This morning, Pantone announced its color of the year. “A life-affirming shade, Greenery is also emblematic of the pursuit of personal passions and vitality,” Pantone says.
“Greenery,” to be clear, is green. A bright moss, a little lichen-y, a bit half-sour pickle-ish, a tad Palm Springs astroturf-esque. As in, the color you painted your childhood bedroom and regretted for several hideous years thereafter.
“Greenery burst forth in 2017 to provide us with the dread and hopelessness so many of us already feel here in the end of 2016,” Pantone says. Just kidding! They say it’s to provide us with the “reassurance we yearn for amid a tumultuous social and political environment,” to which I have but one Q: who is reassured by the color green?
The Mucinex blob?
You know why the geniuses at Mucinex made the Mucinex blob this color and put him in those pants? Because this palette elicits human disgust on a visceral level. The grotesque color of this guy sends people literally running to the stores to buy their mucus-killing product, probably. This is our 2017 color of the year.
Remember last year’s?
Look at her! She’s an ethereal blur of rosy serenity!!!! She looks like she’s on vacation and in love! But you know what we did with such beauty? We made Ken Bone memes.
But this shade of green — I’m sorry, “greenery” — seems like undue punishment. If this color enjoys the same reverence in 2017 that pink did in 2016, then I’m going to have to start wearing those glasses that scientists made to teach us what it feels like to be color blind 24/7.
Amelia said maybe it’s kind of ’70s or punk rock or something. Krista and Emily of our visuals team like it too. Krista wants a greenery twinset. I appreciate their optimism. We need it in these trying times.
But the most astute observation might have been Harling’s, which was that Pantone’s 2017 color of the year might be an homage to 2016’s most relatable felt amphibian. This seems like the most reasonable explanation. And one that, frankly, we deserve.
Collage by Emily Zirimis.
