When was the last time someone commented on the colour of your smartphone? Motorola, by partnering with colour experts Pantone, doesn’t just want to make phones in colours that look good; it wants those colours to mean something. Which is where Pantone comes in.
Traditionally, Pantone has chosen a ‘Colour of the Year’ from its existing 2100-plus-strong catalogue. But now, for the first time, the company has gone with a brand-new colour, made especially to epitomise 2022. It’s called Very Peri, which Pantone describes as a periwinkle blue with a violet red undertone. And it’s what the Motorola edge 30 Neo comes wrapped in.
Why is colour important?
“We know that smartphones are more than just tools for communication,” says Kurt Bonnici, Head of Motorola for Australia and New Zealand. “They have become a vessel for expression, representing who we are.
“Colour plays a huge part in this – it is incredibly powerful and just like our smartphones, helps us tell our story and connect with the world around us.”
Head of Customer Experience at Motorola, Ruben Castano agrees. “With colour, we don’t think about it in relation to age or gender… For us, working with colour, it’s really to position Motorola as a brand that is open to dialogue with consumers. A brand that is looking into the future and understands market and consumer trends.
“It’s about establishing a dialogue with consumers to our brand through colour.”
That colour is important is obviously true. Yet so few phones come in colours other than black, white, or some kind of silver. And when there is colour, you can be left wondering about exactly what “sorta sunny”, “kinda coral” or “deep purple” actually is.
Now, Motorola’s partnership with Pantone means that, while the colour names remain as arty as ever, those names actually refer to a specific colour that all sorts of industries agree on.
You might one day choose a Very Peri sofa, hang curtains in Black Onyx, wear an Ice Palace jacket, or sleep on sheets of Aqua Foam. And part of your colour choice might just be because it matches your Motorola edge 30 Neo.
Those are the first four colours offered with the Motorola-Pantone partnership, and what’s fun about Black Onyx, Aqua Foam, and Ice Palace*, is that they are all TCX colours.
Pantone TCX links fashion and phones
TCX is Pantone’s Textile Cotton eXtended range, which reflects the link between your phone and your fashion – after all, if we didn’t care what they looked like, all our phones would still be beige, right?
Indeed, links and transitions is where Very Peri comes back in as a sort of Motorola-Pantone colour flagship – and it’s why Pantone chose/made it for colour of the year, too.
As Leatrice Eiseman, Pantone’s executive director of the Pantone Colour Institute, puts it: “Creating a new colour for the first time in the history of our Pantone Colour of the Year… reflects the global innovation and transformation taking place.”
Motorola’s Ruben Castano believes Very Peri is emblematic of the changing times as well. “Thinking about the current state of the world coming out of the pandemic, it’s almost a transition period. It’s a colour that is very optimistic, it’s about the future, it’s a very energetic feel.”
What Pantone is going for with Very Peri, is something that captures the zeitgeist as the company sees it: A social and technological move toward a blend of the real and the virtual, such as in the metaverse, VR, and the increasing integration of tech into our lives.
Which means – even if we don’t realise it – we’re all thinking about ways to communicate that go beyond speech, the written word, or even traditional video and figurative art.
[S]ociety continues to recognise colour as a critical form of communication,” Pantone’s Eiseman says. “[Colour is] a way to express and affect ideas and emotions, and engage and connect, the complexity of this new red violet infused blue hue highlights the expansive possibilities that lay before us.”
In other words: You might not have noticed that your snazzy new Very Peri Motorola edge 30 Nano reflects the mood of the society and culture around you… but your brain did.
Read more Motorola articles on GadgetGuy
*Very Peri and Black Onyx ranged in Australia. Please check instore for availability.
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