Pantone's hot color of the year is a warm, golden shade of yellow it named Mimosa.
"The color yellow exemplifies the warmth and nurturing quality of the sun, properties we as humans are naturally drawn to for reassurance," explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute®. "Mimosa also speaks to enlightenment, as it is a hue that sparks imagination and innovation."
Wouldn't it be a cool job if your main role was figuring out color trends of the future?
Maclife.com interviewed Eiseman to find out how she does it:
Eiseman doesn’t spend her working days locked up in a room crunching data or aiming darts at a brilliantly hued board to see where they land. Rather, she identifies color trends by synthesizing history, current events, psychology, marketing principles, fine art, pop art, and street fashion, along with all the information culled from her own color surveys.
“Right now, I’m researching the color preferences prevalent during previous recessions,” Eiseman says. “What I’m finding is that neutrals are preferred during economic downturns, especially for big-ticket items. People don’t want to invest in trendy-colored items when times are tough. They’re looking for stability and longevity.”
Nevertheless, Eiseman says that flooding the market with beige items isn’t necessarily the right approach right now. Instead, manufacturers should focus on coming up with new ways of combining neutrals with livelier colors to “tweak the consumer’s eye and spark interest.
Yellow was very prevalent in the fashion and interior design feel of 2008, particularly when teamed with gray, but I was a little surprised that Pantone didn't move away from it in a new direction for 2009.
Anyway, it's kind of a bad color for blondes.
Thoughts?