Color Punch

using color in design

Sometimes I want drink color. Or eat it. My eyes get stuck on patches of it and can't move on because color has grabbed my retina. When I was sixteen I started painting with oil on canvas using that citrus scented turpentine substitute. Although I worked to improve my brush strokes and shadowing, the truth is, I mostly sat in front of my work day after day to smell the chemical solvent and play with the tubes of color; mixing them, diluting them, or applying them in big thick swathes. I began to understand why some modern artists, eschewing the more traditional representational art made paintings with giant blocks of thick color. They wanted to cover themselves in the paint but settled for the canvas. They wanted to share their hunger for the glossy pigment.

I feel that way sometimes with design. Sometimes design is more about the color of a project than it is about the shape or cut. I see a trim in lime green and it makes me summer-thirsty and a design begins to evolve from the pool of acidic refreshing punch of green. Shapes begin to emerge after the initial hunger that the color evoked. A hunger for more of it. Trim an apron in it. Or perhaps curtains. Something you'll see often so your eyes will eventually become satiated with it. Though the truth is, they never really do. A good color will make you want it forever.

Not everyone understands the emotional nature of color. Many years ago I visited the Musee D'Orsay in Paris and they happened to have a showing of Theo Van Gogh's collection of art, including a lot of work by his brother Vincent. For the first time I saw Vincent Van Gogh's work in person: right in front of me I could take in the wonderful azure color of his painting "Almond Branches In Bloom" which is the only painting of his I truly love.

Right next to this colorful beautiful painting were some still-lifes of Vincent's done in ochres, muted greens, and dirty browns. The word that came to mind was "pish" which was my family's euphemism for baby poop. These studies in brown were of vases of flowers and arrangements of fruit, things I associate with opulent color. It struck me as such a crime to use all ochres and browns to describe them with. What was he thinking? What was he trying to do to me?! Jesus!! Why would someone make something so hideous?!!

I felt anger well up from my spleen. I was angry the way I feel when seeing photographs of sea birds covered with oil spill. Angry at senseless injustices.

Then I felt stupid for being so angry about color. It felt like a punch in the gut and I reacted on instinct. When I started examining how I felt and why it should be so offensive to me I thought that maybe Vincent used only those dull, spiritless, dark colors because he couldn't afford the prettier ones. Maybe he was making do with what he had. Who am I to judge him for it? Yet I did. In doing more reading, later, I found out that his early paintings were done in somber colors by choice.

This is why the colors you use in designing anything are so important. You could make the most wonderful dress in the world but if you neglect to employ the power of color to evoke an emotional response in people, your design may fall flat. This doesn't mean you have to use bright colors or "cheery" ones. It just means you need to understand what color will say for your design and use it to your advantage. Use color to say what you mean.

Nothing that is lime green is going to say "elegant", for example. Not even Christian Dior could make a garment in lime green that says "elegance". Finding the right color voice for a design means learning to see the subtle differences in shades, tints, and hues.

You don't have to take color theory classes to learn how to work with color, though it wouldn't hurt. Practice is good. Playing around with pigments on a canvas is a good way to see what happens when hues are mixed with other hues, versus what happens when you mix white or black with colors. You can see how different combinations make you feel when you look at them. You can test combinations out on friends and family to find out why they like certain color combinations and not others. Look around you, what colors make you happy? Calm? Depressed? Ask yourself what it is about the colors that evoke different responses.

The best advice I received while I owned my brick and mortar retail store was from Bethany of Bitter Betty Industries who was, for many years, a merchandising manager for Nordstrom. I was trying to figure out how to make better window displays and she said "Always start with your color story and work outwards from there." I followed her advice and like magic my window displays pulled together, started looking more professional.

I'm going to give that same advice to all of you and entreat you to apply it not just to your designs, but to your whole life.

Start with your color story first.