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Color Memes: The Forecast Calls for a High-Visibility, Magnetic Orange

The business of imagining the future is often a colorful one, but especially for the people charged with picking "the new black." Centered around a top-level somewhat-secret meeting that happens twice a year in Europe, the process of hashing out the...
A model at London Fashion Week 2011 wearing tangerine tango.

The business of imagining the future is often a colorful one, but especially for the people charged with picking “the new black.” Centered around a top-level somewhat-secret meeting that happens twice a year in Europe, the process of hashing out the future of hues isn’t without controversy: is Pantone, the American color-standard-keeper that makes these forecasts, predicting or actually driving the future of color? In any case, color-picking relies on some pretty fancy buzz talk.

David Shah, a British-born, Amsterdam-based designer who heads the meeting, is “like novelist William Gibson's trend-hunter Cayce Pollard,” unleasing “a torrent of cultural memes on command,” writes Tom Vanderbuilt at Slate. On this year’s pre-chosen theme of “unity,” reports Vanderbuilt (who went sort-of undercover to the global confab of colorists), Shah sets the stage:

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‘“We're talking a lot about community, neighborliness, moving from macro to micro economy. The whole 'rurban' thing—local food, local chocolate. At the same time, the simplification of things, reducing complications. Don't make any instruction manuals—things should be intuitive. Computers that will think for you, read your gestures, actually tell you when to go shopping. You go into Gap, it starts suggesting products for you, connecting your friend's taste to your taste. It's all about choosing together." He pauses, a quick intake of breath, before firing: "How many people use Twitter here?" "Oh, God," retorts the Frenchwoman.’"

The outcome of this Internet-y color orgy is Pantone View, a $750 publication that is purchased by companies hoping to know what to color their dresses or their window dressing or their SUVs. So what’s the color of now? Cereulean blue was, according to Pantone, “the color of the millenium,” and purple the Obama-christened color of “hope” (in 2008 Pantone picked Blue Iris, “neither blue nor purple”). However, the recent turn towards orange is undeniable, according to Mikel Cirkus, who runs the Conceptual Design Group at the flavor and fragrance megalith Firmenich. And it has a lot to do, he says, with Pantone itself, which in 2011 put out a new line of oranges: "…you can look at what's out in the marketplace—for instance, this red-orange, or flame orange, is everywhere now. It's not a coincidence. It's not even forecasting in my mind, it's a dictating thing."

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The Wall Street Journal saw orange "out in full force" on the faces on models in Paris’s Spring 2011 shows (a bellweather for color futures), "mirroring the fashion color trend of the season." The Sony Vaio, the new Camaro, the Hugo Boss "Orange" line are also indicators. And then there’s Pantone’s own sales stats, which may be one of the most quantifiable ways to track color trends. Top selling swatches aren’t just the familiar oranges like Pantone 18-1354 Burnt Ochre, but more vivid tones like Pantone 16-1459 Mandarin Orange, Pantone 16-1359 Orange Peel and Pantone 15-1157 Flame Orange, are now at the top of the heap.

But the color is an underdog. A quick search in Google’s ngram viewer over the past two hundred years of literature shows that it occurs with far less frequency than yellow, green, blue and red (see graph below). The latter color occurs most often in English literature; beginning in the 1950s, all mentions of color begin to slide until the 2000s. I’d love an explanation as to why. Is there such a thing as a color historian?

The incidence of five colors between 1800 and 2008, as measured by Google’s book-reading ngram viewer. Orange is on the bottom.

This year’s color is Tangerine Tango, or “orange with a lot of depth in it,” according to Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. "Reminiscent of the radiant shadings of a sunset, Tangerine Tango marries the vivaciousness and adrenaline rush of red with the friendliness and warmth of yellow, to form a high-visibility, magnetic hue that emanates heat and energy," she says. That sure beats saying “bright orange.” But that kind of language also makes me worry about an otherwise unacknowledged issue: when’s that orange bubble going to pop?

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Photo:

Walker Art Center