The Pantone Dualities Challenge, a collaborative competition between Yanko Design, KeyShot, and Pantone, has concluded with stunning results that demonstrate innovative approaches to color harmony. The challenge launched in July and ran through the end of August, inviting designers to explore Pantone's magical Dualities color palette through advanced rendering techniques and artificial intelligence tools.
The competition brief was straightforward yet challenging: participants were asked to explore Pantone's Dualities palette and its comprehensive set of 175 color combinations, featuring subtly eye-catching pastel and warm-cool grey shades. The challenge also introduced a groundbreaking new feature from KeyShot's latest 2025.2 update called AI Shots, which allowed designers to experiment with cutting-edge visualization tools.
Participants were encouraged to utilize AI tools in KeyShot Studio, which run locally without requiring credits or internet subscriptions, ensuring data privacy and security. These features enable users to generate materials, backgrounds, and entirely new designs, though they do require fairly powerful GPU hardware. The tools represent a significant step forward in the new era of design and visualization that the industry is entering.
Sam Weise claimed the gold medal with his design "Préssec," which perfectly executed the challenge brief by combining two typically incompatible colors in a novel carabiner design. Weise's approach was brilliant in its simplicity, pairing pink and lemon green – colors that don't usually work together on paper due to one being warm and the other cool. However, his design creates visual harmony and drama, making it easy to understand where the carabiner's arm is located and how to operate it intuitively.
The gold-winning design features a fabric strap that showcases KeyShot's RealCloth material with exceptional grace and technical excellence. Weise's understanding and flawless execution of the brief, particularly his ability to create a pleasing duality from contrasting colors, set his entry apart from the competition.
James Wolf secured the silver medal with his innovative chair design that took a creative spin on the challenge requirements. Rather than simply selecting complementary colors, Wolf decided to blur the lines by creating a magical gradient effect. His design features a warm grey blended effortlessly with a pink hue, creating a visual effect reminiscent of well-blended makeup.
The gradient application on Wolf's chair design feels particularly appropriate given the furniture's feminine aesthetic. Each segment of the chair resembles a lipstick, making the makeup-inspired color application feel like a perfect match. The seamless color transition demonstrates sophisticated understanding of how gradients can create visual appeal and emotional connection in product design.
Sidhant Patnaik earned the bronze medal with a phenomenally creative concept that challenged conventional interpretation of the brief. Rather than strictly adhering to the duality concept, Patnaik embraced color and chaos by imprinting the entire Dualities palette onto a Rubik's Cube design. This transformation turns the classic puzzle toy into a dynamic palette-maker.
Patnaik's design encourages experimentation without traditional winning or losing parameters – users can play and create chaotic color combinations through manipulation. While this approach doesn't strictly embrace the duality brief, it uses the colors in a way that inspires other designers and opens new possibilities for color exploration and interaction.
The first honorable mention went to Paradigm.ooo for a clever xylophone design that applies color in a linear fashion. Most designers view color linearly unless working with color wheels, so applying the palette to an instrument with natural linear structure proved ingenious. The xylophone features colors ranging from pink to blue oriented across the instrument's keys.
This design includes an accidentally brilliant detail: the larger, lower-pitch keys are blue (traditionally associated with masculine characteristics), while the smaller, higher-pitch notes are pink (traditionally feminine). This creates both visual appeal and subtle cultural commentary about sound, color, and gender associations in design.
Liam de la Bedoyere of Bored Eye Designs received the second honorable mention for his experimental chair design featuring multiple piped structures wrapped around a foam seat. His approach created distinct canvases for applying palette colors, demonstrating how colors appear in stripes and swatches when placed together.
De la Bedoyere's design opens opportunities for extensive color experimentation through its modular structure. One version relies on high-contrast elements to grab attention, while another explores different contrast types by pairing opposite colors like blue and pink with harmonious purple serving as a bridging element. This approach showcases the versatility of the Dualities palette across different application methods.
The challenge successfully demonstrated how contemporary designers think about color harmony, showcasing various approaches from strict duality interpretation to creative reinterpretation of the brief. The winning entries highlight the evolution of design tools and the creative possibilities that emerge when traditional color theory meets cutting-edge rendering and AI technology.
