Color Forecasting Through 2015

Color forecasting is compared to "catnip for the creative mind," which sums up how colors are chosen for textiles, clothes, and even dishes. The statement about colors looking different in Minnesota, for example, versus Buenos Aires is correct. Henri Matisse woke up to color when he convalesced in southern France after being sick in cold, northern France. Reportedly he called Mrs. Matisse to urge her to pack up and move to Nice, France, because he never wanted to live in the dark again! Bravo, Matisse, just think what a void the art world would be without his light-filled works. BBL

Now, for the forecasters' inner world of choosing colors:

At Home: Violet is the hot color for 2014

By Marni Jameson
Correspondent

Posted: Tuesday, Dec. 17, 2013

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While many people dream of being in the winner’s circle at the Kentucky Derby, I want to be in the inner circle of the group that calls the color shots.

Think of the power! Two years ago, the Color Marketing Group, which forecasts color trends, predicted that Boyz-N-Berry – a jam-like violet – would be THE color coming in to 2014.

Sure enough, last month two influential color icons –Pantone Color Institute and Sherwin-Williams, the paint company – named shades of purple, Radiant Orchid and Exclusive Plum, respectively, their colors of the year.

“We love it when we’re right,” said Mark Woodman, president of the Color Marketing Group, who insists his group offers direction not dictation. For more than 50 years, CMG has been forecasting what colors will be in so manufacturers of everything from fabrics to futons, carpet to cars, and dresses to dishes, can gear up.

Then he does his best to make me feel what it’s like to be in that room calling color.

“It’s really odd,” he said. “You sit with a group of people having a chat. We’re all looking at what’s going on around the world that could influence color: rock groups, politics, films, traveling art collections, economic conditions, technology, sports events. Then somebody says health care is a big deal, and that prompts someone to say people need to eat better so health care won’t be so expensive, and that leads to dark berries and their health properties, which prompts someone to mention that berries grow wild in the forest, then we think of forests, and forest colors, and the fairy tales that happen in forests, and the fairies that live there, and what color they are, and ...”

The process is like “catnip for creative minds,” Woodman said.

“But why purple, why now?”

“When we pulled Boyz-N-Berry out of the line up in 2011,” he said, “many said it was violet’s time. We thought by the end of 2013, beginning of 2014, we would be moving past the economic crisis, and it would be time to have this marvelous color that many consumers had stayed away from. Historically, purple has been linked to wealth, royalty, and high religious orders. Lately, it has also surfaced as a color of health, with the uptick in dark berries.”

“We anticipated it would hit now, and we’re seeing affirmation.”

This year the group fingered two colors to dominate in 2015: Smokey Cashmere, a warm grey with a brown influence; and Tribal Red, a slightly weathered red with a touch of orange that says heritage.

“So what’s a consumer to do with this information?” I ask.

“It’s important to know what people are doing and where color is going for a lot of reasons,” Woodman said. “For instance, you don’t want to be the one guy in the room with a purple shirt.”

Here’s what else color experts say you can do with the new purple.

Pair with care: This year’s violet has range, and changes completely depending on the combination. “With grey it would be regal,” Woodman said, “with an acid green or yellow it would be completely energized, with an earthy brown and deeper green it would feel organic.”

Jackie Jordan, Sherwin-Williams director of color marketing, likes combining Exclusive Plum with copper and well-worn leather for a more masculine feel, or layering it with gold, gray and white for an elegant, dreamy bedroom.

Pantone executive director Leatrice Eiseman suggests using Radiant Orchid to complement olive and deep hunter greens. “It’s gorgeous when paired with turquoise and teal,” she said.

Adapt it to where you live: Before you slather the new color on the walls of your home, consider where you live, Woodman said. Certain colors that play well in Latin America, for instance, look garish in Minnesota. When the Southwest palette of terracotta and turquoise was big, the strong colors made sense in Phoenix, but had to be paler, washed out and weathered, to work in Schenectady, N.Y.

Mix it in: The slightest touch of a top-trend color can quickly update a room. “This year’s purple is a phenomenal accent color,” said Woodman, who suggests putting it on kitchen chair cushions, either as a solid or mixed in a print. Jordan suggests painting a tired piece of furniture in the trend color. Or add the color with a throw blanket, pillows, candles or even fresh flowers in the new color.

Play with high and low: The “in” color isn’t fixed as one intensity, but rather works along the continuum. Amp it up or pull it back. Think softer in a nursery, and darker to bring drama to a den. A pale violet is now out in transparent glassware. Consumers can also find mid-tone and deep values in a throw pillow. “We want people to play,” Woodman said.

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Read more here: http://www.charlotteobserver.com/2013/12/17/4551264/at-home-violet-is-the-hot-color.html#.UrHnPfRDuu8#storylink=cpy

Another Color Forecast

On the heels of the Pantone forecast, here's the latest from Brentano.

More Color Talk

02.12.2013 § Leave a Comment

We are forecasting interior color trends again this season. There are always nuances of differences in the colors used in different sectors of interior design (homes, hotels, restaurants, hospitals, offices, etc). However, if you look at them over time, the overall color cast does show a consistency across the sectors. Colors were warm with a yellow cast during the 1990s; the 2000s were a transitional time; and now they have definitely cooled and have a red cast. During the 1980s, mauve and plum were big in the contract market, so we can see the pendulum has swung back to red again except now we are seeing different hues with a red cast. 

I’ve noticed that neutral colors are selected a lot, but when using color as an accent, the accent color is brighter compared to those from the 1980s and 1990s when mauve and plum were in vogue. The overall colors are getting clearer and lighter now, which is closer to the Mediterranean color sense.

This is true for the colors we’re forecasting for 2014, even the coral color which, although a yellowish red, still looks relatively cooler than orange. Charcoal and linen, being neutrals, are very much used nowadays. The color of clear gold is starting to get noticed again too, especially the metallic gold I consider a color/neutral. So is deep blue sapphire, another color/neutral. Seafern is the name we chose to describe the “clean” color that’s bluer than celadon but greener than the soft turquoise color that’s already very established and has been very popular for Brentano. It’s a color intended to bring a soft, refreshing atmosphere to an interior without being cold.

Pantone's Color of Spring 2014

I am on the side of those who believe the Pantone Color for Spring 2014 is like a breath of fresh air. Many folks feel insecure about using lilac, lavender, and other tints of purple, but some positives are connoted by derivatives of purple. Note the chart below:

 According to Lilian Verner-Bonds, in her book Colour Healing, purple foods promote leadership and heal erratic emotions. She also reveals the characteristics attributed to colors in the purple family:

Deep purple = arrogance, corrupt power, delusion, ruthlessness.
Violet= a rebuilder of hope, intuition, sense of destiny
Amethyst=mystical connections, idealism, protects the vulnerable
Mauve=makes the right choices, aristocratic, dynastic
Plum=old fashioned, pompous, full of false pride, boring
Lavender=perceptive and fragile, elusive, aesthetic
Lilac=a bright personality, vanity, glamor, romance, adolescence

She goes on to say that "purple flowers placed near you when you are working relieves eyestrain. Also, she advises us to use purple sparingly for it is a "heavy" color which, when used in excess, may be depressing. On its positive aspects, she says purple is useful for any kind of internal inflammation and for subduing palpitations of the heart. It is a good color for head problems; it is the chakra color for the brain. The immune system and jangled nerves can benefit from this color. Should you suffer from an overload of purple, the antidote is exposure to gold in the form of gold lighting, decor or clothes."

In Maria Killam's blog, Color Me Happy, wonderful examples are shown of how to use purple tints well.

Maria Killam, Interior Designer

Used sparingly, lilac perks up metallics.

Maria Killam, Interior Design

This is how I would love for my office to turn out. White accents lavender beautifully. Blue is analagous.

Is White Really A Color?

Some would argue that white represents the absence of color; others insist that white contains all colors. Sir Isaac Newton showed that sunlight contains colors when viewed through a prism. The artist profiled below has his own reasons for using white.

White is more than a color at Delaware art exhibition

The question is simple: is white really a color? There are differing opinions among color theory purists whether white should be considered a color at all, since it represents the absence of hue, and it cannot be made from the three primary colors.

It's not usually represented on an artist’s color wheel, but white is normally an essential ingredient of any palette. Artists know it as the strong, brilliant white pigment available for oil paintings.

“Into White,” a solo exhibition of watercolor and oil paintings by Greg Mort is on display at the Somerville Manning Gallery in Greenville, N.C. and runs through Jan. 4. Recognized today as one of America's leading contemporary artists, his watercolor, oil and pastel images are in notable collections around the world.  Mort’s works have been exhibited for 27 years at the gallery.

“This show is about the many shades of white and the variation in those shades,” Mort explained. “In watercolor paintings you paint the objects, but leave part of the paper untouched. It’s like a pencil drawing with trees and the sky, but for the moon you leave that space white. The lighter the object the more it moves toward you when you’re viewing the painting.”

The 19 paintings in “Into White” were developed from Mort’s exploration of the tension resulting from the presence of white or the absence of color in an image. Painting with a limited palette allows Mort to draw the viewer’s attention to specific details in each composition, like the petals of a blooming peony or the intricate striations of a conch shell. His use of white in the recent watercolors and oils evoke an ethereal beauty, enticing the viewer to appreciate his take on the objects depicted.

The inspiration for the exhibition came about a year ago when Mort was listening to and then interpreting the lyrics to the Cat Stevens’ song “Into White.”

‘I built my house from barley rice

Green pepper walls and water ice

And everything emptying into white’

“It’s a mixing of all these everyday things and all these colors come back to white,” observes Mort, who lives on 130 acres in Ashton, Md. “I’ve always been fascinated by the notion of white. It’s such a clean thing, like symbolizing purity in a wedding. To me it’s also an abstract notion, like a Robert Frost poem. He captures so much with so few words.”

Image in reverse

Mort approached the construction of each of these watercolor paintings by developing the image in reverse. Much like graphite drawing, he started on a blank white sheet of paper and developed the darker section, leaving the areas of light untouched. Since transparent watercolor affects the paper in a similar fashion, one becomes acutely aware of the underlying importance of negative space.

As Mort was building his collection of paintings for the exhibition, serendipity played a part, such as in “Apple White.” Don’t seek, find, as Picasso once said.

“It starts with a theme and then it feeds off itself,” Mort described. “I was visiting a neighbor up in Maine and was walking through a grove of apple trees. The usual red and green ones, then I discovered these blonde apples. I wasn’t expecting to see them and may have walked right past except for the theme of my paintings, so I was receptive. Once you’re leaning one way it’s easier to fall into other aspects of it.”

Last year near his summer home in Port Clyde, Maine, Mort came across a portion of a beach made up of tiny conch shells, no bigger than the size of the end of a thumb. White on white became “Latitude.”

“They were incredibly white, almost blindingly bleached white by the sun,” Mort described. “I grabbed a bag of them. A perfect fit for the nautical life in Maine. Latitude comes from the blue ribbon that I stretched across the shells. It was a suggestion of infinity. The ribbon leads you beyond the painting.”

Drawing and painting since childhood, Mort earned his first museum show at eighteen. His creations have the classic feel of the Dutch Masters but are juxtaposed with startlingly modern designs. They are on display at the Smithsonian, Corcoran Gallery of Art, Delaware Art Museum, Academy Art Museum, Portland Museum of Art and Brandywine River Museum as well as in scores of private collections.

Art and astronomy

Mort regularly hikes the rugged coast of Maine and navigates the rural trails of Maryland with his brushes, paints and canvases. He sees a strong connection between both art and science.

“There's an amazing parallel between science and art, and if you look at art history, you can see any number of people, like Leonardo da Vinci, who was a scientist and an artist, and for me, both are almost one and the same,” Mort maintained.

“Both art and science seek a kind of beauty. We try to get at the essence of things. Take the bark of a tree, why does it look that way? Take a mundane object that can be instilled with new life. A large part of my artistic journey as a painter seems to find its roots in scientific inquiry.”

 Mort also was honored when his 2008 oil painting “One World” was recently moved from the U.S. Embassy at the United Nations building in New York City to the White House. The large-scale oil features a globe of the earth in an ancient doorway and was first shown at Somerville Manning Gallery’s “American Green” environmentally themed exhibit.

“One World” was part of President and Mrs. Bill Clinton’s collection during their early days in the White House. The Mort family foundation Art of Stewardship encourages environmental awareness by offering resources and opportunities to artists through grass roots efforts.

“It is a huge honor to have my ‘One World’ painting at the White House,” Mort said. “There is so much power in art and imagery. Artists can accomplish so much by using their voices to raise awareness.”

Somerville Manning Gallery is located at 101 Stone Block Rd, Greenville. For exhibition hours, visit www.somervillemanning.com

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Terry Conway is a Delaware Arts and Culture writer.  You can view more of his work: www.terryconway.net.

Mood Clothes?

Color-Changing Mood Sweater Lets People Know What Its Wearer Is Feeling

By Rhonda J. Miller on December 7, 2013 6:11 PM EST

The technology of Galvanic Skin Response similar to a lie detector has been developed into wearable interactive garments that respond to emotion with changing colors of light. (Photo: Sensoree / Rhonda J. Miller)

Feelings are on display for all to see. A new mood sweater with lights, which change color according to its wearer's feelings — from aqua to convey tranquility, to green for calm, to yellow for blissful nirvana, and even red for feelings of nervousness or love.

The GER mood sweater by the design lab Sensoree is wearable technology that uses Galvanic Skin Response similar to a lie detector. That's the conductive quality of human skin in response to stimulii, according to The Guardian. Galvanic Skin Response is lower when a person is calm and at rest and higher when anxious.

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Sensoree named it the GER for Galvanic Extimacy Responder, which it describes it as "externalized intimacy" on its website.

The Galvanic Extimacy Responder sensors read excitement levels and translate the data into a palette of colors, according to Sensoree. The high collar bowl has LEDs that reflect onto the self for instant biofeedback.

"Located around the larynx, the visual interface replaces speaking, as the wearer's truths are instantly expressed with color," according to Sensoree.

The technology works by attaching sensors to the wearer's hands and then hooking the sensors up to a funnel-shaped LED collar, according toThe Guardian.

Sensoree was founded by San Francisco-based designer Kristin Neidlinger, who has a background in kinetic costume design and physical therapy. She began developing the responsive garments for people with sensory processing disorder. Sensoree describes its products as therpeutic biomedia that communicate emotions to promote body awareness, insight, and fun.

The mood sweater has been shown in exhibitions including the Digital Fall 2013 Fashion Show in San Francisco in October and the Futurotextiles exhibition in Romania in November, according to The Guardian.

"If mood rings weren't enough, Sensoree designed a sweater that interprets and displays the wearer's mood as an interactive light show," according topsfk.com. "While this idea might be a too excessive for casual wear, it is still an interesting project in the realm of wearable technology."

Sensoree announced it is planning to produce 100 of the mood sweaters that will be available in March 2014.

What do you think of this? Too revealing, or fun? 

Why Red & Green for Christmas?

This post is from the international interior design expert Maria Killam, first published in 2008. 

WHY ARE RED & GREEN THE COLOURS (she's Canadian) OF CHRISTMAS?

There are a few answers to this question but basically it comes down to this one by Glenn Baylock: Red symbolizes the blood that Jesus spilt to redeem us from our sins.

Green is the color of life. Therefore, green symbolizes the potential for eternal life that Jesus' sacrifice made possible for all of us. The evergreen tree is green all year round. So, it also symbolizes eternal life.

The flame of a candle, the lights on the tree and the star on top are all meant to remind us of the new star that appeared to proclaim the birth of the promised Messiah.

The bell is a reminder of the bells worn by sheep. They provide a means for the shepherd to find the sheep that has wandered from the flock and become lost. They symbolize our pleas to the Good Shepherd for guidance back to His flock.

The candy cane is shaped like a shepherd's staff. It symbolizes the responsibility that we all have to be shepherds, to help each other and guide each other back to God.

Finally, the bows on the top of the presents are symbolic of brotherhood. It should be a reminder that, just as the ribbons are tied together, we should all be tied together by the knowledge that we are all God's children and, therefore, brothers and sisters.

Goethe's Color Theory Rediscovered

Goethe’s Theory of Colors: The 1810 Treatise That Inspired Kandinsky & Early Abstract Painting

I doubt I need to list for you the many titles of the 18th century German savant and polymath Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, but allow me to add one or two that were new to me, at least: color theorist (or phenomenologist of color) and progenitor of abstract expressionism. As a fascinating Booktryst post informs us, Goethe’s book on color, Zur Farbenlehre (Theory of Colors), written in 1810, disputed the Newtonian view of the subject and formulated a psychological and philosophical account of the way we actually experience color as a phenomenon. In his account, Goethe describes how he came by his views:

Along with the rest of the world I was convinced that all the colors are contained in the light; no one had ever told me anything different, and I had never found the least cause to doubt it, because I had no further interest in the subject.

But how I was astonished, as I looked at a white wall through the prism, that it stayed white! That only where it came upon some darkened area, it showed some color, then at last, around the window sill all the colors shone… It didn’t take long before I knew here was something significant about color to be brought forth, and I spoke as through an instinct out loud, that the Newtonian teachings were false.

Schopenhauer would later write that “[Goethe] delivered in full measure what was promised by the title of his excellent work: data toward a theory of colour. They are important, complete, and significant data, rich material for a future theory of colour.” It was a theory, Schopenhauer admits, that does not “[furnish] us with a real explanation of the essential nature of colour, but really postulates it as a phenomenon, and merely tells us how it originates, not what it is.”

Another later philosophical interpreter of Goethe, Ludwig Wittgenstein—a thinker greatly interested in visual perception—also saw Goethe’s work as operating very differently than Newton’s optics—not as a scientific theory but rather as an intuitive schema. Wittgenstein remarked that Goethe’s work “is really not a theory at all. Nothing can be predicted by means of it. It is, rather, a vague schematic outline, of the sort we find in [William] James’s psychology. There is no experimentum crucis for Goethe’s theory of colour.”

Yet a third later German genius, Werner Heisenberg, commented on the influence of Zur Farbenlehre, writing that “Goethe’s colour theory has in many ways borne fruit in art, physiology and aesthetics. But victory, and hence influence on the research of the following century, has been Newton’s.”

I’m not fit to evaluate the relative merits of Goethe’s theory, or lack thereof, versus Newton’s rigorous work on optics. Whole books have been written on the subject. But whatever his intentions, Goethe’s work has been well-received as a psychologically accurate account that has also, through his text and many illustrations you see here, had significant influence on twentieth century painters also greatly concerned with the psychology of color, most notably Wassily Kandinsky, who produced his own “schematic outline” of the psychological effects of color titled Concerning the Spiritual in Art, a classic of modernist aesthetic theory. As is usually the case with Goethe, the influence of this single work is wider and deeper than he probably ever foresaw.

You can find Goethe’s Theory of Colors in our collection of 450 Free Ebooks.

Related Content:

The Tale of the Fox: Watch Ladislas Starevich’s Animation of Goethe’s Great German Folktale (1937)

Wassily Kandinsky Caught in the Act of Creation, 1926

When Respected Authors, from Goethe to Henry Miller, Try Their Hand at Painting

Josh Jones is a writer and musician based in Durham, NC. Follow him at @jdmagness