Each year Pantone, the paint and color people, choose a color in December for the year ahead. They imbue these colors with ideas and ideals for the new year. I don't always agree with the choices but along with many in the quilting community, I like to ruminate on them a bit.
The Pantone color of the year for 2020 is Classic Blue.
Here is what they say about it:
“Instilling calm, confidence, and connection, this enduring blue hue highlights our desire for a dependable and stable foundation on which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era… Imprinted in our psyches as a restful color, PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue brings a sense of peace and tranquility to the human spirit, offering refuge. Aiding concentration and bringing laser like clarity, PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue re-centers our thoughts. A reflective blue tone, Classic Blue fosters resilience… As technology continues to race ahead of the human ability to process it all, it is easy to understand why we gravitate to colors that are honest and offer the promise of protection. Non-aggressive and easily relatable, the trusted PANTONE 19-4052 Classic Blue lends itself to relaxed interaction. Associated with the return of another day, this universal favorite is comfortably embraced.”
I’ve pondered Classic Blue for almost two months.
Generally I have a pretty quick response to the Color of the Year. Usually a negative one. I tend to vehemently disagree with the statement and mission that Pantone puts out. This year it took me much longer to decide how I feel.
My first thought is that I like this color. I’m often indifferent to the actual color of the Color of the Year. But Classic Blue is calming; it reminds we of the deepening blue of a late spring or early summer sky, cloudless and intense. The feeling you get when you’ve gone thru your whole day and for some reason you glance up, maybe a noise attracted your attention, maybe your in the middle of a memory and your head tilts up in thought, and there it is, a perfectly blue sky. And the feeling that the color inspires is so all encompassing, washing over your body, spirit and mind. It is uplifting, humbling, and expansive all at the same time. It may be, as Pantone suggests, a peaceful color, but it is at the same time a color that makes one think of the vastness of sky, ocean, and time, and how small your part in that expanse can be .
One tiny indistinguishable drop in an enormous endless bucket.
To me, this feeling is comfortable, re-centering, bringing a sense of peace and tranquility, just like Pantone intends. The idea that we are all the same, and all only a part of something far bigger and more important than the individual. This might not be exactly what Pantone meant, but to me this is the most relevant message to what’s happening in the world that Pantone has come up with in recent years. With world leaders making choices that strip away our rights, and divide us, with a shift to a “me me me” mentality, we need a reminder that everyone is connected and everyone needs to be able to relate to each other and put themselves in other people place. No one is special, no one is different, look at a stranger as you would look at yourself.
Overall, I really like classic blue and hope that Pantone, is right and this can be an awaken, centering, joining, strengthening year for all as a whole. That the larger community can leave the individual behind and come together to create better things.
What does Classic Blue make you think of or feel?