verderamade

A quick roundup of paint company's colors for 2024 reveals a trend toward blue. It's not surprising in a year that is forecasted to be economically turbulent. Blue is a safe bet as one of the most popular colors for most people. Scroll through the colors below and find more inspiration in the color palettes I created to inspire graphic designers. Minwax: Bay Blue Source: https://www.minwax.com/en/wood-stain-color-guide/color-of-the-year/2024-coty This relaxing mix of blue and green expands our connection to water and wellness, moving beyond the growth-focused greens of recent years for a wholly immersive color experience. It invites you to interpret design [...]

We're expecting a Barbie whiplash this summer — as the pendulum swings away from dopamine-inducing neons to subtler warm-weather tones. Don't be shocked to find other playful colors like canary yellow and mossy green to jump ahead of the pervasive pink. Take a look through these new 2024 summer tones to inspire your graphic design projects. Who What Wear Predicts Icy Blush "...I think it's safe to say that 2024 marks the decline of the hot-pink Barbie aesthetic that was so in demand last year. Instead, the pink we'll all reach for is a shade we're calling icy blush." - [...]

Pink is a polarizing color. Aligned with feminity and unapologetic girliness, the tone saturated social media (and most of the design world) throughout the 2010s. Then, it was declared basic and a little bit toxic — along with girl-bossing and performative friend-squadding. Since the not-quite-bubblegum, not-quite-salmon shade was officially coined as such in Véronique Hyland’s 2016 essay, it’s gone from the hue you rosé-d all day with (while passing rosy-hued ads and debating which peachy-pink velvet sofa would best complement the neon sign you’d hang above it) to a basic—ahem, cheugy—shade everyone’s all too quick to declare passé. (Indeed, one of the [...]

I remember 2008 fondly — when I rented my first apartment, solo. I had no money, and dove right into meshing curbside drag-aways with yard sale treasures and family hand-me downs. I splashed paint on anything that would hold it (as we did in the earliest days of Pinterest) and improperly prepared every surface. But, I had a good time and flexed my design eye in the way that you only can when you're single, living alone and binging (read: pirating) design TV shows on a brick of a laptop. As I picked, stripped, and reimagined, I found myself grabbing [...]

  When Pantone dropped two colors of the year in 2016, people didn't know what to think. Quickly, the design community realized the colors represented a duality of trend. Rose Quartz and Serenity together highlighted a trend toward an unapologetically feminine aesthetic (think: Nov 2021 when Red Taylor's version permitted us to glory in all things girly). Millennial pink had dominated design for years and people were grabbing onto neutral-eque color palettes and the prettiest, macaron-coded pastels Regency returned (Bridgerton + Jane Austen fangirls), lace dripped from designer's portfolios, and whimsical, teeny florals sprouted on our feeds. For brands, the [...]

Get inspired with Pantone color ideas from my Virginia Advertising Group. In this post, we look at Ultra Violet from 2018. Each year that Pantone announces their color of the year, I look for ways to use the tone in my client's projects. I enjoyed the versatility of Ultra Violet — even though it's a stand-out tone. Ultra Violet Pantone Color of the Year 2018 Designers embraced this tone when it dropped. It was a fresh design choice— an androgynous blue-purple that was easy on the eyes without looking dull. Complex and contemplative, Ultra Violet suggests the mysteries of the [...]

When Pantone announced Honeysuckle as the color of the year for 2011, I was underwhelmed. It seemed like a bridesmaid dress color and nothing else. It's a flattering pink shade that made its way across the bridal scene quickly. Revisiting it now, I realized I like it as a "light red" concept. Combine it with the right greens, blues, and tans — it takes on a vintage, art deco look. A COLOR FOR ALL SEASONS: COURAGEOUS. CONFIDENT. VITAL. A BRAVE NEW COLOR, FOR A BRAVE NEW WORLD. LET THE BOLD SPIRIT OF HONEYSUCKLE INFUSE YOU, LIFT YOU AND CARRY YOU [...]