Pantone Colors of the Year
Pantone Colors of the Year–Things you don't know about Yellow and Grey
Seldom can people understand the importance of colors and appreciate their existence especially when they’re omnipresent instead of scarce. Colors are defined by what the majority of us perceive them to be. Those who are colorblind live in a completely different world full of black and white that we’re unable to imagine its lack of vigor. It takes time for us to realize that perceptions of colors are in fact gifts to us human.
In Lois Lowry’s dystopian novel–The Giver, the protagonist Jonas lives in a future black-and-white utopian community in which citizens are deprived of the ability to perceive colors to preserve the social structure, order, and a true sense of equality. Becoming a memory receiver who is responsible for the community’s decision-making process, Jonas starts to know a world with rainbow, bright flower, hunger, love, and sex from the past memories, tasting the sweetness of an “imperfect” community. Colors are never only a form of perceptions of the world, they are an indispensable vehicle to comprehend the natural and human heritages.
A marriage of color conveying a message of strength and hopefulness that is both enduring and uplifting.
As Pantone announced the Color of the Year 2021–Ultimate grey + Illuminating, grey and yellow earn their deserved attention among years of blue, green, and pink. This is the first time Pantone chose a color combination as the Color of the Year. Such a harmonious yet uplifting color combination is second to none in demonstrating our post-pandemic mood, empowering us with positivity and vivacity to be more resilient to survive the external environment. Colors not only can bring energy to us human beings, but also tells its own stories about nature, food, and culture.
Color Stories
Acid Yellow – Lemon and Emoji
Why is yellow acid? Lemon is the answer. Nature has assigned lemon this color to express (or to warn us for) its acidity. Thanks for this warning brightness, lemon always gives us a strong first impression of vitality and energy, alluring us at all times.
In 2015 the Oxford English Dictionary announced that its word of the year was not, in fact, a word, but an emoji: “face with tears of joy.” Emojis has been made with those acid yellow circles with a few black lines outlining eyes and mouth since its birth. They’ve made acid yellow intrinsic to modern communication by establishing such a strong color association for the millennials.
Naples Yellow – Building and Paint
Sometime in the early 1970s a collection of 90 small bottles was discovered in an old German pharmacy near Darmstadt. Some were as round and plain as jam jars, others looked like inwells, and some resembled tiny, stoppered perfume bottles. Each had its own carefully written calligraphy labeled with words as unfamiliar and outlandish as “Virid aeris,” “Cudbeard persia,” and “Gummi gutta.” Some suggested that it was mined from Mount Vesuvius as a historical treasure. When examined in a laboratory in Amsterdam, it was discovered that this was in fact a cache of pigments from the nineteenth century. One, bearing the cramped legend “Neapelgelb Neopolitanische Gelb Verbidung disSpieblaz, Bleies,” was Naples Yellow.
When the pigment had been stashed, Naples Yellow’s days as an essential part of the artist’s palette were numbered. This pale yellow seemed to have an endless potential to be mixed with other color palettes, adding different tones to artistic works.
Kohl Grey
Kohl Grey can be found at the Egyptology collection of the Louvre in Paris. Hidden in the head of the statuettes of God Bes, a protector of homes, women, and children in Egyptian world, is a small container intended for kohl eyeliner. This kohl pot can also be found at lots of other Egyptian collections since everyone in ancient Egypt rimmed their eyes with thick black lines; Many were buried with jars so that they were able to carry this habit to their afterlife.
The kind of Kohl used depended on wealth and social status. The poor might use mixtures of soot and animal fats while the wealthy would utilize galena, the dark metallic mineral form of lead sulfide, together with powdered pearls, gold, and emeralds.
WISKII Color Exclusives
Butter
Sweet and delightfully subtle beauty
Butter is as old as Western civilization. In ancient Rome, it was medicinal--swallowed for coughs or spread on aching joints. In India, Hindus have been offering Lord Krishna tins full of ghee —luscious, clarified butter —for at least 3,000 years. And in the Bible, butter is a food for celebration, first mentioned when Abraham and Sarah offer three visiting angels a feast of meat, milk and the creamy yellow spread.
Butter’s origins are likely to be more humble, though. Rumor has it a nomad made the first batch by accident. He probably tied a sheepskin bag of milk to his horse and, after a day of jostling, discovered the handy transformation so many generations have noticed and learned to apply: Churned milk fat solidifies into something amazing. The oldest known butter-making technique still in use today is remarkably similar: Farmers in Syria skin a goat, tie the hide up tight, then fill it with milk and begin shaking.
In this new summer season, WISKII cooked butter with sports bra and leggings to add an icing on your daily workout cakes, unlocking the natural beauty of butter as a color.
WISKII Pure Lunar Sports Bra + Zipper Bike Shorts
Misty Grey
Mysterious and pure in the twilight
Inspired by the mist from nature, we developed this color of misty grey based on the Benjamin Moore’s misty grey paint. It’s a pure, clear, and illuminating color that exhibits the looming beauty, offering a sense of mystery and peace.
