It’s that time of year when everyone’s making their highlight lists and touting their predictions for what’s to come. While we’re not about to step out and name a single hue the color of the year, it feels like time to give attention to a tone we keep noticing. Fountain: a teal for today and tomorrow.
This aqueous Aegean cyan color is at once both cooling and energizing. It’s the self care of doing laps at the pool, as opposed to the meditative colors of crystal visions in recent years. Popping up in noted runway shows, consumer collections, stylish publications, and much more, this color is becoming a stamp of the fashion-forward.
Trendwatchers repeatedly tell us that the Y2K aesthetic is back (I mean, we did too) and it’s pretty hard to picture that early 2000s era without some variation of this color in sight. Remember the Bondi Blue iMac? It was a defining design of the time — ushering in waves of transparent, colorful, candy-like high-tech devices that reshaped our visions of the future and made our appliances friendly and fun. Also related: Tumblr’s 2011 Seapunk aesthetic for your nostalgic pleasure.
Maybe we’re hungry again for that optimistic look at what the next big thing could be. Our devices seem to dictate us more than ever, yet they feel increasingly flat, boring, and banal. Aiming to pave a friendlier path ahead, designers might be pulling up this notably futuristic hue once again to get us excited for what lies ahead.
Fountain is also a color that signals the pleasures of travel — a concept we’re all thirsty for. As daily BeReals highlight mundane 9-to-5s and WFH setups over and over again, this color, locked up in faraway glacier-fed rivers and the filmic skies of disposable cameras, is calling to us. Fill your lungs. Take the plunge!
Fountain also helps us aspire to express ourselves. Who hasn’t impulsively wanted to dye their hair this color at one point? It feels like a radical hue to make a part of one’s identity. Not a masculine blue, not a feminine turquoise, not neutral at all — it claims a self-defined uniqueness.
Fountain is a thirst-quenching addition to your palettes. Tucked between teal and turquoise it balances the richness of jewel tones without too much digital RGB brightness (as in, you can print this without fuss). Check out more Fountain stock photos, footage, and illustrations below or search by color on the Stocksy site.
