Pantone has spoken. They have named the color of the year for 2020 and it is a shade of blue, specifically, their Classic Blue. Classic Blue is almost navy blue, just a little brighter. It is similar to the color of a Pepsi can.
As an environmental psychologist, Pantone’s color of the year seems like a more reasonable choice to me some years than other years. This year I support the choice made.
Classic blue is a familiar color. Experiencing familiar things can be very comforting to us and when we’re stressed we are particularly attracted to familiar options—and 2020 is shaping up to be stressful. For instance, on one side of the Atlantic there’s the U.S. presidential election to look forward to and some of the people on the other side of the Atlantic can look forward to whatever Brexit will bring. Also, few people would be surprised if the economy/stock market dramatically changed course this year and we all regularly hear of new database hacks that make it extraordinarily likely that bad guys can destroy us financially, whenever they happen to get around to it. Comforting experiences seem highly desirable.
In our society, there are all sorts of associations with blue that make it just the right hue to use in challenging situations. Rigorous research shows that we associate blue with stability, competence, dependability, and trustworthiness, just for starters. If you are a bank or financial institution, for example, blue is the best possible color for your logo and lobby, unless your main competitor already uses blue—and even then you should seriously consider blue.
A benefit of using a blue like Classic Blue is that people are apt to like it. Around the world, when you ask people what their favorite color is, which is generally done without any context (such as a favorite color to wear or to paint walls), the answer you are most likely to get is blue. The least popular color, by the way, is yellow yellow green. Blue is the color of the sky on a lovely temperate day and a water hole from a distance, and both pleasant weather and water were likely quite popular in the early days of our species. Yellow yellow green is the color of stomach bile, and seeing it was, undoubtedly, a negative experience for our predecessors.
A further benefit of using blue is that people feel significantly cooler in a space that features cool colors than
they do in one where warm colors predominate—which is likely to be more and more important in the years ahead.
So maybe this is the year to not ignore Pantone’s color of the year.
Sally Augustin, PhD, is the editor of Research Design Connections (www.researchdesignconnections.com). Research Design Connections reports on research conducted by social and physical scientists that designers can apply in practice. Insights derived from recent studies are integrated with classic, still relevant findings in concise, powerful articles. Topics covered range from the cognitive, emotional, and physiological implications of sensory and other physical experiences to the alignment of culture, personality, and design, among others. Information, in everyday language, is shared in a monthly subscription newsletter, an archive of thousands of published articles, and a free daily blog. Readers learn about the latest research findings immediately, before they’re available elsewhere. Sally, who is a Fellow of the American Psychological Association, is also the author of Place Advantage: Applied Psychology for Interior Architecture (Wiley, 2009) and, with Cindy Coleman, The Designer’s Guide to Doing Research: Applying Knowledge to Inform Design (Wiley, 2012). She is a principal at Design With Science (www.designwithscience.com) and can be reached at sallyaugustin@designwithscience.com.