Pantone Announces 2012 Color of the Year

Pantone has announced their 2012's color of the year. For 2012, they've selected "Tangerine Tango", a vibrant and saturated shade of orange.

Although the color of the year choice is intended as a reflection of trends and a forecasting tool, Pantone's color trend predictions wields lots of influence over what trends actually evolve. Their choice is very important to trends in the market in all areas of fashion, decor and any industry influenced by color.

The choice of Tangerine Tango is a somewhat natural evolution of the somewhat retro color palette that Pantone has been setting the past few years. In 2010 the color of the year was Turquoise, and then for this year it has been a shade of pink called Honeysuckle. We've often seen shades of orange used as an accent color in palettes with those two colors the past two years.

A beautiful example of Pantone's 2010 through 2012 picks being used in the same product line is Lily Bee's "Head Over Heels" line from CHA Summer 2011 that was recently released. 

The turquoise, pink and orange all appear in the striped paper design that ties the whole palette of the collection together, and then the various colors appear in coordinating patterned papers in the collection. (This collection is uber-trendy: note the presence of the gray and the music and doily motifs as well.) Echo Park's Victoria Garden collection, released earlier this year, also combines all three of Pantone's recent color choices in the same collection.

This time the colors are slightly more pastel but the concept of the tone palette is still the same, which is how we typically see these color trends in action - the color forecast is for a tone and then in actual usage companies implement something similar but not necessarily the identical shade. Gray, green and yellow (another really hip color lately) are thrown into the mix in this collection.

So where is Pantone - and scrapbooking - going to go after Tangerine Tango in 2013? I would bet on two possibilities: yellow and cornflower blue. Both of these are colors that are increasingly an important part of the palette that has produced turquoise, honeysuckle and now tangerine. One of them would be the natural next evolution in the palette.