdrop for this beauty. Even a light blue would work, given that corals are originally found against a backdrop of oceanic blue.

Click Here to Buy Now

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06. Dot&Bo Coral Pantone Clock
While most products embrace a hue, Dot&Bo’s Coral Pantone Clock embraces the entire shade card! With multiple hues arranged around the face of the clock, Dot&Bo’s timepiece is much more subtle than Kvell’s Pop Clock. After all, in-your-face vibrant decor isn’t for all homes.

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07. Vespa Coral Visor 2.0 Helmet
Vespa, the brand, stands on two pillars. Retro-Italian design, and an absolutely delicious color palette. The Visor 2.0 helmet has its share of both. Designed to pair perfectly with the adorable Italian legend-of-a-scooter, the Visor 2.0 Coral helmet will protect your brain and will blow the brains of pedestrians as they catch a glimpse of the Coral-colored helmet blurring past. Pairs well with a coral colored Vespa and the Italian countryside. Both sold separately.

Click Here to Buy Now

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08. Hip Bottle by Karim Rashid
Rashid was using vibrant hues like Coral long before Pantone named it the color of the year. A major part of Karim Rashid’s design legacy is his use of CMF as an absolute weapon. Take the Hip Bottle for instance. Add any other pastel color to the Hip Bottle and chances are it probably won’t stand out. Its form is simple, and the bottle isn’t as edgy as most sports bottles out there… but carefully drop the Coral hue on it and the Hip looks stunning. Also available in 5 other colors that don’t match up to the sheer beauty of the Coral variant.

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09. Bird of Paradise (2018) by KitchenAid
I could totally imagine myself walking into a kitchen with a tropical teal wallpaper with pineapple graphics on it, and surrounded by KitchenAid’s coral-colored appliances. Kitchenaid, in fact, began its own Color of the Year series last year, and believe it or not, Coral was their color of the year for 2018. Titled the Bird of Paradise, the entire collection of kitchen appliances sports the beautiful coral hue, right from the range of blenders to the stand mixer that I personally love most, probably because of its distinctive design, and my obsession for meringues (what, I’m human).

Click Here to Visit Store

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10. Pantone Color of the Year Mug (2019)
I’d be remiss if I didn’t include a product from Pantone’s own catalog. Every year, along with their announcement of the COTY (Color of the Year), Pantone also releases their own merchandise, from notebooks to thumb drives to mugs, that feature the Color of the Year in its Pantone-branded color accuracy. The mugs, however, are a standout because notebooks are too basic and thumb drives are practically obsolete. Besides, look at that mug and tell me it isn’t simply the most eye-catching mug ever.

Click Here to Buy Now

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