Empower Your Packaging with Pantone’s Color of the Year 2018

The color selection made by an international group of people is based on a myriad of factors. (You can read more about the process here.) Once chosen, the Pantone Color of the Year will continue to influence car colors, fashion, advertising and interior design for the rest of the year, if not longer. But what does it mean for packaging? Where brand colors are king, and variation colors are next-in-line, it leaves little room for “trend” colors to make an appearance, short of introducing a new brand that allows the color to reign.

Pantone’s thought behind this year’s Color of the Year is imagination and futurism. “We are living in a time that requires inventiveness and imagination,” says The Pantone Color Institute’s Executive Director, Leatrice Eiseman. “It is this kind of creative inspiration that is indigenous to PANTONE 18-3838 [PMS2096C] Ultra Violet, a blue-based purple that takes our awareness and potential to a higher level. From exploring new technologies and the greater galaxy, to artistic expression and spiritual reflection, intuitive Ultra Violet lights the way to what is yet to come.” If we really want to obtain this so-called futuristic picture Eiseman paints in her reasoning to consumers in packaging and print design, it may take more than a simple application of PMS 2096C.

Packaging is often more than printing on paper and it includes unique strategies in applying effects, finishes and structure. So we thought we would scour Haney’s VIA Alliance™ Packaging Materials & Technology Library for tools and effects that can really bring Ultra Violet to life, should of course, you need to use it in your next packaging project.