Transcripts
1. Colors Introduction: Good morning, good
afternoon. Hello, everyone. Today I want to talk about
how I choose colors when I design a product.
I'm TonkiPrevo. I'm an industrial designer, and I like to have a rationale behind all my decision making, simply because it
helps deciding, but also because it
helps explaining and justifying those proposals to other stakeholders or functions. So let me show you
in one example.
2. Colors Baseline: I'm going to use for
this class an example of a range of safety boots that I have designed for
construction workers and mining workers in
Australia, New Zealand. So this was for the brand
Oliver, where I used to work. And I'm going to show
you just part of the project that is really
just related to the colors. The first point, of course, I have mentioned that
in other classes is that in a design project, you need to balance
a certain amount of innovation with a
level of familiarity. We want users to
recognize our products. We want users to know
exactly what we offer, what they can expect from us, and we want them to feel
confident so that they can explore the things that
are probably new features, and they do it in trust in our products because they recognize the key
elements of the product. It's still valid for colors. So the starting point
for me is to look at the colors that are normal
or usual in that business, in that product category
in that context. And so I do that, of course, by looking at what the
competitors are doing, what we have been
doing until then, and what are the kind of trends, newer or older movements or changes that appear
on that market. And in this case, here on this image, what we see is a competitor
brand that actually had already created a new trend, which was to use the usual
classical base colors of wheat, stone, and black. But they bring an accent color, especially in the
outdoor and in some of the hardware details
which are contrasting, but are still just
small elements. So what we're going
to discuss today is which base colors we take, which accent colors we take, and why should we take a color
rather than another one.
3. Colors Themes: So besides this idea that we can take as a baseline the colors that are
common in that business, as I said, weed, stone, black, some brands
also have dark brown. That's typically the
four base colors that you see in
safety footwear in that region and for
construction and mining and these
kind of professions. You can also, of
course, work from a theme or you can work
if you are in fashion, obviously, that's
going to be much more focused on latest trends. In some situations, you can
just decide to go completely against the wind and really
do something radical. In this case, we decided to
consider those base colors, those fundamentals, and I decided to then look at
what theme we could use. The brief wasn't
specifically saying, Okay, we need to
do, I don't know, sci fi stuff or we need to
do specifically arrange for ladies or we need to do something very specific
in terms of colors. So I came up with those
themes on my own. Knowing that the product was
exclusively for Australia, New Zealand, and that our brand, Oliver is actually
kind of a leader or very recognized
brand on that market, I decided to just
wonder what is it? What is Australia about
in terms of colors? And I picked a
completely subjective, arbitrary, almost random way, a set of themes
which I explored. The reason is that if
you just choose colors, I was going to say
out of the blue just because you like a color. Well, we start from millions
of colors in the palette, and that's a very daunting task to know which one is right. So I'm picking a theme because each theme is going to narrow
down the opportunities. And as you will see,
it's quite interesting that the several themes
I've taken, actually, we're still leading me in um kind of similar tones
of the same colors, which then make the
choices much easier later. So let's go and start with
the first theme I picked.
4. Colors Theme1 Outback: And as I just said, the themes were chosen in a subjective way. I'm not Australian, so with
my European point of view, of course, I went straight
for the stereotypes. And the first, you know, visual, the first aspirational visual coming out on the idea of
Australia is, of course, the outbacksT
incredible nature with this deep red earth or soil. So I just, you know,
went on Internet, found some beautiful
pictures of this, and that immediately gave
me a certain palette. What you see then that line at the bottom of the
screen is some of the colors that I
picked literally just with a color picker in a
photo editing software. I went and explored a
little bit, and of course, then I used my own
taste and sensitivity to try find colors
that work together. They obviously do because
they were found on those photos and nature
is just never wrong. So those colors
obviously work together, whichever you pick on the photo, I just was going for
something earthy definitely, especially for that theme, and also because by definition, the product I'm
designing in that case, is meant to be used in
that kind of environment. It's meant to be
used walking in mud, walking in dirt and
dust and gravel. So I had to go find those
colors that in my mind, were making sense with the let's say subjective
or emotional environment. The way the product is used, where it's used,
in which context, which life it's going to have. I wouldn't make any sense
to make white shoes if you know that they
are going to be used in such environment, although one could argue
that tennis shoes are white. But in this case, for
construction workers, everybody knows that those
products are going to be going through very
tough environments, are going to be
damaged very fast, are going to be dirty every day. I going to go through pretty intensive cleaning
with water and so on. So I them this earthy, typical Australian
environment where I thought I can pick
up some nice colors.
5. Colors Theme2 Aboriginals: And while we are working with stereotypes, obviously,
about Australia, there was this theme about the heritage of the Aboriginals. This is a bit of a
controversial or difficult one. I obviously don't
mean any disrespect, and I probably
have a very, very, very shallow understanding of what they represent and what those colors may represent
in their culture. But in this case, I just
thought I need to explore and see what those colors what colors this could bring me. I can tell you there were quite
a lot of discussions with the marketing team and the
offering management team because exactly the brand never had any intention
to offend anyone, never had any intention to make any kind of political statement. These are shoes for
construction workers. And so I explored it for
a purely visual purpose. It was clear from the beginning that the product would not communicate that culture in any wrong way or even right way. That was not the the
attempt was just to see how they combine
colors, which colors, and if we could do something
interesting out of that, it's again, just another way
to look for inspiration. Same story found some nice
pictures of artefacts, of people and tried to
find some colors that made sense still in that context of the
usage of the product, that context of let's say, um cultural subjective
understanding or stereotype of Australia
and maybe New Zealand.
6. Colors Theme3 Mining: And then of course, since
the product is to be used in construction
and mining industries, it was an obvious one. I had to explore that theme
of construction and mining, specifically for those markets
of Australia, New Zealand, the type of mining, the
kind of minerals they mine, the scale of things, meaning the machinery and equipment they use,
everything is different. The road signage is
different, et cetera. So I not just like construction, whatever the European way. I explored a bit there to see which colors
would be typical. It's also, of course, because if there is a
color that makes sense because of color
coding, a definition, an agreed meaning of that color in that
specific industry, of course, there
is something to be considered for any project. Always start also with
that kind of information. There are colors
that you should or should not use because
of their meaning. Many brands, for example, have red as a detail to use. But then if you are in
some industries where red means danger or emergency, obviously you have a problem and you have a bit
of a conflict. Construction mining,
same exercise, nice pictures,
picking some colors, something that works
together and see if it's a bit different or all
the same as the other themes.
7. Colors Theme4 Trees: Another theme that I
explored is nature, but not just as a landscape, but more, let's say, trees
and plants, flowers. Just wanted to see what they have there that is
typically Australian, different from the
kind of plants or trees or colors that
we find in Europe. And there was this amazing range of colours, of
course, in flowers, but also those trees that
have this like satin, kind of shiny, almost
metallic looking bark. Is pretty amazing stuff. So same story, something unique
for that environment, something that can be a visual, emotional reference
to the environment, to the roots of that brand, as well as where the product
is going to be used, and definitely the
idea to differentiate from what our European brands
would do, for example, because they wouldn't have
those colors or textures in, for example,
European forests. So again, finding nice pictures in good resolution,
putting them together, and picking some colors that
seemed more relevant in that set of palette of
that set of photos, trying to stretch
a bit the palette compared to what I had already found with the other themes. And still in this point of the
project, I'm not choosing. I'm just preselecting
an impression, a mood, a feeling, and it's something I'm
going to work with later. It's not a final decision. Australian trees,
Australian plants for their specific differentiation from the rest of the world, and I picked a few colors there.
8. Colors Theme5 Farms: Generally speaking, if you're
talking about a country or if you're in a project that relates to a
specific country, a specific part of the world, architecture is a theme. It's a theme that helps you
understand the local culture, the local humans,
the local lifestyle. Now, Australia, if you say Australia, architecture,
a lot of people, of course, have
immediately the image of the opera house in Sydney. But that's a monument. I was interested more in more genuinely grassroot or
authentic countryside feel. How do houses look there? I'm quite sure that
a lot of things are pretty much
globalized nowadays. But then I found that
there is such a thing as the Australian farm
house kind of style. And so I picked a
few of those images, noticed there was a lot of
very light colors there. One had a red roof, but a
lot of those houses are in the light tones and whites
and beige and ivory colors. So I did, again, the same exercise, picking pictures, putting them together, and selecting with
the color picker, some colors that seemed
interesting to me, still having in mind
that I had already pi some color palettes
in the other themes. So trying to find
um some difference, some specifics in there in the theme that perhaps
could lead me somewhere. Australian farm houses
because architecture is generally an inspiration you can use in any
part of the world, and it's always quite specific
to that part of the world.
9. Colors Palette Overview: I now had the possibility
to kind of put those things together on
one page, the baseline, the usual stuff
from that business, from that kind of industry, and then the five themes
that I had picked. Again, all this is subjective
and kind of random, but it helped me go from millions to couple
of dozens of colors. There was some consistency
throughout those themes. There were some
specifics, of course. And there was the
time for me to just observe these different micro
palettes that I had built, putting it together into a
palette that I now decided, Okay, I'm going to
pick from that. So picked some colors
thinking they would be good base colors if we allow ourselves to
question the weed stone, brown black scheme of
industrial footwear. And also, I picked
some accent colors, which typically have to be contrasted with
those base colors, typically more saturated. But still we are in the theme of working
with mud and dirt. So I wanted earthy tones,
something very countryside, very outback, and as Australian as can be in the
eyes of a European. So yeah, that's how
I picked the colors. That was reducing it to five, ten colors that I could then explore in my renderings and visuals later
in the project, see how to use them. And here is where I got at
that point of the project.
10. Colors Exercise: As an exercise, then I suggest you pick a brand or a
project you're working on and you start by defining
or selecting themes topics that are illustrating how that brand fits into a
certain environment, context, where that
brand is playing a role. You pick those topics, you
make mood boards like those. These examples here are for a brand that operates in
personal protective equipment, and I visualized in mood boards the different market
verticals where that brand is playing and used that to pick colors that could
work for that brand. Do the same. Make mood boards, pick colors, and of course, you are free to
decide to go against the grain and to choose
radically contrasting color, maybe a complimentary color from those that you find
in those mood boards. Have
11. Colors Start Bold: A so then throughout the process of designing
the outsole and the harpers and
the complete boots and actually complete
range of boots, I made proposals using some of those accent colors
on some base color. This is what you
see here, one of the multiple proposals
where I had picked a very light base
color for the outsole and quite large areas
for the accent colors, areas that would also be visible from the
edge of the shoe. So when someone be standing, that accent color
would constantly be visible if not covered in mud. The reality of
business, of course, is that all these
decisions are made in consensus with the
offering management team, the marketing team, the
sales guys, et cetera. And we settled on
something much less bold, something more like this, actually. Is one of those. So we settled with
smaller accents, and they are not visible from the outside
when you are standing. They are just
visible underneath. But they correspond to what
the brand has done so far and they represent actually some of the properties
of the outsold. There are different
color schemes. I want to make a comment here. I have a tendency to
design things quite bold and kind of radical
at the beginning, because I know by
experience that things always get watered down a
little bit through the process, through the decision making, because all of this is a business and risk
taking is all fine. But at the end of the day, you need a business that works. So when you're designing things, when you're picking colors, start bold, start
strong, make statements, and then accept to
work it through with other functions except to make it business realistic
or business friendly, and you're going to
get somewhere that is acceptable to
the right audience. It's a bit risky to be too careful at the
beginning, actually, because then if you start careful and you water
it down further because there will always be fear
and risk factor in business, then you end up with
nothing at all. Oh, this is how I do. I pick a theme or a few themes. They help me explore
that environment or that context that I don't know yet or I didn't
know before the project, and they help me make
decisions that are completely preliminary
and subjective, of course, because
these are colors. And as we see in French, anscua the words in English, taste and colors
can't be argued upon. So it's all subjective, but the best way for
me to avoid just sitting in front of a
Panton reference color where there are millions of colors and I don't
know what to do. I pick a theme. It gets me into a certain mood,
and in that mood, then I can make selections in a much more spontaneous
way, something easier, and then it's a negotiation
process with the rest of the team so that you have a final product that
holds together. Good luck with your projects.
12. Colors Summary: So to summarize what
we've discussed today, when you choose colors, you start from infinite choice, which makes it difficult, of course, to make decisions. There are things you
need to consider. In some jobs, in
some industries, in some specific contexts, color has a meaning. There are some color
coding of some sort. Of course, that's
the first thing you need to know and respect. Second thing, you are probably
working in an environment, in a business that exists
that has its own habits and traditions where there is some market leader that has established a certain
set of expectations. So this, of course,
you need to consider, like I just said, for
industrial footwear, we had that weed stone, brown and black setup on the Australian landscape of industrial footwear for
construction and mining. Then my way to avoid
that huge labyrinth and reduce the choice so I can make decisions in an easier
way is to pick themes. It's also because it helps
me explore the soft values, the soft sides, the emotional, subjective, cultural
aspects of the project. In this case, as a
European having to design something an Australian brand for Australian
customers and users, I needed to somehow figure
out something about Australia without
necessarily traveling and spending a fortune. So I picked themes, Sowre complete stereotypes, some were usual safe bets like
architecture and nature. Understand visually what a part of the world can refer to. And so I picked those themes, picked some colors
in there, made my own choice between
those colors. I chose Earthy because it worked together with the idea
that those shoes are meant to be in mud dirt dusts in outside in the
in the countryside. So again, very
subjectively, pull things, pull themes and ideas
together in some kind of package and pick ideas,
pick colors there. Be bold in your early proposals, visualize them the best you
can to convince people, and most probably I'm going to have to retract a little
bit water down a bit your designs and then
you get to something that is adequate for the market, adequate for your audience,
and hopefully successful. Enjoy trying good luck.
Tanguy Prevot, Industrial Designer / Educator
