Once again, The Pantone Color Institute is hoping to change the tone of the next year with their newest selection of color of the year.
After a year of searching, the group announced on Wednesday that Living Coral was the color for 2019 and was selected in response to “the onslaught of digital technology and social media increasingly embedding into daily life.”
“With everything that’s going on today, we’re looking for those humanizing qualities because we’re seeing online life dehumanizing a lot of things,’’ Pantone Vice President Laurie Pressman said ahead of Wednesday’s annual color unveiling. ‘‘We’re looking toward those colors that bring nourishment and the comfort and familiarity that make us feel good. It’s not too heavy. We want to play. We want to be uplifted.”
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Pantone described the color as “an animated and life-affirming coral hue with a golden undertone” and “a nurturing color that appears in our natural surroundings and at the same time, displays a lively presence within social media.”
Before the announcement, Living Coral popped up in the spring 2019 Marc Jacobs collection and appeared on the back of the new iPhone XR, initiating its resonance in popular culture.
Last year Pantone named Ultra Violet — a deep purple meant to evoke a counterculture flair, a grab for originality, ingenuity, and visionary thinking — as the 2018 color of the year.
Officially, Living Coral is Pantone 16-1546.
Ever wonder what those Pantone numbers are all about? Well, they’re broken into three pairs and refer to a color’s level of lightness, hue and ‘‘chroma,’’ on various scales.
And for those non-art majors out there, “chroma” is a description that combines hue and saturation.
Material from the Associated Press was used in this report. Abbi Matheson can be reached at abbi.matheson@globe.com. Follow her on Twitter at @AbbiMatheson
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