(I think I just gave away that I’m a Canadian with my spelling of ‘colour’.)

Have you ever wondered why it seems that all new websites are green? Or, perhaps less specifically, why certain colours seem to come into fashion one year only to be replaced by others the next? I’m sure that the fashion industry has a great deal to do with this, but how do these things trickle down to us (fashion-phobic) plebes?

Enter the good folks at Pantone®. As reported on the site ‘Colour Lovers’ (also Canadian? British?) it seems that blue is the new green this year. Pantone® has even chosen a specific shade of blue, 18-3943 Blue Iris. (Which, if you ask me, looks more purple than blue, but who am I?)

I guess we can look forward to a whole crop of over-designed websites using various hues of blue over the next year. I’m fine with that, so long as they start spelling words correctly (Flickr and Digg, I’m looking at you here) and get rid of all those damned reflections and bubble fonts in their logos.

Geesh! I’m starting to sound like a cranky old man.