It’s that time of year again. Pantone has officially unveiled their 2022 “Color of the Year,” a prediction of the hue that will capture the coming year’s vibe and influence everything from fashion to marketing to home decor.

The crystal ball at Pantone’s headquarters has looked into the future and pulled out a brand new shade for 2022, a periwinkle tint called PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri.

“It is literally the happiest and the warmest of all the blue hues,” said Pantone Color Institute’s Executive Director Leatrice Eiseman in a video call with CNN. “Because of that red undertone, it introduces an empowering feeling of newness, and newness is what we’re looking for.”

“The color symbolizes the future,” she added. “[It] has that sprightly, joyous attitude that we’re talking about, that carefree confidence, and creative spirit.”

Pantone’s Vice President Laurie Pressman agrees, adding that “We’ve gone through so many challenges over this time, we don’t know what’s going to pop up from one day to the next. It’s curiosity that’s helping people to get through these difficult times. What we would call courageous creativity.”

Each year the company scours the worlds of art, entertainment, travel trends, and socio-economic conditions for new color influences. This year, Pantone experts took cues from the pervasiveness of technology in the wake of the coronavirus pandemic.

“We are living in transformative times. PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri is a symbol of the global zeitgeist of the moment and the transition we are going through,” the company says on its website. “As we emerge from an intense period of isolation, our notions and standards are changing, and our physical and digital lives have merged in new ways. Digital design helps us to stretch the limits of reality, opening the door to a dynamic virtual world where we can explore and create new color possibilities. With trends in gaming, the expanding popularity of the metaverse, and [the] rising artistic community in the digital space, PANTONE 17-3938 Very Peri illustrates the fusion of modern life and how color trends in the digital world are being manifested in the physical world and vice versa.”

In keeping with that emphasis on technology, the Pantone Color Institute digitally created its 2022 Color of the Year, the first time in its 23 years that it has not simply pulled from the company’s existing archives.

“The Pantone Color of the Year reflects what is taking place in our global culture, expressing what people are looking for that color can hope to answer,” adds Vice President Pressman. “Creating a new color for the first time in the history of our Pantone Color of the Year educational color program reflects the global innovation and transformation taking place. As society continues to recognize color as a critical form of communication, and 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 fact, the company is partnering with Microsoft in 2022 to roll out Very Peri across multiple applications, including screensavers and interface options for PowerPoint, Teams, Edge, and Windows. And thanks to this collaboration, Eiseman’s statement will be true in a literal way: “Very Peri places the future ahead in a new light.”