Okay, so Pantone’s 2009 Color of the Year, Mimosa, right? I remember when that came out. I was just starting to get really into design, and I thought, “I gotta do something with this.”
My Little Mimosa Project
First, I grabbed a bunch of magazines. I mean, a lot of magazines – fashion, home decor, even some old gardening ones. I just wanted to see how this color was being used, or if it was even showing up yet.
Then, I started flipping through them. I was looking for anything that even remotely resembled Mimosa. It’s that kind of yellow-orange, you know, like the drink. Not quite yellow, not quite orange, but somewhere in between.
- I found a few ads with it – a dress, a throw pillow, some flowers. It was definitely popping up in unexpected places.
- I cut out all the examples I could find. My desk was a mess, covered in little scraps of paper.
After the magazine hunt, I headed online. I wanted to see what other designers were doing with it. Were they embracing it? Ignoring it? Tweaking it?
I looked websites and some design blogs. I noticed that a lot of people were pairing it with turquoise or a deep blue. That was a cool contrast I hadn’t thought of.
Finally, I decided to try my own little experiment. I opened my paint program on compute, and played around with some basic shapes and color * fancy.I added some Mimosa to some simple background, and then I used those turquoise and deep blue accents I’d seen online. It actually looked pretty good!
It wasn’t a huge project, but it was fun. It really helped me understand how a single color can be interpreted in so many different ways. And it got me thinking more about color trends and how they influence design. I actually still have those magazine clippings somewhere…
