Retail Trends: Pantone’s 2017 Color of the Year
Colors can impact our mood and how we feel about a certain product, display, packaging collection, you name it. Retailers who identify and tap into that frame of mind will have a distinct advantage over their competition. Pantone Color Institute forecasts color trends and works with companies to maximize their marketing strategies through the use of color. As Pantone suggests, “When 80% of human experience is filtered through the eyes… the choice of color is critical”.
A bright yellow-green, Greenery, which Pantone calls “nature’s neutral”, is their choice for the 2017 color of the year. As the name suggests, Greenery is a color taken from plant life and sends the consumer back to nature. Pantone explains that modern life disconnects us from the natural world and creates a craving for the organic. Although a plant-like green is always a popular background to other trendier colors, this year it is in the spotlight. Greenery calls forth a sense of growth and renewal and a feeling of calm in a world that can be anything but.
Greenery also made it into the top 10 colors of Pantone’s Spring 2017 Color Report, which predicts the colors likely to be big this year on the fashion scene, and in turn reflecting current color trends in all markets. Other colors in the top ten include two watery blues, soft natural shades of yellow and green, and bright shades of red-orange and pink.
Two paint companies, Benjamin Moore and PPG Paints, chose purples as their winners for 2017. Benjamin Moore’s Shadow is a smokey, almost gray amethyst and PPG’s Violet Verbena, while having a gray influence as well, is a much truer purple and less mysterious and ambiguous than Shadow. Sherwin Williams takes a different approach with their pick of a neutral; a shade they call Poised Taupe.
Keep the color forecasts of 2017 in mind while designing your displays, products and more! Leatrice Eiseman of Pantone describes the color: “Greenery bursts forth in 2017 to provide us with the reassurance we yearn for amid a tumultuous social and political environment. Satisfying our growing desire to rejuvenate and revitalize, Greenery symbolizes the reconnection we seek with nature, one another and a larger purpose.” Let that inspiring description influence your business and marketing strategies in the months to come.
Choosing the right packaging, including the right colors, at the right time, for the right product, is what we do. Please contact us and let us help you send just the right message to 2017’s customers.