Design Moment: Classic Blue, 2020

Goodbye pinky, hard to get right Living Coral, the Pantone colour of 2019 and hello safe reliable Classic Blue, the colour of 2020. It’s 20 years since Pantone, the US company behind the standardisation of colour for so many design professions, hit on the marketing idea of picking a colour of the year.

The turn of the millennium didn’t prompt giddy excitement; instead Y2K dread was widespread so Pantone for its first colour forecast chose Cerulean Blue – a lively but reassuringly familiar colour.

Now as we enter a new decade, once again the forecasters are playing it safe with an inoffensive shade of azure. There are many shades of blue in the Pantone range - all numbered on its famous swatches - Classic Blue is 19-4052.

Announcing its colour of the year the New Jersey-based company said Classis Blue is “a timeless and enduring hue elegant in its simplicity. Suggestive of the sky at dusk, the reassuring qualities of the thought-provoking Classic Blue highlight our desire for a dependable and stable foundation from which to build as we cross the threshold into a new era.”

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So not the most thrilling reasons to choose a colour - but maybe right for now.