2016 The Year In Colour

The Year In Colour from Brand Union looks back at 2016 and the dominant colors from the news stories every day of the year.

This year, we chose to depart from traditional season’s greetings (elves toiling in grottoes) in favour of something equally fantastical: an algorithm. We scanned the news media and identified dominant colours from leading headlines for each day of 2016.

However, it is important to note that no matter how far AI has come, it cannot replace human sentiments. Sentiments like wishing you Happy Holidays and our warmest wishes for a delightful New Year. This, we are happy to do in the traditional way: from the heart.

The design is interactive. Each dot will show you the dominant news story of the day when you hover over it, and clicking takes you directly to the article and the images used to determine the colors.

I'm not sure why the rows are 14 dots across; 2-weeks of days. This would have been a little easier to navigate if it matched the 7-day row layout of a standard calendar. Instead, the months are separated, but the dots are just shown as sequential days.

Thanks to Brianna for sending in the link!