Is there a sweeter gift for a designer and a chocolate lover? The Barcelona based design agency BLOCD created this beautiful Pantone-inspired swatch deck containing chocolate with a lovely spectrum of shades. The inspiration – the designers themselves! “”If anything defines us, it’s our expertise with a solid background in graphic design. That’s the reason why we chose a Pantone, an indispensable tool for any designer, combining it with an appreciated product by our clients and friends, in this case chocolate. Our particular Pantone had different chocolate colour ranges, which symbolize the care and attention that we pay to all our projects and the desire to share with our people the joy of tasting this delightful chocolate.” There are a lot of beautiful packaging out there, but this one takes the cake (or the chocolate bar).
Drum roll please….Pantone’s colour of the year is….2 colours?
Pantone’s selection for the 2016 Colour of The Year came as a surprise, not only in the quantity of their choice (they picked two – whoa!) but also in their actual swatch selections.
Rose Quartz (13-1520), a soft cool pink, and Serenity (15-3919), a tone of muted powder blue and lavender blended together, were chosen in to blur gender in the design sphere while simultaneously evoking peacefulness and calmness. The two pastel shades are reminiscent, but not identical, to the stereotypical colours you would associate to a male/female nursery.
2015 turned out to be an important year for the international transgender community, and Pantone’s choice of neutral versions of these two gendered, emblematic colours reminded our team of such worldwide events. The combination of these peaceful tones are symbolic of what society would like to see when it comes to distinguishing men and women in all spheres: biological, professional, and personal.
Simultaneously, our team also contemplated if Pantone would be completely successful in how their audiences will respond to their colour choices, and the notions of gender surrounding them. Do Pantone’s colour choices conflict with their concept? Are they merely (unintentionally) reinforcing these stereotypes? Let us know your thoughts!
I forgot about this one! A post I wrote in January and forgot to publish. Better late than never . . .
To understand why this post is cool it helps if you have a basic idea of what Pantone is. If you’re in the know just skip the next paragraph and get to the good stuff quicker.
Pantone Inc. is a U.S. corporation that is best known for its PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM® (Yes, that’s PMS for short…some marketing director was asleep in that meeting). PMS is a proprietary color space used in a variety of industries, primarily printing, though sometimes in the manufacture of colored paint, fabric and plastics. The idea behind PMS is to allow designers to ‘color match’ specific colors when a design enters production stage—regardless of the equipment used to produce the color. This system has been widely adopted by graphic designers, reproduction and printing houses for a number of years now.
Pantone seems to be creeping into fashion, household products, office supplies…just about everything. Below are some fun Pantone projects for your viewing pleasure.
[Pantone handbags from Mango in the UK]
[Pantone carpet from The Mohawk Group]
[Pantone glasses from Arm One]
[Pantone flight stool from British design team Barber Osgerby. Pantone decided to sell a limited edition of these stools on their website and Lawrence Herbert, founder and innovator of the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, has signed 20 of them! Click here to get your own flight stool!]