To combat the gloom, a team of designers has teamed up with Pantone on a fantastic street art project called ‘Project Monsoon’.

Using hydrochromic paint that remains invisible unless it becomes wet, they’re painting a number of streets with cheerful murals featuring vibrant aquatic life in mood lifting colors.

The pieces are inspired by South Korea’s cultural admiration of rivers, using the flow of rainwater that fills the streets to make them explode with color and life.

Before the rains arrive the team is teasing the project with augmented reality billboards which display a glimpse of the art hidden on city streets, and giving the people of Seoul something to look forward to in this year’s monsoon season.

Seunghoon Shin, Yoonshin Kim and Nu Ri Kim, all affiliated with School of the Art Institute of Chicago, are the creative minds behind the project.

” to bring back the color,” Yoonshin Kim wrote on his website. “We painted the streets of Seoul with hydrochromic paint — a special formula which changes from transparent to opaque when it gets wet.”

Kim added, “Inspired by South Korea’s culture of emphasizing the importance of the flow of rivers, the paintings utilize Korea’s topographical features that create a flow and puddle of rain water in every street to fill the streets with color and life.”