Well, we can all let out our breath now. The year is new, last year’s gone. And Pantone has announced its color of the year for 2008. It’s a boy. An ambivalent boy, it seems. Blue Iris, or as we in the biz like to call it, familiarly, PANTONE 18-3943, is the color. Leatrice Eiseman, one of those color wonks at Pantone tries to justify the choice,

          o “As a reflection of the times, Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspect of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic. Look for it artfully combined with deeper plums, red-browns, yellow-greens, grapes and grays.”
          o And this is what I come away with after that. What kind of name is Leatrice?
Blue Iris is a purpley color. I’m not so sure about its soul-searching capability, but it does remind me of one of those colors I might see on a live link on a web page. So I guess we may just see it a lot in that sense. It’s a little too grape meets aubergine (that’s eggplant for those not in with fashionable words), and it seems a bit heavy. I think it was back in the nineties that we were working through eggplant purple and deep leaf green. Ah to be able to go back to those innocent times. Too late, I’m afraid. But, at least the color of the year is blue, which says some good things about the election.

Andrew Shalat   

andrew@shalat.com

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