Pantone is raising the alarm about corals and climate change with a new colour campaign called Glowing, Glowing, Gone which highlights a troubling phenomenon known as fluorescing.
Pantone is working with Adobe Stock and The Ocean Agency, the non-profit behind the Netflix’s award-winning documentary Chasing Coral, to highlight one of the greatest environmental challenges of our time: ocean warming and the loss of coral reefs. One-fifth of the world’s coral reefs have already disappeared or are suffering from severe damage like ‘bleaching,’ a form of environmental stress caused by heating waters that strips corals of their flesh, ultimately weakening and killing them, or ‘fluorescing,’ when corals produce vibrantly coloured chemicals to resist underwater heatwaves caused by climate change.
The Ocean Agency captured fluorescing in action on reefs of New Caledonia when they were filming Chasing Coral. These images were shared with Adobe and the Pantone’s creative teams who used them to create three new colours: Glowing Yellow, Glowing Blue, and Glowing Purple, that reflect the three colours that corals sometimes fluoresce before they die. Following in the footsteps of Pantone’s 2019 Colour of the Year, Living Coral, these three new colours “beckon citizens of the world to recognise Earth’s major ecosystems in peril.”
“Due to climate change, fluorescing is becoming increasingly common, however, it has rarely been seen in the extreme form we witnessed in New Caledonia while filming Chasing Coral,” Richard Vevers, founder and CEO of the Ocean Agency told Lonely Planet. “Fluorescing corals are the ultimate visual warning that we have reached a tipping point for the planet.”
“We are now on the verge of losing entire planetary ecosystems on which we depend, starting with coral reefs, which support a quarter of all marine life and a billion people globally. However, this warning though is currently going totally unnoticed,” he added.
The Glowing, Glowing, Gone campaign kicked off on 3 June with a design challenge for creatives worldwide to use these colours, as well as Adobe Stock images by The Ocean Agency, in their work to remind the public what’s at risk to our ecosystems, using the hashtag #GlowingGone. Designers even have the opportunity for their work to be featured in Times Square and global conferences around ocean policy.
“What we are hoping with this campaign is to get corals’ ‘Glowing’ warning seen by everyone, and to inspire the urgent action that is so desperately needed to combat climate change and save coral reefs,” added Vevers.
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