With 2018 coming to an end and 2019 already peeking from around the corner, it’s time for another end-of-the-year tradition— Pantone’s announcement of its new Color of the Year. 2018’s Ultraviolet has officially made way for Living Coral, the colour that will accompany the whole of 2019.
The Pantone Color of the Year is chosen by analyzing trends and influences from all over the world. Image courtesy of Pantone
US-based graphics expert Pantone describes its new Color of the Year (official code 16-1546) as a “life-affirming coral hue that energizes and enlivens with a softer edge,” thanks to its warm orange shade and golden undertones. The choice is meant to bring comfort in the ever-shifting environment of the modern world, and it represents the “innate need for optimism and joyous pursuits”.
The idea of exploring coral reefs around the world certainly does inspire joy, and while the colour is certainly popular on social media as well as in the natural world, Pantone experts where most certainly inspired by under the sea life more than they were by Instagram. “Lying at the centre of our naturally vivid and chromatic ecosystem,” it reads in the official announcement, “Pantone Living Coral is evocative of how coral reefs provide shelter to a diverse kaleidoscope of colour”.
If you’d like to align yourself with the new Color of the Year and plan a reef-exploring holiday in 2019, the equatorial areas of our oceans do not lack opportunities to do so. The Great Barrier Reef in Australia is not only the world’s largest coral reef system but also a Unesco World Heritage Site and clearly visible from space. The reef is located off the coast of Queensland, in the Coral Sea, and it’s composed of over 2900 individual reefs.
The Great Barrier Reef is the biggest structure made by living organisms in the world. Image by superjoseph/Shutterstock
Another massive coral reef system, the Apo Reef, is located west of Australia in the Philippines. It covers around 34 square kilometres off of the coast of the Occidental Mindoro province in the Mindoro Strait, and it’s, of course, a protected area. The Philippines are also one of the states whose waters create the Coral Triangle, together with Indonesia, Malaysia, Papua New Guinea, Solomon Islands and Timor-Leste. The Coral Triangle, arguably the world’s centre of marine biodiversity, is home to at least 500 species of corals, and it’s often called the “Amazon of the seas”.
The Coral Triangle is a top priority region for marine conservation. Image by SergeUWPhoto/Shutterstock
Moving into the Atlantic Ocean, in Belize you’ll find the Belize Barrier Reef, a series of reefs that stretch for 300 kilometres— and it’s just a section of the much larger Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System, which starts from Cancún in the Yucatán Peninsula, in Mexico, and continues south for 900 kilometres until Honduras.
The Mesoamerican Barrier Reef System is also known as the Great Mayan Reef. Image by Emma Shaw/Lonely Planet
Coral reefs are as mesmerizing and beautiful as they are fragile— while recent years have shown signs that the health of reefs around the world is improving, taking some steps to help them and to be an ecologically-conscious reef-explorer is always a good idea. In that way, Pantone’s Living Coral will truly fulfil its “life-affirming” mission and live up to its name.
The new Pantone Color of the Year makes for an “animating and life-affirming” 2019. Image courtesy of Pantone
If you’d like to know more about Pantone, its current Color of the Year and the past ones, you can check the official website here.
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