Pantone has announced the 2024 Colour of The Year, and it’s a soft, gentle pinky-orange tone, named “Peach Fuzz”. A stark contrast to last year’s “Viva Magenta”, that’s for sure. We asked our design team what they thought of this year’s colour, and it opened up an interesting discussion around the concept as a whole. It’s safe to say we’re all slightly cynical…
What does the Dawn team think?
Our MD, Dave, started out by suggesting that the Colour of the Year is somewhat of a pointless annual exercise. That trends around colour usage make sense in the interior design world to some extent, and fashion too, but when used in a branding capacity, any kind of “trend” like this is detrimental to a brand rather than something that should be used as a way of staying relevant. Staying “true to your colours” applies in quite a literal sense.
On staying relevant, our Head of Design, Oli Furze, said that the Colour of the Year seems to be a tactic for Pantone to remain relevant, as a world where print identifiers like Pantone references are less needed.
Amy, our Digital Marketing Manager, sees it from a marketing perspective. She notes that the multiple brand collaborations that appear when the new colour is announced, such as this year’s Motorola collab which sees a Peach Fuzz coloured back on two of its phone models, is purely just another way of selling more stuff. Pantone, on the Colour of the Year page on the website, suggests that brands “Partner with Pantone to showcase your products in the Color of the Year and reach a global audience that’s passionate about design and color”. In other words, do you want to use the reach of the annual Pantone campaign as a part of your brand awareness campaign this year?
Alice is rather indifferent to the announcement. She says it will be forgotten by January, and doesn’t really mean anything in the design world. Will agrees, arguing that it might be different if they focussed more heavily on the rationale behind the colour choice.
Why is Peach Fuzz the 2024 Colour of the Year?
This year, Pantone states that the reason behind the colour is as follows:
“The color we selected to be our Pantone Color of the Year 2024 needed to express our desire to want to be close to those we love and the joy we get when allowing ourselves to tune into who we are and just savor a moment of quiet time alone. It needed to be a color whose warm and welcoming embrace conveyed a message of compassion and empathy”.
Who decides the Colour of the Year?
A team of global colour experts at the Pantone Color Institute decide on the colour of the year. They look for inspiration across many industries, including TV and film, what has been influential that year throughout global culture, art, design, fashion, what’s going on in the economy, popular travel destinations, and more.
What do you think about the 2024 Colour of the Year?
Are you going to use it to influence anything you do in 2024? Or will you forget about it altogether in a week’s time?
