With NFTs, the Metaverse, and endless online meetings dominating our world, Pantone, the company that sets the color standards for a variety of industries from graphic and fashion design, to printing and manufacturing, has created a completely new color and named it its 2022 color of the year. Very Peri, otherwise known as Pantone 17-3938, a mixture of red and blue, is meant to reflect the increasingly blurry boundary between our physical and digital worlds. The Pantone Color Institute stated that the current unprecedented times called for the introduction of a completely new color as color of the year rather than naming one from the brand’s extensive palette.

Happiest and warmest of all the blue hues

Very Peri is a warm, playful color that blends a periwinkle blue with violet-red undertones into a shade that a representative of the Pantone Color Institute described as “the happiest and the warmest of all the blue hues,” citing its “sprightly, joyous, dynamic presence.” Recent Pantone colors of the year have included Ultimate Gray and Illuminating in 2021, Classic Blue in 2020, and Living Coral in 2019.

Originating from a digital world full of infinite possibilities, Very Peri can serve a transitional purpose in fashion design, in interior design and in one’s individual approach to designing with color, while shining bright across all types of different textures, materials and finishes.

Planning for change in design

Very Peri serves as a stark reminder that there are countless and sundry ways to define our often times surreal world with colors. The message for creatives, designers and agencies is clear, prepare for the vast new digital color possibilities transitioning into the physical world. Pantone makes it clear that change is coming.