{"id":6504,"date":"2019-12-09T16:03:37","date_gmt":"2019-12-09T21:03:37","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/?p=6504"},"modified":"2021-03-10T11:47:09","modified_gmt":"2021-03-10T16:47:09","slug":"pantone-classic-blue-color-of-the-year-2020","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/www.ceros.com\/inspire\/originals\/pantone-classic-blue-color-of-the-year-2020\/","title":{"rendered":"Desperately Seeking Classic Blue, the Pantone Color of the Year 2020"},"content":{"rendered":"Reading Time: <\/span> 3<\/span> minutes<\/span><\/span>\n

Feeling blue? Pantone is, too.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

This week, the dominant color company announced its 2020 Color of the Year was a throwback: Classic Blue 19-4052<\/a>. In some ways, this choice is a departure from recent Color of the Year picks. Pantone\u2019s past selections<\/a> have been indicators of a trend, a finger-on-the pulse moment, and maybe Classic Blue will be, too. While Pantone\u2019s pick emotes a warm twinkle of nostalgia, for now, Classic Blue\u2019s pulse reveals a decidedly slower heart rate.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

So of all places, we didn’t quite expect to see much Classic Blue in Manhattan’s hip Flatiron District (our home turf<\/a>). But always ones to be thorough, two of our top color scientists [ahem<\/em>] here at Ceros took a 1-hour walk around Ceros’s backyard to gauge how frequently we’d spot Classic Blue in the wild. <\/p>\n\n\n\n

Although, in full disclosure: we didn\u2019t even have to leave the Ceros office to get our first sighting. Each conference room in our office has a theme, and one of these rooms, named \u201cBlue Note,\u201d is almost completely Classic Blue. Without even leaving the building, we have the first challenge to our initial assumption regarding Classic Blue\u2019s un-cooless.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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But regardless, we continue outside. Pantone says the shade represents stability and dependability, and that shone through in the type of brands that use Classic Blue in its palette. Classic blue is especially common in the always-stable<\/em> banking sector. Just take a look at how many financial institutions make use of the hue, or one extremely close to it.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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Also, thanks to its primary sponsor, Classic Blue adorns over 12,000 Citi Bikes across the boroughs.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We also found that the paradigm for American reliability and consistency, the United States Postal Service, makes prominent use of the color in question.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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If there\u2019s an industry that has the most urgent need to convey calmness, soothing and relaxed, it\u2019s construction. The simple shade of blue was common at NYC\u2019s many construction sites\u2014we noticed the shade in hardhats, painter\u2019s tape, dumpsters, tarps, signage, and more. Sometimes it was an accent color, like on this dumpster outside our office, and sometimes it clearly dominated.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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We continued on to retail, but didn\u2019t have much luck there. It largely made sense\u2014everything about window displays at most retailers tries to evoke hip, trendy, cutting-edge. Blue didn\u2019t appear too frequently in the windows, but we did notice it a few times inside some stores. Perhaps its most apt sighting of the day, we saw a little Classic Blue in the original colorway of a pair of Nike Cortez.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

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So to recap, we didn\u2019t expect to see Classic Blue in a lot of hip, trendy places, the types of places that we\u2019re used to seeing former Pantone COTYs like Living Coral. Frankly, we didn\u2019t expect to see very much of it at all<\/em> in this neighborhood. That was mostly true, but not completely. We did see Classic Blue far more frequently than anticipated, but mostly related to the aesthetics of banks or construction sites.<\/p>\n\n\n\n

But it seems like that\u2019s the point; classic<\/em> is right there in the name. It\u2019s reassuring, calming, soothing in the face of uncertainty\u2026 and the places that we saw the color seem to be attempting to evoke that exact feeling.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Ceros has dispatched its two top “color scientists” on a hunt through New York City for sightings of the Pantone Color of the Year in the wild.<\/div>\n

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