Tag Archives: color

As colors go, orange (specifically Pantone O21c) has had a good run in the design world. Despite taking a back seat through antiquity to various golds, blues, reds, and whites, it would seem the visual merits of the color were finally recognized in the mid 20th century. As the legend...

Some aesthetic themes arise purely as a counterpoint to an established visual mode. For decades, we’ve surrounded ourselves with increasingly polished, seamless, perfect objects; from smartphones to automobiles, the stylistic vector has been ever towards shiny, sleek, rational, and technological. Made by machines, with all hints of an artisanal human...

As designers, we’re always looking for a strong first-read stylistic element that will attract the target user’s immediate visual attention. In the last few years, a trend has emerged that exclusively uses a single color to create this aesthetic hook. Very simply, Color Dipping involves (sometimes literally) dipping a complete...

There are only so many colors in the world. Despite Pantone’s claims to “invent” new colors, many of today’s designers are obsessing less about which exact PMS to specify, and more about how transparent it should be. Chromatic Gels is a trend that is finding traction from Architecture to Furniture:...

Although rainbows have been a frequently occurring visual theme in modern culture (kid’s characters, hippies, the GLBT community, Mork), in recent years they have been increasingly present in the Product, Fashion, Furniture, and Architecture categories. Possible reasons behind this resurgence are many (these colors are particularly vibrant against today’s prominent...

In keeping with the theme of the Juxtaposition category, this trend highlights the use of an intense color accent to contrast with a more muted primary color palette. The result is an immediate first-read dissonance that makes the accent color really pop as a vibrant element in an otherwise orderly...

Although achievable easily in oils and watercolors, the gradations we see in the natural world around us have always been hard to replicate in production. The first explorations of gradation appeared in print with the invention of half-tone patterns. Not until digital tools arrived in the late 20th century did...

In keeping with the Reinterpretation theme, Color Reinterpretation maintains all design elements of the original icon, but alters the color in new and striking ways. Andy Warhol’s Marilyn prints illustrate this effect perfectly: taking the widely and immediately recognized icon of Marilyn’s face, and layering on a cascade of vibrant...

Silver paint is a Declining Trend, but the story of its rise to glory is worth knowing. Around the late 1990s, starting in the Consumer Electronics category, silver paint started a decade-long march across the design community. The inception was most likely two sources: the long use of lightly metallic-flaked...

Black and White are classic, fundamental colors. Different hues may come and go, but these two can always be counted on to bring both freshness and familiarity to a design. In this context, the two colors are set upon each other with maximum contrast, achieving a kind of yin-yang effect....