Pantone 17-5104 Ultimate Gray and 13-0647 Illuminating - if those names and numbers hold any significance to you, that means you are up to date on Pantone’s Colour of the Year for 2021.

Every year in December Pantone, a company who created a universal language around colour, announces their Colour of the Year. A tradition for over 20 years, this influences design decisions in colour conscious industries such as textiles, apparel, beauty, interiors and architectural and industrial design.

This year, the Ultimate Gray and Illuminating combination highlights how elements can come together to support one another while sending a message of strength and possibility. The grey is natural, assuring, thoughtful and reliable while the yellow is cheery, friendly and full of promise.

This message encompasses hopefulness which is rather fitting given the pandemic year we’ve all been faced with. It can also represent the approaching days of Spring: the reflection of new beginnings, progress and a blossoming of sorts with the image of earth slowly emerging and coming back to life again after a winter slumber (us humans are feeling that too, right?). This combination can inspire to move ahead with new possibilities.

As stated from Pantone: “as people look for ways to fortify themselves with energy, clarity, and hope to overcome the continuing uncertainty, spirited and emboldening shades satisfy our quest for vitality”.

Photo by Fabian Mardi on Unsplash

Because we’ve all been spending A LOT more time indoors this year, it has become increasingly apparent that the quality of our environment plays an essential part in our physical and mental health. Perhaps it has put a new perspective on how space is used and provided ample time to plan on how to make new improvements to either home or office space. To start, by bringing these colours in as simple accents, it can reinvigorate a room without investing too much time or money. After all, colour is the easiest way to transform a space.

But really, the Colour of the Year isn’t meant to be taken as gospel or even a prediction, it is meant as an aspiration.

If you’re a small business owner, these colours could embellish your connection to nature and inspire you to take steps to bring more room and more light into your working quarters. This idea can provide momentum in bringing more natural elements into the space, address concerns of sustainability or allow you to focus on better energy efficiency. These health conscious ideas are no longer niche and can be applied to any space.

If you’re a homeowner, eco-friendly design principles can help reimagine your home and breath new life into a space you’ve gotten to know extremely well over the last year. Or maybe you’re taking the plunge into the HOT real estate market right now where these ideas could help transform a house with potential into the home of your dreams.

Whichever situation you find yourself in, there are many options for home or tenant improvements that allow the safety, security and wellness that has become increasingly important throughout this pandemic. This colour combination for 2021 is just a springboard for inspiration and to quote Pantone, “whose ties to insight, innovation and intuition, and respect for wisdom, experience, and intelligence inspires regeneration, pressing us forward toward new ways of thinking and concepts”.

Photo by Ilse Orsel on Unsplash

We are a small business with some big goals. And one of those goals is to obtain COR.

What is that you ask? It stands for Certificate of Recognition and is a voluntary program run by the Government of Alberta. It is available to members of the Alberta Construction Safety Association (“ACSA”) and rewarded to companies that have developed and implemented a Health & Safety program which meets established provincial standards.

It is an arduous process and since we are building our Health and Safety program from scratch, it’s been a giant learning curve. We asked our Safety Coordinator, Mike Carter to reflect on some of the things he’s learnt on the journey thus far.

Here’s what he had to share:

I didn’t know what to expect when we began the safety program. Before taking the courses through the ACSA, I had been thinking about past work experiences with the City of Fredericton and the robust safety program that they had in place. Shortly after I started framing, I had noticed that some easy adjustments could be made to the job safer and that’s what got me interested in taking on a share of the work getting Archive’s safety program off the ground.

The process had been a long one and far from easy. Because of my commitments waiting for me on the job site, I had a difficult balance to strike in finding time for the work of putting together a Health and Safety Manual.

I learned pretty quick that it was going to be a lot longer process than I had initially thought. As in, on day one of the class. But with the help of my co-worker and sister-in-law, Jacquie, we recently accomplished our goal of a temporary Certificate of Recognition, soon to be followed by full COR status.

A few takeaways from the process:

1. A solid system for the management of the safety of all employees is not only a matter of doing proper due diligence, it also just makes sense in both a compassionate and financial sense.

2. A company that treats its employees with respect by appreciating the risk they go through to accomplish the jobs that pay the bills and the wages, is one that will also have an understanding of how injuries and lost time can affect the bottom line.

3. A safety program is a proactive step in protecting everyone’s lives, including that of the company itself.

Photo by Sandy Millar on Unsplash

Our leadership is committed to safety being a pillar of Archive’s key organizational values. With another of those values being open and honest communication, we want to empower our employees to share their input which will in turn, provide the opportunity to continually improve upon our Health and Safety program.

It will always be a living thing, always evolving and in the process of refinement. Our company goals rely heavily on our team’s contributions and so by creating a solid safety culture, we want to ensure that "safety doesn't happen by accident."

If you’re a small business owner, you know how tough it is to keep things running smoothly on a daily basis. Add in a pandemic, with restrictions, limited capacities, even shut-downs and it becomes, what seems, almost impossible sometimes. Keeping a sense of community afloat it also tough, given the COVID protocols we have, are and will be facing.

However, Print Machine has come up with a creative way to help Edmonton small businesses by creating the Here For Good t-shirt campaign. And Archive joined in on the fun! Proceeds from t-shirt sales go towards keeping us #HereForGood.

Our tshirt can be found here: https://bit.ly/38sgCuR

More information on the overall campaign can be found here: https://bit.ly/2JYMmyj

By joining together while we work through the various COVID restrictions, we can garner some sense of community by helping each other stay #HereForGood.