Move Over Pantone 15-5519

The "inviting, luminous hue" of Pantone 15-5519, the color that has so magically characterized this year is going to have to move over pretty soon to make way for the "dynamic reddish pink" of Pantone 18-2120! That's right, people. The Pantone 2011 color of the year has indeed been announced, Honeysuckle, promising to embolden us in the face the everyday troubles of the coming year! Verve and vigor, everyone!
In further color news, Color: A Natural History of the Palette, Victoria Finlay's new book is on our shelves in voluminous amounts. I'm taking the time to direct your attention to it because, other than the fact that I think it's a great book, I'm worried that it's a book that will be widely overlooked this season. Within it's pages we find the story of Finlay enthusiastically seeking out the origin of individual colors on our palate, many of which have bizarre and intriguing stories behind them, involving things such as insect invasions, human urine, and the off mining disaster or two. I think that the cover of the book itself, as well as the blurbs printed on the back of it prove to be a bit misleading, giving the book a bit of an Eat, Pray, Love kind of vibe, which is a little unfair (and that's not to say anything poor about Eat, Pray, Love necessarily, but aside from travel, the similarities are nonexistent).

I wouldn't have gravitated to Finlay's book at all if it weren't for my own personal interest in design, and truth be told I thought that it looked a little dull upon my first assessment, but upon opening it I was pleasantly surprised to find a text filled composed unique of travelogue and little known historical facts. Like any good history of a single object (or in this case maybe concept?), it's about so much more than the object itself. Did you know that there are colors today that are slowly on their way out of existence? I mean, who really thinks about color these days anyway? Who's trying to get to the bottom of this situation? Really?!