Color: More Than Art
Many of us may not realize it, but the use of color is not just about whimsy nor is it confined to artistic, playful endeavors. It happens to be a very big, serious business and plays a major role in our daily lives. It involves huge amounts of money including tremendous expenditure of time and energy. These are invested each year in planning the newest color palette and predicting colors trends that will reflect the upcoming emotional climate. (Consider consumption of items from the annual color palette art therapy, if you will. Who said that shopping was not good therapy? Once the annual color trend choices are made, they will be used for everything one could possibly think of consuming. Thus the yearly gamble is taken, after the color palette has been chosen, that consumers will be lured into making purchases in every industry but not until many months later.
This is predominant in the fashion industry, overflowing into interior design and other decorative industries. It weaves its way into fabrics and notions, trickles down into house paints, finds a home in house wares and comes to rest in bedding and bath accessories. It even colors the art/design world itself including, architecture, landscaping, graphic design, hand-crafts, floral design and the food industry.
According to the June 2004, 'Annual Color Forecast' Issue of the New York based magazine, Graphic Design USA, “Color communicates and color sells products, services, ideas and causes . . . ." To paraphrase their interpretation along with my own observations, color is considered a reflection of the mood of the country, its people and the events taking place. These predictions are made many, many months in advance of their debut as products. As much as color may seem to be the domain of art, color is very much a matter of science, psychology and big business as well.
Color Business, Institutes and Organizations
There are numerous organizations, institutes and businesses that are devoted to this science of predicting color trends and the yearly color palette. The grand dame of the fashion industry appears to reign over all of this. Companies reveal the color palette predictions with spectacular fanfare and at great expense. All one has to do is attend a designer's fashion show or see the movie, The Devil Wears Prada, to realize how seriously this is taken by the industry and how intensely we are influenced, manipulated, and even hypnotized by the predicted color trends and choice of color palette.
In the design/printing industry, Pantone products, have brought things all together for themselves as well as for all the other industries involved with color trends. They developed the standard color matching system (known as PMS) that insures accurate color reproduction throughout. Some of the companies and organizations involved with the science, psychology and business of color trends follow with these links to their sites: The Color Association of The United States, The Color Marketing Group, The Pantone Color Institute, and The International Color Consortium.
My Latest Favorite Colors
As one may have guessed by the title of this article, my recent passion has been for pink, preferable polka dots with pistachio, especially the ice cream version. I have lusted after and found items of almost every variety in my favorite 'flavors', from clothing and accessories, jewellery and notions (new and collectible), bed sheets, kitchen ware (also new and collectible), a tiny tin tea set, as well as note pads and other paper products.
I have also been able to find multitudes of items in a vast variety of categories from clothing, accessories, bedroom decor, kitchenware, toys, and even food. This is clearly an indication that these prognosticators of our taste in color in every walk of life are accurate to a fault. The fault, of course, is mine because I have indulged in purchasing just about everything I have found in these colors.
Reflections and Conclusions
But, what moods do pink and pistachio reflect? What events and activities do they symbolize? With all that has happened in the last two years in this country, the last colors one might select to represent the mood and events would be pink and pistachio. Perhaps, in the same way that Busby Berkeley's film extravaganzas entertained depression era audiences helping them forget their impoverished lives, pink and pistachio have made me smile and feel good during very trying times.
If that is the case for most of the US, then it has all been worth it. The time, energy and money that went into predicting the color trends for 2010 and the upcoming trends for 2011 have paid and will pay off. Making everything one could possibly want available in pink and pistachio was a very wise, insightful and profitable decision. It has kept people smiling in spite of everything that has been going on in the world lately. I wonder what the color trends for 2011 and 2012 will be. What's your guess?
Alison Gilbert - Alison Gilbert is the Digital Age Storyteller and Social Media Anthropologist. Her work is based upon experience and extensive research.
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