Craft Color Planner Winter

The Pantone Color Planner for Winter 2010/2011 offers a ‘mosaic’ of color choices.

There are really eight color palettes for use in women’s wear, menswear, active wear, cosmetics, lifestyle, industrial design and graphics:

• Molecular is an exploration into a mood that is not somber, but vibrant and glowing and in constant re-interpretation of itself. It represents a whole world built and organized around a mosaic, with faceted and unified parts. Deep, deep darks have never been more enticing, more positive, more promising and exciting to play with.

 

• Think of old mosaic shop signage, imperial clothes and palaces, or other architectural elements. Strip away the years. With every layer that is removed, you will be closer to Byzantine. Take your time and have faith. Select special ingredients and render with precision.

 

• Macrobiotic tones, dehydrated and preserved greens, and toasted nuances are all joined in a botanical mosaic as we open our surroundings to vegetation in Urban Field. Let it grow in our rooms, settle on furniture and items to naturalize them, and decorate our garments.

 

• To imitate, to resemble, but also to dissimulate are key ideas in Mimetic. At close range, it can look like a disorderly arrangement of bits and touches of colors, but seen from a distance, they form an organized whole image.

 

• Foundation colors are rediscovered and revised in Deconstructing/ Reconstructing. We need to dismantle to understand how to give a second life. Embrace familiar colors that always work – traditional navy, bottle green, pillar box red, ecru and mid grey. Don’t discard them, but blend and intertwine them in innovative ways.

 

• In Neuro Networks, science walks in parallel with spiritual matters. Celestial and ethereal nuances are materialized in subtle high-tech or elegant raw aspects. Serene energy is conveyed through benevolent greys, transparent blues, skin beiges, aura mauve and immaterial yellow.

 

• For Multiple Identity, think of the physical changes in skin, of how emotional or corporeal responses alter states. The texture mutates and temperatures rise or fall. Think of eye color after tears or no sleep, in bright sunlight or candlelight.

 

• The vivid mosaic of the heavens and the great cycles that represent a continuity of genesis make up Universe. Visions of dynamic waves and veils of saturated, layered colours are studded with starry accents, all set against the beauty of black – a versatile and unusually rich palette that delivers real design gymnastics.

 

Mosaics can reflect cultural, geographical and political differences, yet still coordinate all these disparate themes. Mosaics are a practical and eco-efficient way of integrating previously used elements or materials to create something new and unique. While mosaics are a record of the past, new technologies continue to re-invent future usage.

The PANTONE View Colour Planner Winter 2010/2011 explores the idea of mosaics to examine the patterns of life, the environment and the imagination. It offers a multitude of surprising and unending color patterns and combinations that can be formed – whether abstract or planned, playful or studied, simple or complex, unrelated or inter-connected, accidental or organized, throwaway or precious, haphazard or interwoven, freeform or deliberate, spontaneous or thoughtful.

 

"In this current retail climate, thoughtful and creative uses of color are that much more important. Now more than ever, designers need to come up with new ways to attract the consumer’s attention," said Laurie Pressman, vice president of fashion, home and interiors at Pantone. "The palettes in Mosaics spark the imagination and help users create ingenious color compilations that enchant the eye and tantalize the consumer to buy. PANTONE VIEW Colour Planner provides the insightful direction designers need to make smart, savvy color decisions and thrive in these uncertain times."

 

Other Articles on Craft Color

You might also be interested in the Fall 2009 Color Palettes.  Click here for an article with a free downloadable color trend overview that you can use in all your immediate craft planning.