Welcome to the Year of Purple

According to The Pantone Color Institute, the color of the year selected for 2018 is Ultra Violet. 

​Below is an excerpt from
​the New York Times Morning Briefing
​for January 9, 2018:

​This year the shade is Ultra Violet. “We wanted to pick something that brings hope and an uplifting message,” the institute’s director, Leatrice Eiseman, told The Times. 

In Phoenician times, purple dye was made from the mucus of sea snails in the coastal city of Tyre, in what is now Lebanon.

Because the color was difficult and expensive to produce, it became associated with power and royalty, from ancient Rome to the kingdoms of Europe. In the 1500s, Queen Elizabeth I decreed that only members of the royal family could wear the color.

In 1856, a British chemist, William Henry Perkin, made the color more accessible when he accidentally created a purple dye while trying to concoct a treatment for malaria.

More than 160 years later, a color that’s rare in nature is about to have its moment.

For more on the color purple, read on.

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How can you use color to affect what you create?
​How does color affect the world around you?
Do you think they picked a good color for the year?
​Why or why not?