Pantone Chooses Two Colors of the Year to Tell the Dual Story of 2021

Ultimate Gray and Illuminating. Those are the two colors Pantone has picked as their official colors for 2021, and they are meant to describe the grayness of our existence during the pandemic as well as the light at the end of the tunnel when we do finally emerge, get the vaccine and go back to seeing one another.

This combination of a “dependable gray” with a yellow that feels like “the dawning of hope” is an intentional pairing, but it has also sparked more than one comparison to Maurizio Cattelan’s viral sculpture of a banana stuck on the wall with duct tape called Comedian. That sculpture was widely considered a “dark joke” that sold for more than $120,000. In many ways, 2020 was itself a dark joke on all of us. We're already living the gray. Hopefully the yellow is coming soon.