Color Me Disengaged

Tags: Business, General,

As a kid I used to spend hours meticulously coloring the embossed flower patterns on white paper napkins. No one could use them after that, of course, but it was something to do to pass the time (at a time when everything seemed to move more slowly). In case you haven’t heard, this simple pleasure of mindless coloring has taken the publishing world by storm.  Stressed out adults are now opting for beautifully illustrated coloring books to (literally) unplug from their increasingly complicated adult lives.

Friday afternoons were my favorite class period in grade school. That was arts and crafts time and I couldn’t wait to whip out my cigar box filled with everything a great artist needed to create “art.”

This would have been the week we started fashioning our pine cone turkeys. We used pipe cleaners and color construction paper, and cut and folded a paper fan tail into eight sections so that we could use all eight colors in our Crayola box.

Our creative energies nearly depleted, we finally stuffed the paper tail into the grooves of the pine cone, drowned it in Elmer’s glue, threw on some beads, glitter and feathers for good measure, and voila! The Thanksgiving Day centerpiece was ready to go home.

Art class was always the fastest hour of the week because, without knowing it, we were experiencing an induced meditative state that made us forget — if only for a moment — the grind of competitive spelling bees and flash card math drills.

As adults, we have quite a few more challenges (and people) on our minds, and a lot less time to think about them all.

That could explain why “we” (don’t look at me) have taken to coloring, a childhood activity that is the hottest category in the “Peter Pan Market,” right up there with Adult Summer Camps and Pre-schools…

Robin Neifield, CEO and cofounder of NetPlus Marketing Inc., an interactive agency that focuses on online marketing and advertising best practices, wrote, “As marketers, we note big trends and look for any insights that help us better understand consumer behavior and patterns. The appeal of this coloring trend to at least some significant segments of the adult audience appears to be its simplicity and purported stress relieving properties.”

On the other end of the spectrum, we have Russell Brand, the outspoken English comedian and actor, who doesn’t understand why adults want to live in “childish stupors” and considers the coloring fad as “the final portent of the impending apocalypse.”

“The best-selling books in the world are no longer bibles, Qurans or interesting scientific introspective on the workings of anatomy and the universe,” he all but screams.” They’re coloring books!” (he screams).

Yup.

Social commentators point to the lingering recession, unemployment, illness, lack of play time as a child, and the all-consuming nature of technology, as just a few of the reasons for this cultural shift.

Coloring can be a harmless, creative, therapeutic way of regressing into happier times to avoid the overwhelming present.

But it won’t last forever (coloring or the present).

Like all trends, this unfathomable phenomenon will soon go mainstream and fade, replaced with yet another (unfathomable) shooting star.

I’ll admit that every time I see an embossed white paper napkin, I want to throw some color on it.

But the urge passes.

I’ve moved on.

Anita Alvare (bio)/Alvare Associates/610-520-6140