Through Pantone’s work with the band, “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue” have been officially inked into culture, bringing the lexicon of Dead Heads into the universal language of color. As part of the collaboration, Pantone celebrates their first ever official merch collection featuring Grateful Red Steal Your Face Stealie Blue T-Shirt, Grateful Dead Pantone Hoodie, Grateful Dead Pantone Mug alongside a few more items. Fans can check out the collection here.
“We’re thrilled to unveil the official Grateful Dead Steal Your Face trademark colors. These iconic shades are instantly recognizable and deeply tied to the band’s identity, making it an honor to see the Grateful Dead officially represented by Pantone.” – Mark Pinkus, President, Rhino Entertainment
“The Grateful Dead’s visual iconography is unmatched in the music world. The Dead’s Steal Your Face logo is their most recognizable icon, with three equally essential key elements: the 13-point lightning bolt, and the two colours, red and blue, that make up the logo’s primary design elements. These shades of red and blue are uniquely and identifiably Grateful Dead icons on their own. To now have two pantone colours immortalizing these shades of red and blue as the official colours of the Grateful Dead is a huge honour.” – David Lemieux, Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Archivist
“Just like the music of the iconic Grateful Dead, color can evoke emotions and feelings that can engulf you into a different world. Memorializing and standardizing the iconic colors that showcase the band’s originality and ensuring their legacy lives on through a visual language, is both meaningful and inspiring and we are proud to be a part of it.” – Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute
The unveiling of “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue” mark the latest in a series of celebrations to honor the Grateful Dead’s 60th Anniversary in 2025. The release of the band’s first official greatest hits compilation, Gratest Hits, brings together some of the many songs that continue to unite generations. A sweeping new 60-CD collection, Enjoying The Ride, maps an epic cross-country road trip along the “Heady Highway,” with stops at 20 storied venues where the music, moment and magic of the Grateful Dead converged, while a 6LP/3CD collection, The Music Never Stopped, offers a briefer, but no less illuminating, journey through the live shows that shaped the band. The partnership with Pantone also follows recent collaborations with Loewe, Vineyard Vines, Dogfish Head, Retrospec, NBA, Knockaround and others in recent months, with more to be announced soon.
The Grateful Dead announce a new partnership with Pantone, the global color authority and provider of professional color language standards and digital solutions for the design community, to reveal the creation of “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue”: two colors that have been synonymous with the band for the past 60 years, and now immortalized as part of their ever-growing legacy. The colors were scanned from an original pressing of the Bear’s Choice album, which was the first time the stealie was used on an official Grateful Dead release. From the quintessential Steal Your Face logo, to the epochal swirls of tie-dye that have brightened the crowds at a record-setting 2,318 concerts, to the world of iconography and hundreds of collaborations that have defined the last six decades, these two distinct hues are woven into the fabric of the Grateful Dead’s flourishing fandom, community and catalog.
Through Pantone’s work with the band, “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue” have been officially inked into culture, bringing the lexicon of Dead Heads into the universal language of color. As part of the collaboration, Pantone celebrates their first ever official merch collection featuring Grateful Red Steal Your Face Stealie Blue T-Shirt, Grateful Dead Pantone Hoodie, Grateful Dead Pantone Mug alongside a few more items. Fans can check out the collection here.
“We’re thrilled to unveil the official Grateful Dead Steal Your Face trademark colors. These iconic shades are instantly recognizable and deeply tied to the band’s identity, making it an honor to see the Grateful Dead officially represented by Pantone.” – Mark Pinkus, President, Rhino Entertainment
“The Grateful Dead’s visual iconography is unmatched in the music world. The Dead’s Steal Your Face logo is their most recognizable icon, with three equally essential key elements: the 13-point lightning bolt, and the two colours, red and blue, that make up the logo’s primary design elements. These shades of red and blue are uniquely and identifiably Grateful Dead icons on their own. To now have two pantone colours immortalizing these shades of red and blue as the official colours of the Grateful Dead is a huge honour.” – David Lemieux, Grateful Dead Legacy Manager and Archivist
“Just like the music of the iconic Grateful Dead, color can evoke emotions and feelings that can engulf you into a different world. Memorializing and standardizing the iconic colors that showcase the band’s originality and ensuring their legacy lives on through a visual language, is both meaningful and inspiring and we are proud to be a part of it.” – Laurie Pressman, Vice President of the Pantone Color Institute
The unveiling of “Grateful Red” and “Stealie Blue” mark the latest in a series of celebrations to honor the Grateful Dead’s 60th Anniversary in 2025. The release of the band’s first official greatest hits compilation, Gratest Hits, brings together some of the many songs that continue to unite generations. A sweeping new 60-CD collection, Enjoying The Ride, maps an epic cross-country road trip along the “Heady Highway,” with stops at 20 storied venues where the music, moment and magic of the Grateful Dead converged, while a 6LP/3CD collection, The Music Never Stopped, offers a briefer, but no less illuminating, journey through the live shows that shaped the band. The partnership with Pantone also follows recent collaborations with Loewe, Vineyard Vines, Dogfish Head, Retrospec, NBA, Knockaround and others in recent months, with more to be announced soon.
