Connection Is Power, Consensus Is Opportunity

Why was Mocha Mousse chosen as 2025’s Color of the Year? According to Pantone, it’s a soft brown tone that evokes a sense of nostalgia and indulgence, bringing our senses into the realm of pleasure and flavor. Its warm richness aligns with our collective yearning for comfort. Whether in relationships, work, or social circles, harmony fosters satisfaction and inspires inner peace, security, and balance, connecting us with the world around us. Mocha Mousse reflects this yearning, aiming to fulfill our desire for comfort through the simple joys of sharing and giving.

This is the official explanation from Pantone. At this point, some may ask: Why Pantone? What qualifies it to forecast the Color of the Year? And what’s the basis for its predictions?

Let’s delve into Pantone as a company.

First, why Pantone? We discussed this last year when the Color of the Year was announced. There’s a saying: “Connection is power.” Pantone’s influence in the color industry comes from the connections it creates.

Colors, historically, lacked standardized representation. For instance, how dark is “dark gray”? Which shade is “sky blue”? What differentiates “crimson” from “scarlet”? Explaining these distinctions to a designer was challenging. This issue became more pronounced during the industrial era when mass production required consistent color standards. Without a unified way to describe colors, factories couldn’t produce identical products.

The company that first addressed this problem was Pantone. In 1956, Lawrence Herbert, Pantone’s founder, graduated from Hofstra University in New York and became a color matcher at an advertising firm. Frustrated by the complexity of color matching, he simplified the process, reducing the 60 pigments in use to just 12. When the advertising firm shifted its focus, Herbert bought the company and renamed it Pantone.

Starting in 1963, Pantone found a lucrative business model: creating color standards. This involved assigning a specific number to each color along with its formulation. In other words, as long as you know a color’s Pantone code, you can replicate it precisely. Herbert once said, “God created the world in seven days. On the eighth, Pantone gave it color.”

Creating a color coding system isn’t inherently valuable. The key lies in getting people to use it. The essence of Pantone codes is that they function as a universal language for describing colors, enabling accurate communication about color across industries.

Pantone’s strength lies in creating connections. Its system allows factories and designers, artists and businesses, to collaborate seamlessly on color-related matters.

Does Pantone’s Color of the Year forecast always prove accurate? Not necessarily. Pantone is not the only organization predicting color trends. For instance, PPG, an American paint company established in 1883 and a long-standing Fortune 500 firm, has its own 2025 Color of the Year: Basil Purple, a hue resembling amethyst. Clearly, this differs significantly from Pantone’s prediction.

In other words, Pantone’s Color of the Year is part prediction, part effort to shape consensus—telling a story that persuades people to embrace the chosen color.

For example, Pantone’s 2023 Color of the Year, Viva Magenta, also known as dragonfruit pink, was described as a hybrid shade navigating between the physical and virtual worlds. With 2023 being the year of AI’s explosive growth, this description positioned Viva Magenta as an ideal color for AI-generated visuals. Additionally, Pantone highlighted its connection to cochineal insects, which produce natural red dye, symbolizing a link to primal sources and vitality. This narrative tapped into themes of sustainability and the post-pandemic desire for exploration.

Similarly, the 2024 Color of the Year, Peach Pink, emphasized softness, healing, and community. It resonated with the global surge in interest in psychology, addressing societal turbulence and the growing need for compassion and visions of a peaceful future. Peach Pink evoked the warmth of an embrace, aligning with these sentiments.

Such explanations lend credibility to Pantone’s choices. Moreover, Pantone provides a comprehensive guide on its website for using the Color of the Year across various contexts, including pairing suggestions. Accessing more advanced color services, however, requires a significant investment. As Fast Company observed, the Color of the Year announcement has become Pantone’s primary marketing strategy. According to LeadIQ, Pantone’s revenue in 2024 reached $35 million, a record high.

In essence, Pantone’s work revolves around two strategies: fostering communication through its color codes and creating consensus through its Color of the Year. Connection is power, and consensus is opportunity.

Now, let’s move on to the second topic, which also relates to vision. As the year draws to a close, let’s discuss the past year’s advances in ophthalmology, particularly for those whose work involves extensive screen time.

The first study concerns dry eye syndrome, one of the most common eye conditions after myopia. According to the Expert Consensus on the Clinical Diagnosis and Treatment of Dry Eye Syndrome published in 2013, over 20% of people in China suffer from this condition. That’s at least one in five people.

Many resort to artificial tears, but in September, researchers at Sun Yat-sen University’s Eye Center discovered something intriguing: laughing can improve the eye’s moisture retention and alleviate dry eye symptoms.

Yes, laughter can help relieve dry eye syndrome. This finding was published in the British Medical Journal. The research involved approximately 300 patients with mild to moderate dry eye syndrome, divided into two groups. One group used artificial tears (0.1% sodium hyaluronate) four times a day, while the other practiced laughing exercises four times a day, repeating them 30 times per session. By the eighth week, the laughing group showed a greater improvement in eye disease indices compared to the artificial tears group.

The Second Study: Cataracts
What are cataracts? Simply put, cataracts are like egg whites turning into egg solids. Originally, the lens of the eye is transparent and elastic, but due to protein denaturation within it, the lens becomes cloudy, blocking the transmission of light.

According to official statistics, the incidence rate of cataracts among people over 60 in China is over 80%, and it rises to 90% for those over 90 years old. Currently, the primary treatment for cataracts is replacing the natural lens with an artificial one.

Recently, however, there has been new progress in this area. The breakthrough comes from a collaborative project between the Eye Center of the Second Affiliated Hospital of Zhejiang University and the National Eye Institute under the U.S. National Institutes of Health. Their findings were published in The Journal of Clinical Investigation.

The research team discovered that a species of squirrels experiences clouding of their lenses in cold environments during hibernation. However, when these squirrels awaken from hibernation, their lenses return to complete transparency. This process closely resembles the treatment process for cataracts. Further investigation revealed that when the squirrels awaken, their ubiquitin-proteasome system (UPS) in the lens gets activated. The primary function of this system is protein degradation. Intriguingly, the UPS system in squirrels can precisely clear aggregations of α-crystallin proteins (CRYAA), which are the main culprits behind cataracts.

Without delving too deeply into the mechanisms, if this research matures further, it could potentially lead to the development of new cataract drugs.

The Third Study: Myopia
Moving on to myopia. According to data released by the National Health Commission, the overall myopia rate among adolescents in China has exceeded 50%. In 2018, over 21% of high school seniors had myopia with a degree exceeding 600, categorized as high myopia. Additionally, foreign scholars have estimated that a person may spend up to £1,000 in their lifetime on vision correction.

To address myopia, several new advancements were made this year.

For example, repeated low-intensity red-light therapy (RLRL therapy). In June 2024, Professor Zou Haidong’s team from the Shanghai Eye Disease Prevention and Treatment Center announced that this method effectively controls high myopia in children and adolescents.

Another example is the “Natural Classroom” project. In May, Nature magazine reported on a novel approach that simulates outdoor environments in classrooms, providing students with visual stimuli similar to those experienced outdoors.

Additionally, there’s the use of AI to treat myopia. A technology company affiliated with Osaka University in Japan is developing auto-focusing glasses. These glasses are designed to adjust focus automatically based on head and eye movements. They aim to improve vision for individuals with both myopia and astigmatism. Though still in early development, this project could potentially revolutionize the eyewear industry if successful.

In Conclusion
To summarize, we discussed two main topics today:

1. How Pantone’s commercial flywheel operates. In brief, Pantone creates industry connections through its color coding system while generating new opportunities by announcing its Color of the Year. Connection is power, and consensus is opportunity.
2. The latest advancements in ophthalmic medicine in 2024.

That’s all for today’s content!