A few things I learned from Giovanni Marra (Pantone)

We had a great guest lecturer in class on Tuesday - Giovanni Marra, Director of Corporate Marketing for Pantone. First let me say that he has a great job - studying color, travelling to exotic destinations for research, selling color to top names in fashion, design and other industries.

It was interesting to learn about the need for consistency of lighting in color evaluation. For example, fashion labels choose a color and need to match it with the one their manufacturing facility created, so they determine the standard lighting in order to match accurately. (there's a formula like D50, D65, or cool white flourescent but that's beyond my understanding).

Marra thinks color trends repeat every 15 years or so, then he mentioned that aqua is back in style from the 70's. That was a LOT longer than 15 years ago, however the mid 80's are very much in style again and that was about 15 years ago. Teal defined the 80's more than any other color.

It was surprising that fashion leads trends nearly three years in advance. Pantone looks to labels like Versace, Prada, etc to determine the hottest new colors, and then predicts them two years in advance. Trends are also based on socio-economic issues (yellow to combat drab and depression, because it's uplifting, warm, orangey and fun). Then these color predictions may be a self-fulfilling prophecy because they are never wrong. The color trends trickle all the way from Prada to Walmart in a matter time.

One point Marra made that I agree with very much - we tend to take color for granted because we are surrounded by it at all times of the day, everywhere we go. This is true for so many things.

Some descriptions of yellow from his color presentation: luminous, joyful, spiritual, original, and optimistic.

Side note: be on the lookout for everything Africa, which is supposed to be the next biggest trend. One of my classmates brought up the problem of an entire culture becoming a trend. Does this diminish the value of the culture in a way, turning into a commodity? Quite possible, but I suppose it depends on the application of this culture in the design. If it is inspiration for a new product line, I'm not sure if that is disrespectful; but if a company decides 'Africa is so hot right now, let's call this 'Safari' and proceeds to use colors and textures stereotypically African, that is rather awful. It's the intention that matters.

Ode to the Yellow Hue

I have always thought of yellow as an inspirational color, and the one most associated with innovations and ideas. A few years back I painted the walls of my apartment a pale yellow ("butter"), thinking that I would be inspired by the color! Strangely, I never associated the color with energy even though it obviously represents sunlight. "Yellow, in most cultures, is associated with the power and energy of the sun and is a perfect partner for sustaining and adding power to green." Jack Bredenfoerder writes about color trends on the Landor blog. In this post, he explains how the economy can dictate the tastes people will have in 2010 and beyond. He asserts that because we've experienced such an economic downturn that people will move towards more simplicity in their life, and less 'bling'. Sustainability issues are reaching the forefront of many peoples minds, and that may encourage folks to use materials efficiently and reduce waste by reuse and recycling.

I've included a natural pale yellow wood chair in the inspiration board above to represent the idea of sustainability, and the cool yellow light above represents the inspiration that yellow brings us. Tropical colors are also being forecasted for 2010, since people are dying to go on vacation! There are a couple warm yellow colors included in the Pantone color forecast, to represent sun and the warmth of lying on a tropical beach in paradise (that would be nice). Yellow also reminds me of citrus, and the shocking taste of a lemon. Yellow is the taste of cool lemon water while dozing in the sun on a breezy summer day.

Yellow Hue study. Includes every swatch of yellow color aid - all tints, shades and pastels from Yellow, warm Yellow and cool yellow.

Color Forecasting

I came across this post on the Landor blog from Jack Bredenfoerder while scanning through my bookmarks the other day. It is very relevant to our current project in class, which is to do a trend forecast for a specific color. My color is yellow, so I think it's great that 2010 all of the popular colors are related to tropical vacations because yellow reminds us of sunshine!

Jack Bredenfoerder is design director of Cincinatti-based Landor, and internationally recognized as a color expert. In his article 'Blue is the new Green' he explains the need for a bright 'forward-thinking' blue (that he would call Beyond Belief Blue) because blues are so ubiquitous and such a safe choice that they tend to blend in together. He goes on to explain that greens are tilting towards blue in global preference. And I forgot this fun fact - for many years in China, they did not distinguish between green and blue. They called them the same color, which is a great example of how objective colors are, and how it's possible to classify them in so many different ways. He says this about yellow: "Yellow, in most cultures, is associated with the power and energy of the sun and is a perfect partner for sustaining and adding power to green." Hmm yellow adds power... that's interesting because it's not what I would have thought. I tend to think of yellow as a weak color, but I'm looking forward to exploring it more and being proven wrong!

A fun aspect of predicting color trends is that Hollywood has so much to do with it. Keeping an eye on the red carpet can unveil important new color combinations that could blow up into a global trend.

"While on the Lost tour there was a lot of conversation about Egypt and its ancient deities and how they may be involved in the final episodes. Specifically, Aton and Ra were discussed. Both are sun gods—Aton is a monotheist deity and Ra is a polytheist deity. Expect warm golden yellows and pearly gold metallics. A good representation of these colors would be in the gown that Nicole Kidman recently wore to the Screen Actors Guild Awards." Bredenfoerder also discusses the Avatar trend towards global environmental awareness, and predicts that luminescence and 3D will be huge trends in electronics. And did you know the Avatar blue color has a name!? It's called Yves Klein International Blue, named after the artist who first mixed it. Here are the the color trend predictions for 2010!

Image courtesy of Jack Bredenfoerder, Landor Associates.