The United Colors of the Apocalypse
I created a project called “The United Colors of the Apocalypse,” inspired by the annual Pantone® “Color of the Year” series, and related to the wildfires that were ravaging the western United States over the summer of 2020. Using my own images, plus '“smokey sky” images provided by friends, family, colleagues, and sometimes complete strangers from around the United States, I produced 130 color “swatches” that I posted on social media throughout the month of August, 2020.
All 130 swatches can be seen below.
Once the project was complete I combined all 130 swatches into a poster.
My social media postings of the project series caught the attention of the Creative Director at The American Prospect, a publication in Washington, DC. The article went live on September 18, 2020 in the “Home / Books, Arts, and Culture” section of The American Prospect online. The title of the piece is “United Colors of the Apocalypse, A Pantone Series for 2020, and can be seen here:
https://prospect.org/culture/united-colors-of-the-apocalypse-pantone-2020/
What started as a personal project intended to bring people together, and find some beauty (and a bit of humor) in the chaos, quickly turned into a project that had much broader reach than I expected. I was mentioned in the New Yorker Magazine online on October 19, 2020 in an article by Michelle Nijhuis called “The West Coast Wildfires are Apocalypse, Again.” She stated, "Though the skies never turned lurid orange and red, as they did in the Bay Area, they fluctuated between what David Bieloh, of The American Prospect, dubbed Unholy Ochre and Apocalypto Smoke."
The project was also published in the Fall 2020 edition of Crimson & Black Magazine at CWU:
http://www.cwucrimsonandblack.com/story/a-sky-for-color
An article titled “Paint Me the End of the World” was also published on Get Review on October 24, 2020 about the project. The author states, “With United Color of the Apocalypse, designer David Bieloh paints us a (Pantone Color of the Year) selection a little more in tune with 2020: A selection of colors based on climate change, with that end-of-the-world flavor that we have been feeling since March.”
You can check out the full article here: