Hi, I'm Phnam.
Hi, I'm Mardis.
And we're the hosts of Future Future, where two designers talk about the future of everything.
We're in the business of turning science fiction into a reality for a better future.
And today, we're going to talk about color.
So color, Mardis. An exciting subject.
That's something that is...hopefully most people experience with joy, and with despair, and everything in between.
Well, for designers, we use color in storytelling.
We try to capture an essence of a product or experience through color.
And, as Phnam said, we can make people happy and excited and energetic,
or we can bring them down and really calm them.
We know color is used in a lot of different meditations and therapies and things like that.
And while we're generally not doing that with most of the products we design, we do want to invoke a deep feeling.
We want to evoke sort of a story behind these colors and behind our brand, and we use color to help tell that story.
So while most designers are educated in how to use different colors, there is a subset of designers called CMF designers that are specialized in that.
And, CMF means colors, materials, and finishes.
And now, what a CMF designer does is that they go very very deep into the details on how to reference a color,
and how it feels in different environments, how it's fabricated, how long it lasts, how it reacts to UV lights, etc.
For instance, in a product development team you might have an industrial designer, you might have an engineer, you might have a creative director.
But then you often times have a CMF person - that's exclusively what they focus on.
And they understand cultures, and they understand the meaning behind the color -
not just the pure visual hue and saturation of the color, but also, "what does it mean throughout the world,"
and, "how does this effect their product?"
And CMF designers are involved in all kinds of steps during the process of developing products.
They are there for testing, for quality control at the factory.
They are on the floor testing the colors in different lights to make sure that the product that is designed
has the look and feel that is designed for the design intent.
And I love the idea that you mentioned: testing it in different lights.
Because this is hugely important to how we see color.
Color during the daytime is very different in the afternoon from the morning.
Architects do this all the time.
When they're building a building and 3D modeling, they'll set the sun;
the angle, a time of the day based on where you're at on the planet,
and then they'll look at their architecture in the morning, in the evening, and in the afternoon
so they can digitally test it long before they actually put it into practice.
So one tip we'd like to share with you is to take your samples or your product and test the color in northern light.
It's an ambient light.
It's a little more even and you will get better information.
So one of the key components to color and your brand is literally developing a design language that has a branded color.
So, we think about Coca Cola - what color is that?
That's red.
We think about Microsoft - what color is that?
That is blue.
We have these really recognizable colors.
If you remember the brand that was really big back in the 90s, and is still around, it's called Benetton Colors.
And it's the United Colors of Benetton, and it's every color of the rainbow.
They took colors and used the multiple color scheme to their advantage to become recognizable and very interesting.
So, as professionals we have different types of references that we can start choosing colors from.
One of them is the Pantone book.
So there are different types of books.
This one is the coded colors.
And you can see there are many types of colors here.
And as professionals, the more you work with these books, the more you're frustrated that there are not ten colors between each of these variations.
But it's a great way to start.
The C at the end of each of the number references means, "coated."
So it has a little bit of a gloss on top of the color, which is very different from the same color having a matte finish on top.
And then I would add to that there are a lot of other color books.
And this one is the metallic color book.
So you can look at paints with that metallic impregnated into the paint, and it allows it to reflect a little bit more.
It looks more like a car or something that's been painted in that manner.
So one thing you can see with the Pantone books is that they have a lot of color options,
but when it comes to blacks, grays, and whites, there are not a lot of choices.
And we know there are many products out there that have many types of blacks.
A glossy, very very dark black versus an anthracite versus a warm gray.
There are some options here but it's not wonderful.
So when it comes to choosing a white, don't go after Pantone.
They're not going to help you that much.
So here's a tip that we do often: we go to paint stores and hardware stores and we select paint chips that are normally used for interior design.
We'll select eggshell white, or a cool white, or a warm white,
and this gets all those spectrums of color that we can't find in some of our other traditional color matching systems.
This is also great for darks, too.
And since they're small cards painted on paper,
we'll just ship them right to the manufacturer or the client
and allow them to have a much better conversation about the opportunities in blacks and whites.
So, interesting fact about color books - even though they're very expensive, they're also very sensitive to UV light.
So every time we use them and we're done, we put them back in a dark environment
so UV lights don't alter the quality of the color.
And same for the paint chips.
And it's the same for the products we design or the walls that you paint.
You have to be aware the at the color will change over time from the first day you use it to two or three years later.
Another thing about color and time is that when you're an industrial designer,
you will design a product in a certain color and it will take two to three years for a product to come out.
So if you want to go with trendy colors,
you have to be aware that two or three years from now,
some people might not like that color anymore.
And then they're going to use that product for, let's say, the next five years.
So basically, you have to plan for seven years in advance.
So how do we get those really really beautiful blacks and whites?
Oftentimes we add just a drop of blue in the mixture of color.
And what that does is it keeps the whites from going yellow and the blacks from going warm.
It actually tricks the eye - it's a bit of an illusion that helps you create a more neutral looking color.
Another way to do it, if you're manufacturing or injection molding products,
is put a little bit of talcum powder into the mixture.
And what that does is add a little bit more reflectivity of the white and the color,
and it allows it to maintain its whiteness over time and not be degraded as bad by UV light.
So another way to use color in design is through projection or LEDs.
The color of the light - a lot of times we experience a green LED or a red LED or an amber LED - it can be a lot more sophisticated than that.
You can also play with the edge of a projection, for example.
If you know the artist James Turrell for example, he made a career out of manipulating color.
And it creates those non tangible experiences that feel tangible just by using color and projection.
So if we extrapolate that whole idea into a product that you may be designing,
think about if you're designing a product that's yellow that has a blue light on it, an LED or whatever.
That little period of where the light dissipates out - it's a blue light hitting a yellow surface -
that light is going to turn slightly green on the edges, because that's color theory and that's how that works.
So when you're doing that kind of thing, you really have to think about,
"how might this light affect the physical product in real practice?"
So there's one way to create sophisticated color combinations, and one of them is called, "tone on tone."
So tone on tone is when you use colors that are very similar to each other - and I don't say exactly the same.
The reason I say that is because if you have two different materials,
let's say a hard plastic versus a plastic versus an LED,
and you want to use exactly the same color, it's going to be very, very difficult for you to control that.
It is possible to a certain degree - if you want to spend the time, the money, the effort to do that.
But for the most part, it's going to be pretty much impossible for you to do that
because the light is going to hit it differently, it's going to age differently, etc.
So the way we do that as designers - creating tone on tone products - is to create colors that are close to each other.
The hue is almost the same, but it's different on purpose.
So when it ages over time, it still looks like it belongs together.
So whenever you're doing this tone on tone, make sure to allocate a lot more time and energy into managing that.
Because it's nuances of subtle details at the factory and through production.
You'll have to send your CMF person or your designer or whoever is managing the product line to China,
to wherever you're manufacturing, and make sure these are really aligned.
And that's a lot of time and energy!
But if you get it right, the outcome is just outstanding.
So the takeaway of this video is that color is very powerful.
It can say something about your brand or represent your brand.
It can say something about the subtlety of your brand or the fact that you want to stand out.
And all of this is a manipulation from the designer's point of view.
A lot of products out there are designed to be very generic:
a lot of blacks, a lot of dark grays, a lot of whites.
It's become a little boring over time.
So, we encourage you as designers or as creators to start integrating more colors.
If you can integrate one more color into your palette, please do that.
It would bring a lot more life to the world we live in.
So, like many of us, we have tons of thoughts and opinions on color.
We'd like to invite you to make comments below and tell us what you think about it, what you learned,
and how we inspired you on this talk today.
So thank you for joining us on this colorful journey today,
and we look forward to seeing you next time.
Bye!
Bye.