 Hello everyone. Good evening I'm rookie new hole Ravi Kumar director of education here at Cooper Hewitt and I have the distinct pleasure of welcoming all of you to this great program You can tell there are a lot of color Enthusiasts in the audience because every time we have a program on color. We see you so welcome again I feel like I should have thought this through a little bit better because on the one day We're talking about color. I'm in black and white But it's an absolute pleasure to have this program here You know an innovative organization is a learning organization and that's definitely true of tea leaves They are a company that are continually engaged in learning new things about Processes materials Really every aspect of making tea to the level that they are proud tea nerds And what's really amazing about them is not only do they continuously engage in learning? But they also teach in the most beautiful and elegant ways by making these amazing films And so we have found kindred spirits So even though they are in the business of tea and we're in the business of design We found that We're actually doing a lot of the same thing. So it's really wonderful to have this program here tonight We'll do a screening of a film followed by a panel discussion And I'm really glad we're talking about color. I hope some of you attended the program earlier this afternoon led by Jan Brachy who is our acting head of libraries here and she co-curated an exhibition called Saturated the allure and science of color Not too long ago, which was really extraordinary because we had rare books from the Smithsonian library which some of you got to see today and We paired it with some amazing objects from the Cooper Hewitt's permanent collection to tell really some fantastic stories about color But today We're talking about the nature of color and the color of nature and it's really great to do that since we have our Nature Triennial on view It is on view all the way through January. So if you haven't seen it, I hope you'll Take a moment. There is 62 Fantastic projects in this Triennial which explore what happens at the intersection of design and nature a lot of it looks at the future There's several speculative projects in there and it's really pushing us to be Thinking about design and nature from a less reactive place in a more proactive place and for Those of you who are more than color enthusiasts, but also design enthusiasts We're also gearing up for National Design Week in a few weeks, which is October 12th through the 19th And I hope you will all come back. It's a terrific cohort of winners this year In different categories and they will be here on panels doing workshops and several great opportunities to interact with them in Our programs. It's also our 20th anniversary for the National Design Awards program. So everything will be bigger and better There's a day called the winner salon where we have the winners come up and speak and usually there are three programs But this year they'll be 20 We're doing 20 programs each lasting 20 minutes So it's going to be a ton of a great experience. So I hope to see you all again But without further ado I'd love to get the film started and then I will invite three wonderful people to the panel Esgi Emigroglu who's are the brand manager of tea leaves and sometimes I tell her she's kind of the real boss behind the scenes Laurie Pressman who's the vice president of Pantone and Jennifer Coleman Brocky who's the acting head librarian of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Museum Libraries. So Without further ado, let's get this film started You just look at things the color of that or the shape of that or whatever Just look at the natural world and you know, it's not like I'm making bullets or something some of it's just pleasure like Looking at food and appreciating that aspect of the eating experience, you know I Have 20 to 30 people working on the same thing. How do you make sure that everybody's on the same page? You need a language of color color can set the career of a company if coke Coca-Cola changed from that red to like some kind of like it's kind of a dull brown We're gonna go out of business. It's that wow That happens and it's on the back of your tongue and is that red absolutely because you don't see cola to color colors colors boring You see that red color that they have associated 95% of what happens is really out of your frame of consciousness. You're not even aware of it 95% of what influences with you with color is emotional. It's not rational only 5% is rational Especially in context with information, you know, I could put the word happy If I put the word happy like in like a weird, you know, like off-black against black, well, it's not gonna mean happy It's gonna mean some weird universe ironic statement of happy, you know I had one period of time of a significant portion of the food supply was unsafe If something was not the right color or didn't smell right where was that was a cue that we were not to eat it So I mean that's you know that there there have been evolutionary Rules reasons for us to be able to make those distinctions over time How do you make it in a different way that that is familiar but at the same time consumers are a little Kind of surprised with well, how did exactly did you do that? When you're looking at a product in a store three seconds. Do I like it? Do I not if I not like it? I'm gonna walk away not interested There are many products that are well designed that can Not get the traction they deserve because the colors not right Color plays into a texture plays into a graphics play into it. All of that is part of the fluidity of creating this Amazing product at the same time when it's done people would say I want to be seen in that Especially in track and field more than any other Olympic sport is all around how How dominating do you look and down to the point where in preparing For an event if you watch they come out with like five or six layers of clothes on even if it's 85 degrees out And they slowly take away. They're they're slowly taken Sort of the covers off to get down to the armor, which is the final layer And so you're watching your competition back and forth of what they got out of there You know what's sometimes even the shoes are covered or they put on a final pair right when they're down to the level But first off a pal so many of these athletes, especially in Olympics want colors that match to their country So he's from Jamaica and the colors are are green yellow and black And what he wanted was the plate to be gold for very specific reason He viewed himself as the fastest, you know animal in the world out there Of course cheetah was the one that is the fastest you can do 60 miles an hour Let's do a cheetah pattern that mimics this animal that I am so sort of fond of and Studied and when you get into really studying the cheetah print Through the head and the ears is a very small pattern and then it expands as the body goes back so the the size of the Ellipses are not circles or ellipses Up through the ears and nose of the neck are maybe a third the size as they are through the back of the body So you know we studied we went to the zoo and you look at the cheetahs and you look at the okay explain them and you can kind of Really get a feel for how sometimes nature really makes things look fast when maybe they aren't so cheetah looks fast and it's still So that's what we invoked into the shoe and the colors We tried a range of things But those colors are hard to work with because well if when we and we talked earlier when you do black too much Black it looks slow and we picked that up right away So there were a range of color ways that were done the white one was the one and we put it in the tip because again when you're watching Top down. I'm seeing white light weight almost Angel-like with this cool print and then the darkest colors in the back of the heel would then comes back up through the legs So it almost looks like that green just flows back up through a sock and then into the the power of the leg Look at me look at how cool I am Don't I scare you and that was all part of it because you look at look at those shoes Why he's really got to be fast if he's putting that stuff on and he's all hooked and all of a sudden God did I train hard enough? Can I beat this guy? And so it's all about trying to put just a hint a hint of doubt in your competitor because the track and field stuff It's a tenth of a second. It's that fast silver silver to bronze I mean go to bronze. It's that fast tens of seconds. So any slight doubt I can put into your mind Is I've already won and we haven't even gone into the blocks yet in the design process Part of my goal has always been to think about it at the very beginning one of the things that I think is a Mistake is to use color as a band-aid to act as if it can come in at the end And you're just going to tape over it and it's going to say something that you wanted to say But when I compose a dish at Junie what it's about is first it's about the season So what happens is that season generally gives you different color profiles to be able to use So as we get into summer we use orange we use red We use all those beautiful summer colors as you progressively go into fall its mushrooms and its darker colors And then winter turns into this aspect of black and white So just by changing the things that people are thinking about that the color reminds them of you can actually change their preference for the color Oh, it's say we have a specific shade of red and we show you lots of strawberries and ripe fruit and flowers that are as positive and associated with red You'll come to like red more than someone that we show blood and guts and lesions that are negatively associated with red Like look I want to bring back all the color. I Want to bring back like fantasy and whimsy and humor You know you could have the same object be different colors and some colors you use you have to touch it You have to pick it up, you know and once you pick something up, then it's got you so OPI got into color in 1989 and we looked at the nail polish category and It was really just a number and a color didn't have personality It was an aspiration or it wasn't fun or sexy. We had OPI realized that that was missing The most asked for a question from every editor in the world is how do you come up with those names? It happened I was at a wedding at the Natural History Museum and this young lady was pouring wine I actually missed the glass and half of it was pouring down my dress and she said to me I'm not really a waitress I'm an actress. I'm like, oh my god. Have I got something for you and the name? I'm not really a waitress was born which is kind of a candy apple red It's a great red because it really fits all skin tones. It's really set to women You can be anything you want to be, you know, I'm not really a waitress. I'm an editor I'm a flight attendant. I am a mom a homemaker. I'm an executive So everybody could relate to that color and it really set to women You can be anything you want to be in this world. It gave them permission to to wear nail polish and And say look at me here. I am Lincoln Park after dark from the Chicago collection a color that really revolutionized how women look at perceived color Where dark nail polish became chic and wearable, you know before if you wore dark color It was really kind of very grungy and Not for everybody, but you know dark color became mainstream People ask me who do you design shades for and I say for my daughter who's 22 My mom who's 93 and everybody in between When we would do concept work There would be all kinds of colors that you would just sketch up a range of things and you would you could influence a decision of Desire by color so oftentimes we just went to kind of shades of gray to really emphasize on the design first The lines and the proportions and sort of the the symmetry of the design and then bring color in So I usually will think about the color before I even think about the design Especially like planning out the product line for the company because you know We're gonna release something like 120 different products over the course of the year and the ideal customer is the collector That has them all so I had to think about what's it all gonna look like together on a big shelf. I have to pull back And I have to listen so with my process what I want to understand is What that color needs to do in order to make it have a connection So what I try to do is to be empathic to a situation Empathic to a need empathic to a place empathic to a person We don't want the items to be the same shapes, but we can carry through like themes in color and Or ranges of color or feelings or counterpoint like this one's white. This one's black together They look, you know, there's a lot of that thought out too So I have a giant wall laid out with either all the products We're gonna make or an example that's close to it just so you can see a rhythm of color and pattern across the whole thing And if the whole wall is pleasing to look at as an enemy then I know that it's worked we made a decision to Start a color of the year program for lack of a better word When we saw how much angst there was around the new millennium coming up the world's gonna fall apart Is my computer gonna break down what's gonna happen? You know you had that half the population the other half going how exciting we're moving into 2000 no matter what goes on in the world We're always looking at it. Here's what's taking place now. What does that mean for color? How do we take this message and communicate that out in the language of color because essentially that's what Pantone is the language of color What we came up with was serenely blue because we felt that this color best expressed What was taking place and what really what people needed and you look at a lot of different industries to get this particularly You know industries at a long lead and movies media. What's coming up in? 2020 and in the case of coming up with Marsala It was a very conscious effort with a color that was different than what people would typically expect Because the past couple of years have been brighter shade you think about the brights It was honey suckle pink and if I said a mimosa and tangerine tango emerald green was really about unity and bringing people together Radiant orchid freshness newness unique and modern and where are people now? We're having technology coming at us. We're going crazy. We want to de-stress. We want to unplug We want to do yoga. We want to meditate. We want to decompress. We want to turn off We want something a little bit more muted and when we saw the shade and it was Marsala I thought okay, that's really good number one It brings to mind the Marsala region in Italy and so you're thinking wines even though it's not a drinkable wine It's a cooking wine, but it also plays into where are we we want things that are going to feed us We want things that are going to nurture us. So what better way? It's not just feeding our soul Spiritually, it's also feeding our soul physically We may be talking about all these different colors and then you have a cataclysmic event That's the thing that can rock the world of trend if I go back to the financial crash All of a sudden you could see it's like my eyes could close and you knew they were going to be neutrals on the selling floor You just knew it because all of a sudden people are going to be nervous about spending money I'm going to spend my money on things that are investments things that are neutral stay that stand the test of time but I think that Our team at Pantone who's coming up with color trends have been doing this for a very long time. They're very Attuned to what's happening and you can't divorce trend from the culture. Everything is so Interwoven in what's taking place around 2003 I was playing Ultimate Frisbee at a tournament in Santa Cruz, California and I was wearing a pair of glasses that I had actually manufactured in my laboratory That were made out of glass that I'd melted and ground and everything and I was selling these to local laser surgery companies for the surgeons to wear to protect their eyes during laser surgery and the word had got back to me that the surgeons were stealing the glasses and Using them as sunglasses. So I had this vision of them driving around their Maserati's and Ferraris with their sunglasses on Up and down the coastal highway of California. And I thought that's cool. I should do that too So I had them at the tournament and a friend of mine said can I borrow your sunglasses? He put them on and I didn't know it at the time, but he was colorblind and he said oh I can see the cones He couldn't actually see the fluorescent orange cone on the green background. They were the same color But when you put the glasses on you could see them Things like I can see the red traffic light. I can see the red stop sign I can see the green leaves from the brown leaves It's this this might seem really mundane, but I get the biggest thrill of walking around with somebody Who is trying the glasses on for the first time and observing how they interact with the world differently? And it goes something like this What is that lavender and then you might I'm immediately thinking as a scientist like how do they know what lavender is? Well, if I had to define lecture, I'd say that in lecture. It's really the details that matter and In particular, I would say that color is so important in what we do Whether it be from the inside of the packaging So that's from the tea leaves themselves to the color of the actual fusion that the tea leaves make To the exterior of the packaging. So what's going to entice to make you excited about actually trying the different teas Which is why we we partnered with Pantone to help us with our exterior packaging of the teas to make it exciting to you In the culinary world there's a saying that as tea blenders we take very seriously and that is the first taste is with the eyes So as a result when we custom blend our teas for our clients We treat color just as importantly as we do taste and aroma So in ice teas you actually lose the aroma So one of the three major components that we take into account in hot tea Which is color aroma and taste in iced you actually lose out on the aroma So you only have color and taste to take into account as a result that elevates color even to a higher Status than it would be even in hot tea and industry standards for blending ice Teas currently is actually very dark and very saturated. However for ourselves We actually want to make something that looks super tasty and very exciting and enticing for people So we actually blend it lighter liqueur and more amber and in tonality So that when it's poured over ice it actually is reminiscent of something like a great scotch and Who doesn't like a great scotch? Even though we may do details like blending for color which people may or may not Recognize or know that it's there that's affecting them on any intimate level that we know it's there And that we know it has an impact of some sort you can be influenced by what's going on Okay, you didn't like get energy from it and have it trigger thoughts But if you're just going to mimic what you see is going on now by the time it comes out People will like what he's just comping that shit or whatever There is a sphere that we're going to do it wrong and Honestly, the only thing we would really do wrong would be to not play or to not Understand what each of these things could do just by shifting it subtly So my encouragement with any designers I'm working with with any company I'm working with is to try to engage in that form of play How does what we're doing the product from a color point of view? Accessorized with everything else that's going on. What's your color strategy? If you design toward human value that you will have far longer reach and a deeper connection Then you ever could to trend So I think that one of the bigger obstacles that I have is trying to communicate to My client why we're doing something, you know, I guess why the question is why do we? Continue to do things that maybe people may or may not notice or appreciate or why it's at a financial Disincentive really for us to be doing these things Taking a lot of these details into account, you know why do we continue to do them when there's a lot of reasons not to be doing them and I think the reason is like why does an Artist go to their easel every day and try and paint something better than what they did the day before Why do people try and you know elevate or do better in their marathons every time they run and I think it's personal pursuit of perfection and Inside it we all know it's the right thing to do. I'm good evening Welcome to our panel nature of color and thank you for choosing to be here tonight among all other options of what you could do tonight Thank you to our wonderful friends at Cooper Hewitt and Pantone. It's it's such a pleasure to partner with them At tea leaves where we're tea blenders by trade and we've learned that in luxury. It's the details that matter In our collaborative project with Pantone. It was an exploration of culture mood color Knowing that mood has extremely strong affiliations with tea as well as with color So throughout our color exploration from from the inside and out as we worked on our packaging It was one of the first projects I worked on We wanted to share our learnings by filming this documentary in our in-house film department And it's called color in sight and two of the stars in our documentary Laurie Pressman and Frank Kozik Are here with us tonight and Frank Kozik is the legendary chief creative director of kid robot I'm so honored to be monitoring this panel with these two lovely women tonight, and I'd love to call them up It's Laurie and Jennifer Jennifer is the acting head librarian of Cooper Hewitt Smithsonian Design Library one of the 21 branches of Smithsonian libraries and a leading repository of European and American design and decorative arts in the nation in the world Yeah With 20 years of experience at Cooper Hewitt Jen has a background in digital imaging and has led numerous digital initiatives for the museum In the library she curated her first exhibition color in a new light in between February 2016 and May 2017 for Smithsonian libraries at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC She co-curated the expanded exhibition saturated the allure in science of color which I had the pleasure of Visiting for Cooper Hewitt She enjoys exploring the intersections of art and science and providing access to as much information as possible Laurie Is the vice president of the Pantone Color Institute? The world's most comprehensive destination to gain intelligence insight and implications on the science and emotions of color She's involved in the development of Pantone's color research and color trend forecasting Products and services as the managing editor of tones Pantone's color newsletter Additionally she sits on the home products board for fashion Institute of Technology the fashion advisory board at Savannah College of Art and Design and as the vice chairman of the color standards committee for color marketing group Knowing that What's going on in Cooper Hewitt now? I thought it would just be very interesting. This is very quick just to talk about color and trend and nature of color color of nature and I guess the role of trend in between all of that and how today we are so much more tied into nature and Influenced by nature in terms of the colors that we're looking for So color is a language. I think you got that from the film right color is a language It's a way we express ourselves color is also inextricably tied to the culture We use the language of color to express who we are how we feel and to symbolize the message you want to send to the world With nature top of mind for so many it makes perfect sense as some of the key colors We are seeing today are coming directly from nature Nature is a true innovator. It's it is something that inspires all industries from creative design to logistical engineering nature's color and perspectives Influence the way we relate to the world around us Effortly achieving all the design goals that humans set for themselves and strive to reach beauty functionality circularity There's ruthlessness as well as beauty in natures what we would call their super efficient circular systems But at the same time nature's infinite variation Irregularity and flexibility is something we can emulate I'm thinking one of the images got lost in the transmission here, so I apologize for that Something that we see through the color the material the form of our creations But when you think about it, why is it that we are seeing visual elements tied to nature becoming increasingly? important to design thinking and they are What is it that these visuals are saying to us that seems to be resonating with us so deeply is It the realization that our natural resources are being destroyed That's getting our attention Or do we unconsciously understand that we get energy from nature that it fuels our mind and body Enriches our soul This is the story of the transmission between a PC to a Mac So I apologize because I can see that one of the visuals and this is what happens You lose the visuals for those of us who work on a PC we see this and I'm sorry We didn't test it before so I'm really sorry for that in our response picture this nature in our response to nature Then being guided by our focus on health and self-care and our desire to connect back to ourselves and live a more healthy and Natural lifestyle picture this woman stretching on this deck because that's what she's doing is she's doing our yoga Maybe it's a result of our increasingly digitized lives One is that experience through a flat screen one that's devoid of the warmth and texture a physical touch Or this whole idea of experiencing a virtual reality instead of enjoying a physical reality Or the push to robotics in the greater galaxy Maybe for city dwellers It's the concrete jungle packed with people with barely a hint of green or anything organic and natural That's driving this thirst And let's we forget maybe it's a 24-7 lifestyle which many of us are living one where we are completely overloaded That is driving this desire to sink with nature Or possibly it's all of the above For there's nothing that conveys freedom fun and the ability to completely Decompress then thoughts of being in nature Trend of course plays a big role in color choices as trend is all about Relevancy and as we look at trends in color for spring summer 2020 nature is calling and yes, I agree with Laura Guido-Clarke It's not always about looking at a trend color What my goal was here tonight was to highlight trend but really to highlight What's taking place on a macro level and how that then gets communicated out into the world of color? And I don't know that people always are aware of that people that are working in color, of course See that because we all pay attention to it. So I'm sharing that So we talk about reflecting the sustenance and nourishing balance We're craving as well as the need to rejuvenate it makes sense at the greens a color family Symbolic of the physical beauty and inherent unity of the natural world are the first color family that comes to mind when we think of nature Physiologically affecting the nervous system causing us to breathe slowly and deeply Helping the heart to relax by slowing the production of stress hormones this color family which we refer to at Pantone as nature's neutral Helps us to revive restore renew when we think about the greens. It's always the re words refresh restore revitalize the re re re This is a good reason why you see more and more cities creating parks We've been seeing this for a long time already where people can take a re-evigoration break during the day or Injecting green smack into the middle of the city even as surrounded by buildings our bodies still immediately react both physiologically and Psychologically to the presence of green helping to soothe our eyes calm our souls So keeping this in mind it makes sense, right that products directly reflecting shades and patterning from nature's greens are resonating across the color spectrum Along with the greens we talked earlier about nature and the texture of nature We're seeing the patterning of leaves illustrating this texture and the intrinsic beauty of nature also becoming more prominent as well But it's not just about the greens in nature that we connect to at this base level It's also the blues long associated with the serenity of the blue sky over a calm sea below The light the mid-tone and deep blue shades bring feelings of a quiet and a cool permanence Open an expanse of these reassuring and restful blues evoke trust and dependability all of which in turn engender feelings of contentment certainly a desired feeling in our Turbulent world without getting political continually turbulent world Everyday turbulent world Front and center today of the light and the airy blues conveying a message of mobility these blues speak to our desire for freedom This is something we really began to see at the beginning of Of the two thousands but more so and more so today when you think about how certain people are living They're renting they're not owning it's air B&B's it's uber's it nobody wants to make a permanent investment And when you think about the blue that symbolizes that it's really the light and the pale shades that we think about When we think about the watery teals and the turquoise inflected blues This is all about escapism and joy. You don't completely get this here You can see the relationship, but when you think about you see that the Mediterranean sea you see something like that right away You're there you just feel like you're on that beach or in that place We've also seen a continued interest in floral. This is another trend that is not going away It continues and continues throughout all different areas of design. This is another way we express our affinity for nature Again, it's a trend that's continuing importance showing up in so many different product categories in so many different ways and In so many different color patterns color ways as we call it As well as in some less typically expected places Mineral colors and patterning reminiscent of mountainous landscapes and rock formations are another way in which we see nature being brought in Also looking at the faded looking topi browns again Reflecting the earth itself same reason why we see the burnt orange tones that are coming through again It's about this connection going back to nature going back to the roots Going back to the wilderness going back to this desire to disconnect and just connect with something that's real You know versus sitting at that screen all day see and feel and physically touch something else So it's turning off your mind and I'm looking to colors that are organic transparent and honest And I briefly do want to touch on color of the year Which was color of the year 2019 which was living coral when we first made the decision So my role there is Pantone color Institute was started in 1986 It was founded on the basis of consumer color preference studies And at the time Larry Herbert was a family-owned company felt it was important to have a foundation It wasn't just about a book of color. It's like why do we have these colors? What do these colors mean so whether it was our palette for print or our palette for fashion home and interiors There had to be a story behind it color of the year did start in 1999 Part of it was we wanted to start a conversation around color and the other part of it was people always asking What's the one color? There's never one color. It's never just one color. It just doesn't work like that But we felt this is a good way to get everybody talking about color and to get everybody to understand that color is a language color Reflects what's taking place in the culture at a moment in time. So we really look at ourselves. It's a global team It's a trend team but a lot of our role is education and helping people understand the power of color and had a Leverage color to really be able to convey your message whether it's brand visual identity or product. So 2019 living coral really was top of mind for us what was taking place in nature You know, it didn't get we didn't want to take a position as an environmental company We are not we're a color company, but we really felt there was a strong message here And just as coral reefs are a source of sustenance and shelter for sea life We felt this vibrant shade yet at the same time a mellow shade embraced us with the warmth and nourishment To help provide comfort and buoyancy in our continually shifting environment. You get that turbulence, right? Still there Sociable and spirited there was also an engaging feeling to living coral that welcomed and encouraged light-hearted activity And the enjoyment of spending time with others and having fun in our color of the year program Our messaging tends to evolve because except for those cataclysmic events things tend to evolve over time, right? You don't go like this now do you go like this like this but when you look at color I I'm joking, but when things tend to just move along, you know It grows it builds and and that kind of thing It's not always so drastic or dramatic and just because things are turbulent It doesn't mean we don't want to go out and have fun And this was also a color that really spoke to again You know shutting down the computer go out have some light-hearted activity bring some fun into your life It was a color that really spoke to our innate need for optimism and joyful pursuits very important Embodering our desire for playful expression a trend we've continued to see this whole desire to play And at the same time a color who's humanizing and heartening qualities played into our quest for comfort and reassurance Amidst this continued unrest and uncertainty and instability And if you look around what you see today, you see a lot of softer shapes softer materials warm and softer colors because people are looking for that comfort and To really sum this up and to sum up color of the year when we think about this program It's a symbolic snapshot of what's taking place in our culture our global culture at a moment in time It's a color for us that we see crossing all areas of design that serves as an expression a mood And an attitude on the part of the consumers a color that we feel will resonate around the world The color that reflects what people are looking for what they feel they need that color can help to answer And then I would tell you to stay tuned for December 5th 2019 when we announce our Pantone Call of the Year for 2020 Because living Carl only goes so long it'll last this year Then we'll be on to the next. Thank you This is working I'm really excited to talk to you all tonight about one of my favorite topics color As mentioned, I had the privilege of curating an exhibition about the topic But first let me just tell you that I am the head of the Cooper Hewitt Library And we are open to the public if you didn't know we have a library. I welcome you You just have to make a reservation and we'd be happy to show you all of our treasures so we have two lovely reading rooms and a hundred thousand books on Design of course and we also have 15,000 rare books and special collections Some of you got to see those earlier tonight in person on color and you're gonna see some of those again on the slides So the Exhibition saturate was actually inspired by a smaller Show that I curated for Smithsonian libraries that was at the National Museum of Natural History in Washington, DC Of course, we had to include Pantone noted on the wall very prominently placed there. They're fan deck So Both of these color exhibitions were actually inspired by Cooper Hewitt's amazing collection of rare books on color ranging from color theory dye recipes color trend books and paint samples to name a few The saturated exhibition covered a variety of topics related to color and for this presentation. I've selected those most connected to nature. I Also want to note that all these books have been digitized So you can browse them from home or wherever you connect to the internet from cover to cover Starting with the theme capturing color which displayed many Books with color models that had been created over hundreds of years The oldest color model that we featured was created by a naturalist named Moses Harris Harris was an entomologist. He studied insects and he created this color wheel in 1776 and used it to help with the identification of insects Color was and still is used as a major trait for identifying and categorizing different species of insects animals and plants Here is another example of a naturalist using color as an identification tool this time for birds This one was created in 1912 by Robert Ridgway Smithsonian's first ornithologist Ridgway was dissatisfied with the existing color standards of the time. So he set out to create his own a True pursuit of passion. He devoted over a decade of his life to creating this expanded second edition Which features over 1,000 colors all hand-cut and pasted in each volume volume in his kitchen by him and his wife This example also has lots of fun names Including dragon's blood and elephant's breath In this section creating color we featured many objects showing the variety of materials used to create the different colors using natural or synthetic dyes So this book Is from 1794 Called the vener-farb in cabinet It's one of only four copies known in the United States this early manual describes the preparation of colors It includes 2,592 hand-colored natural dye Specimens and is organized according to color starting with black It includes color recipes along with the details of how to apply these dyes to silk cotton wool leather bone and many other materials and interesting note about this one is that we scanned it and With our scanned books we used OCR what is called optical character recognition Which is that magical thing that allows you to keyword search a text online? But that doesn't work with this kind of font or typography. It's a German black letter So computers still don't pick up on that very well The Smithsonian Transcription Center was available for us to use and literally within six months these thousand pages Were transcribed by volunteers across the world So you still have to know German, but at least you can plop that German text into your translator too if you don't know it So being so rare it provides this new level of access to an important work that People still use today especially in the conservation world where our conservators on a daily basis are dealing with the Old mysterious materials that went into dyes So these lovely objects are from Cooper Hewitt's amazing textile collection And we use them to tell the story of the invention of synthetic dyes The garment on the left is a hui peel or a woman's blouse from Mexico The magenta threads are colored with the shellfish dye from a sea snail Mixed tech men activate the snails defense mechanism by manually they pluck it from the side of a like a cliff along the ocean They agitate its gland it squirts out this ink They run the cotton threads through it exposure to light it starts turning purple very quickly So this is an extremely labor-intensive process as you might imagine which also means it's very expensive And it requires thousands of sea snails to make a small amount of colored thread Archeologists have excavated pits of these crushed shells in the millions Revealing humans desire for this vibrant purple goes back to ancient times the object on the right a mid 19th century silk Garve which is very similar in color to the hui peel is an example of one of the earliest synthetic dyes in 1856 an 18 year old chemist William Henry Perkin accidentally discovered the first synthetic dye While using coal tar a byproduct of the industrial revolution While searching for a cure for malaria His experiment failed unfortunately for malaria But it left behind an oily residue that stained silk a brilliant color of purple that he called mauveen Synthetic purple dyes soon took the fashion world by storm not to mention it also was a game-changer in that it brought The industry it brought chemistry into the industrial world which paved the way for the development of pharmaceuticals explosives plastics So a real changing moment all for our desire for color So with the invention of synthetic dyes comes the rise of the idea of color harmony Now that people had access to all the colors of the rainbow at their fingertips And at a price they could afford they were putting together many color combinations that Perhaps were new considered garish by some So you have an opportunity for taste makers of the day who felt the need to provide guidance to prevent what they considered these garish combinations One of these taste makers was an architect and decorator Edward Guy shard Who promoted the concept of color harmony for the design of wallpaper draperies upholstery and paint schemes? his harmony of colors from 1882 contains a hundred and sixty six spectacular full colored plates with 1300 Harmonious color palettes intended to inspire as fellow designers and this can be considered an early precursor to what is known today as color trend books So those are just a few highlights from the library's rare book collection that demonstrate the close relationship between color and nature whether looking to nature to Inspire a greater understanding of color or having color teach us more about nature The two are inseparable and will continue to influence new discoveries and an understanding of the world around us Thanks as designers and artists and humans. Why are we so inspired by nature? My specialty is more with the history So I think it's undeniable that we're inspired by nature and I'm not gonna question why we just are and it's there and it always will be so and Color is right there with it. I would say no, I'm kind of right there with you. It's real I think it's something we naturally respond to it just touches us and it's something we connect to I don't know that I question it either. I think it's just It's a part of the natural beauty of the world So that would be My short and long answer Let's move a little bit into history guys So, you know throughout time, how would you describe how our appreciation of color has evolved throughout time? Lots of theories we discussed over our call as well that were really interesting. How has that changed over time? Okay, I Think our relationship with color has evolved over time From Exactly what you were referring to when we think about the snails and how difficult it may have been to access color over time And yet I think people were fascinated by color from the beginnings of time You know when you look back and you see how they whether it was color You know dirt from the earth or all these different ways that they found to Extract eyes and create color so color was always a language And I think there was always as time went on and you still see it today the discovery of new colors And how can I use color to express myself? So to me color is life and I don't know how to describe this any better is that it's a further exploration of how do we Find another way to express ourselves. I don't know if that's the right answer I'd love to like a bright answer. I'd love to compare kind of you know Why do the 20s look so different than the 80s? Why did the 50s look so different than now? And is there is there a connection between trends or culture history or perhaps it's technical That these tastes have changed over time. You know, why were the 80s so bright? Trends and color reflect the culture. I mean that's something I think if you spent time with me with anybody on my team That would be so clear. It's a language and it's even just what I was saying at the beginning. It's There are these macro trends. They get expressed into the world of color I you know, we say there's a book that would come out through the Pantone color Institute Pantone 20th century and color written by my colleagues Litra Seisman and Keith Rekker and In there you would clearly see a line that speaks to you can trace back History over time and be able to figure out what was taking place by the trends that were happening at that time So if you think about the 20s the 20s was about the jazz age It was about rebellion. It was about the flappers. It was about women getting the right to vote. Yay You know all of these things of course were before the crash but it was a time of Again rebellion prohibition may have been taking place But people were trying to drink anyway and find different ways to do it So the colors that you're seeing at that point you had Art Deco You know that came into being in the 20s were colors that reflected those times if I think about The 80s I think about greed. I think about empowerment. I think about people wanting to do things better I think about Reagan. I think about dynasty. I think about Dallas You know the preppy hand, but that's what you think about right you think about the preppy handbook It was a time where people were spending money people were joyous people were positive You know for a good part of that decade So I think the color story is that you see really reflect that when I think about some of the big discrepancies not discrepancies, but where you could see a real Shift is is you know the 40s and 50s where you had the 40s and you had the war going on So how were people what were people feeling what were people seeing and then you move into the 50s where people were coming back From the war they were starting new jobs. They were moving into these planned communities You know there was more of a happiness You started to see the shift in cultural perception of the pink shifting to women with pink and funny face But I think that to me is what when you look at decades and you compare things I think now where you are, you know Yes, you could probably relate back to decades I think now we're always reaching back to the 70s the 80s and 90s what was happening then the color stories and trend I think things are being cycled back so much more quickly now because of social media and everything our lives are moving So quickly so what was old? That comes comes back much more quickly than it did in the past But I think of where we are now I think we're at a place where it is about natural it is about being organic You know we're reaching to nature For inspiration all different areas of nature for those color stories whether it's the floor whether it's a succulents whether it's the plants Whether it's the sea whether it's the earth You're also seeing I think a whole story of saturated brights because of social media and the vibrancy, but that's a separate piece I was a big ramble. No, I hope 60s you could talk about the drug culture, you know the psychedelics and the influence of color, you know There's always a marriage You can keep going I grew up an avocado green fridge and I never understood How that could have happened So that's interesting because if you think about that harvest gold and avocado right the 70s and and I can relate But you might not want to call it that today So how do you change people's perception about color you change it by the name? You know is the name more current the minute you hear avocado green and harvest gold You're right back in the 70s So you probably would call it something differently and you would you would harmonize those colors differently You would juxtapose that same, you know what you may call now Guacamole instead of avocado green with maybe it's a vibrant purple, you know red base purple something else that you Would have a completely different It would influence you in a different way you'd perceive it in a different way that that's how you keep reinventing color I think I Don't know but I think we're so trained on that harvest gold and avocado green cheese Why do you think that was so in vogue and those times earthy colors? I mean that was a time of the earth movement, you know, so you saw the the relationship I mean you saw in the 60s the whole earth movement really started coming I think it was 1970 when Earth Day started it was that it and I forget the name of that wonderful woman who wrote that Great book and I should know this and I forget off the top of my head But you saw the focus on the environment so here too once again You see the reflection of what's taking place and those colors spilling into The way we live into lifestyle So in terms of that movement into the earth we're seeing that again now Why do you think it looks different? do you think it looks different because of the technology and the resources we have to create different colors or The trends are different for some reason. Why is this does this return to nature look completely different like you showed? Compared to the avocado green Because nobody nobody wants to live back in the past You know the times are different the culture is different So I would say you reach back to the past for inspiration and you apply that into new materials Into new textures because what existed 30 years ago is very different than what it's 50 years ago than what exists today So it's really about reinvention. I think that's one piece of it and maybe there's different now I'm just riffing, you know, there's different pieces of nature that you might be inspired by maybe you weren't looking at Was wellness a big focus then was that what we were talking about then were we talking about? Disconnecting and taking a walk into nature. We were certainly concerned about preserving the environment that there's no question about that Clean air wasn't the clean air act signed in the 70s as well. I believe it was I mean so that I think there were different aspects I don't know that we were thinking about a worldwide water shortage in the 70s Were we so I think it depends on what's topical at the time what the needs are of The culture at the time maybe how we respond to it But I would still go back to the reinvention of things that happened in the past And how do we reply that we make them current for today's culture and today's consumer and today's lifestyle? Going back to an earlier question about how we've evolved in our relationship of color It is such an interdisciplinary topic you have the sciences chemistry physics are all coming together and people with these various backgrounds have made amazing discoveries that have really Transformed where we are today. And so what I always am drawn to with color is How our desire for it and understanding of it leads to all these other things almost accidentally sometimes But it still color is not something you can explain with a simple formula Or even a set of rules like say geometry So there's always this element of mystery that keeps us kind of Going forward and searching and trying to answer find more answers So I guess color seems Magical to me in that way like I don't know how many other topics you could say that about Or maybe I just have an affinity for it and it became a total convert when I started researching it But I do think it is unique and how it has led to so many discoveries through just people's interest in figuring it out had the pleasure of seeing the saturated exhibition and the nostalgia that It brought back to see the colors of the max and then seeing the new trends of how they are bringing those back again How they're going back to their old colors though the vibrancy was really interesting for me to see Can you can you tell us a little bit about the inspiration or the ideas and the Structure behind putting together the color that's hatchery and exhibition It Started with that smaller show and the reason I Took on this topic that I naively took on and probably went to take on if I knew how complicated it was I knew Cooper Hewitt have this great color collection And I have the luxury of also borrowing books from Smithsonian libraries other 20 branches So when you combine all of our branches together, we really have the best of the best and have a definitive color collection So I was posed with a challenge of Picking a topic that could show the breadth and depth of all of Smithsonian libraries and here We have history science art and culture and what on earth brings all those together. Well, nothing better than color so it just became the perfect topic to Talk about a lot of the different disciplines that we collect in And I still think it's a perfect topic for Smithsonian to explore beyond Cooper Hewitt's walls I mean, there's so much potential it could have that the Air and Space Museum or American history Color is such a malleable flexible topic that people are just captivated and drawn to So that's how the topic came about The small exhibition was seen by Susan Brown Associate curator of textiles here who I co-curated saturated with She was like why don't we bring it up to Cooper Hewitt and put objects next to these great theory books that demonstrate the theory That the book is talking about and it was perfect in my mind to you know Be able to learn these lessons on color theory, which aren't always the easiest things to learn And we certainly get into areas of science that after page two. I'm lost, you know But if you have an object there that demonstrates Iridescence after you've talked about how there's no pigment there at all. It's just refracting and reflecting wavelengths It's it became a real educational experience to have the two working together I'll reveal something I probably shouldn't but I was so fascinated the team will remember I was so fascinated that I actually ran into the glass And I left a face mark unsaturated I was hoping they'd forgotten but I'll remind them. Oh, yeah not funny at the time but yeah, I Was looking at the color book The hard part is picking one page to show we had some rotations of pages, but yes, there's if they're full of more great images So what as we talk about synthetics and technology, what is the timeline and evolution of humans use of? pigments and dies we Or I in my limited knowledge see it as the ultimate Biomimicry in a way to create something that represents nature. What's the history of that? There was a textile found I think somewhere in South America in the last couple of years that is one of the oldest examples including dies I forget if it was indigo but Textiles don't live a long time They break down but people who know textiles just kind of Innately know that people have been dying textiles a lot longer than we have textiles to show examples of so To some people was like, oh my god We've been dying things for tens of thousands of years like this technology is so old and to Susan the textile person She was like, of course we have like But yeah, I mean our Just fascination with color and wanting to reproduce it has been there That's history question no, no, no, I I'm right there with you. I agree with you What What's the case for synthetic dyes? What what is the reason that we need synthetic dyes? Why are they important in? color and playing with color and design Well, all I could think about when you were talking about the snail. I'm going wow not only is that expensive Wow, how could you ever? commercially reproduce that you couldn't you know impossible and I think the world in which we live in today from a Manufacturing point of view you need a way to commercialize something so of course you don't want to create synthetic dyes that Are poisonous to the environment and I can't speak for every dye company the dye stuff that we use We don't create our own dyes. We have to be very sure that there is sustainable as possible I don't know if that's the right way to put it We have to adhere to different standards in different countries, so we have to be responsible I've been with Pantone for almost 20 years. It's been like that since I've been there But standards continue to get stricter and stricter about what chemicals you can and cannot use And we have to live up to the highest bar because our clients are global, so it's about commercialization It's about creation and commercialization period and the story. I think there's a big case for natural dyes Absolutely, and the whole look of crafts and if that's a path you want to go down. I think it's great I think the both can coexist. I don't think it's one of the other It's hard to imagine to not like having every color at your fingertip and going back to Limited palettes based on just what you can get from the earth in a way You know now we're used to it So going the other way No way how artists Hundreds of years back showed the wealth that they had by by being able to create them use those colors because they were so expensive or Volatile or difficult? I mean different colors had a higher value than silver or gold at times in history, so it color is a commodity So it could be very influential in that way too Lori, I know the Pantone created the skin tone deck Can you tell us a little bit about that journey? I'm assuming it was in a straightforward one We created the skin tone deck at request originally with Sephora And I don't remember what year that started maybe 2014. I forget but their goal was to be able to Use one of the machines by our parent company x-Rite that could measure somebody's skin tone And from there be able to advise them what color makeup would work for their complexion their eye color their hair color Etc. So in order for us to be able to come up with something that they could then You know hold to your skin and measure we we had to come up with what are all the different skin tones out there? So of course you're never going to be able to come up with a guide Every single person has a different skin tone period end of story your skin tone on your face is different than the skin tone On your arm you look at all the intermarriage Interrelationships all the different cultures around the world. We tried to come up with what we felt would be a Representation in the way they did it because they took a sample size I don't remember what the data set was and measured people's skin tones And then tried to come out with give me a tonal story in skin tone so that there was enough of a range but a lot of the Cosmetic companies have used that I'm calling it a colorimeter. I don't really remember what it's called anymore. I should don't but have used it specifically for that reason the for really for beauty to advise people on On what would be the most flattering if you almost think about it as an update from those books that were out years ago The spring or spring or a summer or fall or winter whatever it is. So a little bit more current version of that kind of thing It worked I mean to four was very happy with it You know at the time and a lot of other companies continue to use it So I have to imagine if it fills a certain segment of the population. I Certainly think the range needs to be expanded. There's no question Okay, perfect. We'll open it up to the audience if the audience has any questions Hello One that movie was wonderful. This is I've been sitting here in trans. This is really a wonderful evening in general My question is in anything I feel like we said human nature is to go back into nature One of the things that I think is in human nature is to go forward like that bold I'm going to see what else is out there that cosmic curiosity. What is there a process or what is the process of? Wanting to see are there colors that we don't know yet? You know like technologies where we are sensing light on spectrum that we you know Maybe the eye hasn't done or we're just now coming to terms with what is that like? What is that like? I'm very curious I think that and yes There's a gamut of colors that the eye can see there's a gamut of colors that can then be made up in print There's gamut of colors. You might see on in technology On the Pantone side of it. Yes, people are always discovering new colors The challenge for us is can we reproduce those colors? So for example, we worked with LG recently They were introducing an OLED television or wanted to reinvigorate this OLED television We ended up doing a cafe pop-up down in Soho what they really came to us for is can we create the blackest black like van de blak and From what we had and to reproduce this in an ink format It just wasn't we couldn't do it and that's the thing so the challenge is yes There's always going to be new colors. You're going to discover. There's so many colors out there But what can you physically reproduce and for us in? As somebody who's a standardized language of color our palates are only as good as Our client ability to commercially reproduce those colors simply and effectively on the materials they're applying them to But yes, so I don't know From a technological standpoint what the process is like to discover new colors because I'm not sitting in that space But I do think people are always on the lookout for that Hi, can you hear me cool? Can you talk a little bit about kind of you said pantons obviously not political But I think colors being so culturally based can mean very different things to very different like people depending on their background So can you talk a little bit about kind of how you deliver a trend report? Or create a color every year, but also keep it kind of culturally sensitive or culturally agnostic Okay I am definitely a political here I represent Pantone, but I do want to touch on a funny story and then I'll get back to the topic You know the team selects the Pantone color of the year. This is not a marketing exercise for us This for us is a very pure Feeling this is what we see. This is what we believe we don't have anything vested. We're not telling pain I'm sharing that with you because when we were sharing the color of the year with a colleague in Germany Who was not involved in it? She said oh, that's the color of our garbage trucks. This was tangerine tango. So You know That's just that was just a funny side That's not about being culturally sensitive that it could be offensive But when we think about so let's talk about trend reports versus color of the year We do forecasting our largest We do forecasting for a client so consultative which could be anywhere from three to five years out Which is definitely a distance out there those projects are tailored based on the culture based on the market based on you know Everything that they're looking for so I think cultural sensitivity is definitely taken into account for that I just had a client who were working on a new Cosmetics line which is crossing cultures and really having to be very Knowledgeable about how a certain color is going to resonate Let's say a particular shade of gold In the Middle East versus how that same shade of gold would resonate in the UK could be completely different One culture has a preference for one kind versus another culture. So you have to be really culturally aware I don't know if it's about being political. It's just as it's really as you say cultural sensitivities to what is Interesting to people and treating to people what they feel is relevant when we get into our trend books It is a global team Pantone view color planner is our one that goes furthest out. That's 18 to 24 months You have a cross you have a range of people sitting there making the contribution I think it's also very pure based on what's happening spring summer 21 is Botanica so I talked about spring summer 20, but spring summer 21 is also very obviously botanica very nature-based, but I Don't know that anybody is sitting on the team going wow that yellow is not going to work in you know China or something like that. I think we're sensitive with names We're sensitive with color of the year, but color of the year is not a forecast It's what I would call a report back using an old ready-to-wear term because it's really a reflection of what we see taking place It's something that we see happening across all these different areas around the world Across all these different design influences travel new media new technology lifestyles play style social values. So I don't know Political things enter into the picture, but they don't enter into the picture as a person they enter in war in terms of Hate to use this word the chaos caused or the stability that results from versus a particular person That was very long-winded, but that has helped it helped answer You can ask me another question Hello, thank you Would you happen to know if there is a such thing as a color therapist for health and wellness and if this doesn't exist? perhaps it should just so happens that our Curatorial assistant in her building is a color therapist so when we were doing our research she Got friendlier with her neighbor and was like what is that all about and she sat through a session And it was like nothing I had expected. It's not like she sat in the room bathed in red light Although I'm sure there's that color therapy out there, too But this was more of like almost a hypnosis Where it jogged the memory to an early memory? I forget the steps involved, but you know She was describing a beach and the ocean and the colors that she saw And it all came down to identifying that she was terrified of rats from her move to New York And because she had this uncontrollable fear of mice or rats and she never had that before she grew up on a farm in Ohio, she's like why am I scared of them now and through this one therapy session? She identified what her problem was and then also identified a color That she would focus on when she had these feelings and that color I forget how they came to it, but it ended up being silver for her So when she got anxious with this fear she would breathe Whatever that means But it helped and worked and sounded like a fascinating process There is a whole like school of thought I forget the name of the person who started this that like people are being trained and spreading I don't know how widespread it is But it's out there. Hi my questions more along the lines of in terms of how color in terms of Association because I heard quite a bit of reminiscing with Avocado green and harvest gold and at the same time I wouldn't call it polarizing But many people have very distinct memories of those two colors, especially if they grew up with it But then I it made me think about how I've met a lot of people where they now associate honey suckle Which was 2011's it color with It's one of my favorite colors by the way But thing is that with things that with the women's March movement because so many of the knitted hats were Invarying shades of honey suckle But the and then I couldn't and I'm thinking about the gentleman's question in the back about cultural sensitivity and cultural awareness They is there any colors that you've come out that have you've seen within the past decade or two decades that you can you can foresee a degree of like of like that sharp like You know connection of an association for like millennials and future generations Yeah, I mean I think to me that's a question of shifting perception You know it's a cultural sensitivity, but it's about how did we shift perception? We worked with the UN I think it was also 2014 to help them come up with a color for a movement called he for she and it was about men Joining with women to protest treatment against women and it was a red base pink that we used and you started To see at that point pink really being labeled as protest pink And that was before the whole you know the whole pink hat thing So we'd already started to begin to see that shift on the hot pinks and I do think there are Definitely cultural connections like you said the visceral connection to the avocado green and the harvest gold I do think that pink has become associated with it I think you could take the white for the suffragette movement, you know when you started to see I guess in 2016 And even this last in the US at the last Congress was it where all the women were white in In solidarity for the women's movement, so I do think there's cultural connections That we keep with color and and there's more you could get into but Are you asking them what'll happen in the future? And And I think it goes back to the color therapy thing and I think you know when I think about Litra Seisman who's the executive director of the Pantone color Institute one of the first things I did when I came to Pantone I also have a master's in psychology, which was probably helpful, which I didn't know coming into my role it was just done because I wanted to do it and The first thing I did was read some of her books and she has a great book called colors for your every mood And it really starts with almost what that color therapy person is suggesting so many different things and closing your eyes And what do you think about what makes you happy? What makes you sad bringing you back to times? Maybe your favorite colors because your favorite teacher wore it or you know your mother wore it and you loved your mother She went to a party and you'd love that dress something But I do think there are visceral reactions to certain colors that we may not always know why they happen That therapy is very rooted in memory too and kind of treats color as the first language we learn Because we'll see it before we have words Thank you, I'm honestly it was great Really interesting. I didn't think about it many of those things I desperately trying to remember the name of that movie about Anna Latour You're the one where she does that really withering and put down of the girl. It doesn't take color seriously because Thank you. The devil wears Prada because that's what I kept thinking about when you were talking. Yeah devil wears Prada moment. Yeah, thank you I've got a bit of a who why question and Who how question so thinking about just how important what you're saying is and all the ways in which color provides access to meaning and Gives us ways to connect and all of that type of thing. Who do you think would be like if you were in charge? hypothetically not that I am but if you were in charge of design of Design education, right? Who would you put? Who would you think would be best placed to? To get who would be the right people to Have design students work with in order to become more color literate for want of a better word, you know Who are the right people for them to be thinking talking to working with and learning about color with? well, I Guess in my research, I've been Fascinated how long of a life Albers has had with his interaction of color it has been the standard sort of in higher ed and Beyond when it comes to teaching art and design students about color Along also with Johannes Eaton's book as well. So both coming out of the Bauhaus I Have pondered why there hasn't been I mean that's from 1963. Certainly technology has changed We've come a long way. We have a lot of other experiences But yet when it comes to the education of color we seem still there and I Welcome any input from a student or somebody who has you know learned otherwise great One story that I loved from our rare books is the story of Milton Bradley of board game fame He also was an art supply manufacturer and wrote a book called elementary color. He also created tools that measured color but he was very adamant that You should teach color to young children like the younger they are when you teach them color Just like an instrument say a musical instrument the younger you learn at the better You'll be able to speak the language of color as you grow up So that too seemed like this revolutionary idea in a way with color, but what? Contemporarily is happening. I'm curious. I saw a hand My name is Savannah. I graduated from Pratt Institute last year and I studied communications design and I also did a minor in photography But we had a foundation year in our first year at Pratt where we did an entire year of light and color design Class that was six hours long two days a week So we really went in depth into color everything from studying classic paintings to Collecting leaves and reinterpreting the colors to the exact of that leaf to drawing an egg with red yellow and blue So we like we really studied color. We painted We painted flames. We saw you know, we really really went into it we did pointillism and We Reinterpreted famous paintings painting them exactly or painting them in blocks with different colors painting them from different approaches We were only allowed to use like six colors throughout the entire year But in our paints and our acrylic paints and we had to figure out ways to combine those colors to create every single color in the gamut And we even did a full Pantone color Project where we had to make our own like hexagon color wheel with all the different colors and how they connect together and figure out kind of like the science between You know purple and green and how does that eventually make black and everything in between so? It was pretty amazing. We weren't even allowed to use black We had to make our own black with purple and green So it was it was a great education on color and I'm sure every art school has something in that vein But we took our time to really learn color and I've seen it go into My career in this first year out of school so many times where I'm like looking back on that first year of school Five years ago and remembering all the things that I learned So this has been a great great update on that and I love sharing. That's great I'm glad to hear Prince doing that. I gave a lot of tours to a lot of students and a lot of them Maybe had one class in a semester on color. So maybe we're shifting back to putting more attention on it. Yeah, it was great Hi so one of the things one of the questions I've had all along while watching the film and Beyond that is And now that I know that you have a master's in psychology. This isn't especially good question for you I'm interested in the collective unconscious when it comes to color why you might like Be walking down the street and all of a sudden have a craving for a certain color I want to wear it or I want I'm a photographer. I want to use this in my work and then you start seeing it everywhere over the next few months and then It's at H&M and then it's at Sephora and you sort of feel like you could feel it coming on I do come from an art background, but I I think it can't just be me and I'm wondering about the collective like how How that plays into color as a culture as People as people experience in color as people consuming color as people craving color Because I honestly don't because I feel like Sometimes things just click and that thing could be in your environment You're not aware of it and all of a sudden once you become aware of it You just become really attuned to what's going on. That's probably the best thing I could describe it Maybe you do have some kind of prescience that could be there as well. Maybe you're not aware of that. Maybe that comes from Even though you don't think you're conscious of it somehow it has entered into as you say you're collective unconscious and it's not until it comes into Consciousness that you're aware, but I don't know how I would label that I would say people that are in the world of forecasting though typically are very attuned to what's going on And I would say have that kind of a skill set because some of it is Observational skills as well, but really being able to connect the dots. Is that what you were going to say to? So we develop products and products have a it takes time for them to come out 12 to 14 months as a production cycle. So what you're probably experiencing is you're seeing the forerunners They've hit upon an interesting color that hasn't been out for a while. They're the first ones to market So you'll see it here there suddenly those products will start selling so store and chain buyers for the bigger stores Will request that color in a product and in the company is usually larger scale companies that are six months behind the curve Eight months behind the curve will suddenly mass market that color because the trendy people are doing it And it runs through a secondary cycle and then it repeats again and again So there's kind of like a really boring technical reason for that and it has to do with awareness and production cycles in industry Thank you for that. I wasn't looking at it from a retail cycle and I guess that was probably a much better way to answer it So thanks. Yeah, no, no, no, but that's Thank you all for coming out