Tag Archives: pantone

Colour of the Year :(

culture, design, fashion, news, opinions/rants, ,

It’s that time of year again. No – not Christmas. It’s that time when we get announcements about colour of the year. Pantone – the undisputed heavy weight champion of the world – when it comes to such matters has announced that the colour of 2022 is periwinkle.

Maybe it’s just me, but I cannot get excited by the colour of the year. To be fair, it’s not just plucked from nowhere. Colour of the year, like colour forecasting, is the result of a process that links colour to the cultural trends and values of our time – the zeitgeist, if you will. However, there are two reasons why I can’t get excited.

The first is that it is so trite. Colour forecasting is a little better. But just because Pantone have announced this insipid violet colour is the colour of the year, I am not going to be changing my purchasing habits. I won’t be buying purple trousers, a purple volvo or decorating my house in periwinkle any time soon. It seems to me that colour of the year is just a publicity stunt, a marketing device.

The second is that in terms of colour forecasting generally I fall into the camp of people that believe that it does more harm than good. If we take the textile and apparel industry, as an example, our consumption behaviour is simply unsustainable. As noted in fastcompany, our obsession with colour trends is killing the planet.

To be fair, there is another side of the argument. Those on that side would argue that colour forecasting helps companies to produce products in colours that people want and that reduces waste. However, I just don’t buy it. There is scant evidence that colour forecasting ‘works’ at all and the relentless pushing of the idea that we have to keep buying new stuff to keep up with colour trends is harmful in my opinion. Instead of obsessing with colour of the year we should be buying things in colours that we like. We don’t need people to tell us what is trendy. Just buy what you like and stick with it.

RYB primaries

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There are two phrases I keep seeing written down all over the internet that cause my blood pressure to increase.

The first is that the colour primaries are red, yellow and blue (RYB). And the second is that the primaries are colours that cannot be made by mixing other colours. Neither of these statements are true, of course.

The first statement makes no distinction between additive colour mixing (of lights) and subtractive colour mixing (of paints and inks) but subtractive colour mixing is normally implied. However, RYB is a relatively poor choice for three colour primaries. The range of colours that can be produced is actually quite small. For most painters and artists it doesn’t matter because very few work in just three primaries – if they did so they would probably be frustrated by the small gamut of colours achievable. Many artists (painters) will use 10 or more basic colours to mix their palette. However, there is a group of people who care passionately about the gamut of colours that can be obtained by mixing three colour primaries – that is the people who work for companies such as HP and Canon. These companies make CMYK printers for the consumer market and their jobs depend upon consumers liking their printers. They understand that the largest gamut (in subtractive mixing) can be obtained if the primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY). The teaching of RYB as the (subtractive) primaries should be stopped. It’s already gone on for far too long.

One reason I don’t like the teaching of RYB as being the subtractive primaries, in addition to the fact that it is wrong, is that it confuses people who are trying to learn colour theory. This is because red, yellow and blue seem to be quite pure colours and this encourages people to hold the second belief I don’t like which is that the primaries are pure colours that cannot be mixed from other colours. If people understood that the primaries were CMY it would be less tempting to hold this belief about the purity of the primaries. Of course, if you make a palette of colours of three primaries then it is true that no mixture of two or more colours from that palette can match any of the primaries. However, there are other colours (that are outside the gamut of the primary system) that could be mixed together to match the primaries. This false notion of purity confuses the real issue – that is, that the subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow because the additive primaries are red, green and blue. Look at this picture below:

The additive primaries are red, green and blue and the secondaries are cyan, magenta and yellow. Correspondingly, the subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow and the subtractive secondaries are red, green and blue. Simple.

I wrote about this before so for a slightly different perspective see my earlier post.

Perhaps I am so agitated about it today because I am just watching England getting trounced by Ireland at rugby when the Grand Slam was so tantalisingly close. Or maybe I will feel just the same tomorrow.

Pantone Plus

design, professional, , ,

Everyone who works in colour has heard of Pantone. The Pantone Matching System has been used for decades for colour specification and colour communication. This month Pantone have unveiled a new system – Pantone Plus. Apparently, Pantone Plus provides users with expanded colour sets and more intuitive selection method to help streamline the creative process. I look forward to seeing it.