Why Pantone sees color reflecting pushback on tech

Color can set a tone, reflect a mood, evoke a feeling.

In 2026, Pantone’s Color of the Year, Cloud Dancer, “a billowy white imbued with serenity,” was positioned as a hue that allows “the mind to wander and creativity to breathe.” While it may not have been entirely received as such—the color reminds us of a blank Google doc yet to be filled with the necessary words for a story—it could be a good juxtaposition to what comes next.

Of late, culture seems to be eschewing the infinite scroll and boomeranging back to an appreciation for all things real and human. Even Big Tech brands like Anthropic and, more recently, Meta, are using marketing messages about the importance of people.

“The more technology becomes part of our lives, the more we revert back to the things that make us human, whether it’s nature, authenticity, things that are real, and things that you can physically touch,” Laurie Pressman, VP of the Pantone Color Institute, told Marketing Brew. That may be especially true “at a time when we don’t trust anything.”

When it comes to color choices, that might mean we see more “energizing colors,” Pressman said. “Because those are the colors that give us comfort, that give us warmth, that make us feel something. It’s not that you don’t feel when you see other colors, but I think you gravitate toward what you’re looking for and what you’re looking to engage with and what you need.”

For nearly three decades, Pantone’s Color of the Year, which debuted in 1999, has been a way for the company to “highlight the relationship between color and culture,” Pressman told us. (She declined to give us any other hints about what hue 2027’s Color of the Year may be.)

Color of the Year

Color can be a bellwether for the global mood and how that will be reflected in the design choices of the year to come.

“Every year when we select the color, there’s always a message that’s behind that color, why we made that selection,” Pressman said.

In 2016, for example, the institute saw a “real global” impact after the selection of Rose Quartz and Serenity as the Colors of the Year, Pressman said, with its “symbolic” colors getting much more play on social media. That year, the duo was a reflection of the need to de-stress from the modern world and pointed toward ideas about gender fluidity becoming more common.

As the visibility of Color of the Year has grown, the institute has partnered with brands like Motorola and Play-Doh, among many others, to create products featuring the appointed hue (or hues).

For marketers interested in partnering with the institute, the goal is for the brand to help to “organically express” the message of the Color of the Year, per Pressman.

The institute typically lands on the next year’s color by April or May, so conversations with brands interested in collaborating will often start to take shape in May or June. That allows brands creating products to coincide with the release of the Color of the Year in December time to produce said products.

More storytelling

When it comes to the rollout of the Color of the Year, the institute has broadened its efforts significantly in recent years. “People want more texture, so we really have to go into much more depth on the storytelling so that people understand the why behind it,” Pressman said. “That’s something we’ve seen change in a big way over time.”

The curiosity that people have today is likely a reflection of how values extend into purchases and brand affiliation today.

“We see people today really want to have more of a relationship with the brands that they engage with,” Pressman said. “‘Do you share my philosophy?’...The consumer today is very different than it was 20 years ago, so the concept of Color of the Year hasn’t changed. But a lot of the things we need to consider, even the influences, [have changed].”