Yes, these eye shadows do look a lot like iPod minis, which look a lot like Kyocera cameras, don't they? And I think I saw that yellow car on the way down to Palo Alto yesterday.
It's become a kind of a truism to point out that Pantone owns product aesthetics. But in the spirit of reconfirming the obvious, I point you towards this inadvertently hilarious forecast from 2003 to get a sense of how managed "good taste" is these days, and how peculiar the interplay between politics, consumption, and design can become.
Walch urges graphic designers to "remember yellow, always a color of movement and youthful energies, and symbolic of a bright future, ideal for contemporary graphics." And Melanie Wood captures an emerging national mood when she asserts that "we want to get the war behind us, start anew and have fun again. Colors that refresh and rejuvenate will lead the way with innocent tones of pink and peach giving us a sense of freshness and a promise of tomorrow."
I hope you considered the cultural implications before you bought that pink iPod. And that eyeshadow. Not to mention the car.
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