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What Is Millennial Pink and Why Won’t It Go Away?

If you’re looking for your own striking imagery, you can get a 10% discount off all Shutterstock imagery using the code: ‘dots10’. Get started here.

Millennial Pink is much more than a color that caught on. Learn how this hue has evolved to be an entity with serious staying power, and how you can use it to send a message in your own marketing.


Almost three years after the release of the Rose Gold iPhone, we should be able to identify what is collectively called Millennial Pink. Still, if you try to describe it, the range of adjectives that seem definitive are actually broadly vague. Peachy-salmon, rose gold, rose quartz, pale dogwood… they’re all correct.
Much has been written about the trend since its appearance around 2012, and consequently the meaning and history of pink itself, yet we’re still talking about it. So, what is it? It wouldn’t be wrong to say that Millennial Pink is less a specific color, and more the embodiment of relevancy.
Image via HappyAprilBoy


Cultural Relevancy and Using Millennial Pink in Advertising

Advertisers are typically early adopters of trends, and the genesis of Millennial Pink is no different. It’s use in advertising campaigns is the reason it’s familiar to most people.
In 2006 Acne Studios, the high-end fashion house based in Stockholm, Sweden started using the now-familiar shade of neutralized pink for its shopping bags. Having outgrown its relationship to Barbie, the new pink seemed grown up, eschewing the neon tone for upscale neutralized shades.
A company called Thinx made waves the last couple years with a thought-provoking but straightforward campaign for their ground-breaking feminine products. The company uses the Millennial Pink palette, as well as other neutrals, with contemporary typography to visually communicate to their customer in a taboo-smashing way.
But Millennial Pink goes beyond a simple signifier of feminine products. Its evolution and deeper tonality have made it THE color for today, embodying so many of today’s issues surrounding identity. So whether you’re designing an email to announce involvement in The Global March or next year’s International Women’s Day, or your advertising a breakthrough product, Millennial Pink means you’re communicating a sense of cultural awareness.


Using Millennial Pink In Your Design Work

Check out the following backgrounds in the Millennial Pink category that leave ample room for text and other design elements.
Image via Wstockstudio
Using a range of dusty, beige, neutral pink, soft blush, or rosé as a background can give your marketing materials a specific vibe that you can build on easily. A simple tonal shift can turn a piece from the cloying Baker-Miller pink into a neutral and more current shade.
Image via Anna Bliokh
Image via kbecca
You don’t have to wash the background in pink in order to convey contemporary design awareness. Use patterns with pink accents to be suggestive without hitting the viewer over the head with a pink hammer.
Image via kokeshi1976
Image via Yorri
The hashtag #plantsonpink is a mega-popular trend on social media. Cactus and succulents, another wildly popular creative trend, can be paired with backgrounds ranging from soft and neutral pink to synthetic magenta for a timeless look and feel of a desert retreat getaway.
Image via BillyBlakkr
From high-end fashion houses to groundbreaking ad campaigns meant to reclaim a product for the actual target audience, and farther up the ladder to social, cultural, and political struggles, Millennial Pink shows just how much color can communicate.
This is the reason we’re still talking about this trend. Search for the term and you will find almost as many “it’s over” posts as you will articles about its continuing relevancy. Yet as much as some people will try to say it’s slowing down, or a new color palette has overtaken it, Millennial Pink simply refuses to budge.

If you’re looking for your own striking imagery, you can get a 10% discount off all Shutterstock imagery using the code: ‘dots10’. Get started here.
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