Meet the Color Mavens
Kate Smith
"As a professional color expert, trend forecaster, engaging speaker and chief color maven, I work with corporate clients and buiness owners on using color to drive sales and elicit a favorable response to their products, their brands, and their marketing messages."
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Julie Hoylen
"Born with a natural sense of style, Julie is a fashion stylist and consultant working in the New York City area. Julie's professional experience in both the fashion and music industries has allowed her to develop a unique perspective on personal style that keeps her clients turning to her when"
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Featured Book
Make effective, unique and credible color choices
Based on research and filled with hundreds of color combinations and illustrations, Color: Messages & Meanings presents color expert, Leatrice Eiseman’s insights on color and emotion, and addresses how best to integrate these qualities into your work, insuring your intended message is communicated.
Buy this book at Amazon.com
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I keep an eye on the science and research publications to see what may be on the horizon for color in the future.
Even if I don’t fully understand the impact of the latest reserch it still sparks my imagination and opens my mind to new possiblities for the future as well as for using the materials available to me today.
This week Chemical Technology: A magazine highlighting the latest applications and technological aspects of research across the chemical sciences reports:
A simple process for preparing light-emitting layers of silica with wide colour variation has been developed by Italian scientists.
The promise of preparing white light emitting materials for flat displays stimulated a team led by Gianluca Accorsi of National Research Council, Bologna, to develop luminescent hybrid layers.
Rsearchers are looking at this technolgy for “colour tunable luminescent devices” and with so many interesting developments such as this one coming about it’s easy to envision color being used in new ways and across many new applications.
Maybe before long we’ll be painting our rooms with light rather than pigment or using light and color in other ways we’ve only dreamed of in the past.
The picture is from Chemical Technology and you can read the full article here.
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If you read our feature A Rainbow of Carrots you already know that carrots weren’t always orange.
In the most recent BrandFlash video Martin Lindstrom points out that while today we all recognize carrots as being orange few people know or remember the place where it was created. The video titled “Color Branding the Carrot: A Netherlands’ ‘How Not to’ Story” is available to be viewed online at Adverting Age.
Think about all of the energy your company puts into branding. Will it be remembered?
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The color of a drink influences our perception of how sweet it tastes and can even fool our taste buds.
Which would you think tastes sweeter…
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With a name like Green & Black you might expect to see those two colors in their logo or packaging but the smart husband and wife team recognized something about color that many people miss.
Find out why they brilliantly omitted green…
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Authored by Kate Smith
Not only are brand new black cars storming up the sales league among customers, second-hand black cars are commanding a £500 price premium over other colours.
“UK sales of new silver cars fell substantially in 2006, while sales of black cars grew to such an extent that it has now nudged blue out of second place. “We appear to be witnessing the rapid beginning of the end for Britain’s love affair with silver cars” said Mike Orford of car company SEAT, who has tracked the trend away from ‘prestige’ silver and towards black.
To cash in on the trend, SEAT has just launched a new 125mph Toledo Sport 2.0 TDi special edition costing £18,995 which is available only in black.
Mr Orford said: “Last year ubiquitous silver lost some of its sheen with new car buyers while black jumped from third to the second most popular colour choice. Menacing black is now arguably the coolest paint option.”
More on the rise in black…
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General Motors loves the color orange. So much so that nearly 75% of its upcoming stable of vehicles will be available in some variation of orange in the next few years.
Chris Webb, General Motor’s Trends and Exterior Color Designer and one of my colleagues at CMG was featured in Brandweek Q+A and talks candidly about the importance of color for new GM vehicles.
Read the Brandweek article…
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From the Toronto Star:
Controversial label on one leather sofa sparks international debate and outrage
It’s not often that a packing label prompts an international embarrassment, but there was Toronto, on CNN’s Lou Dobbs Tonight, a city where, viewers were told, a dark brown leather couch was being marketed as “nigger-brown.”
“You’ve got to be kidding,” said Dobbs, shaking his head at the shame of it. The guest held up the Toronto Star story about a black woman in Brampton whose new couch arrived in her home bearing a packing label describing the colour as “nigger-brown.”
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Authored by Kate Smith
As reported today in the USAToday:
The color orange will infuse landmarks Tuesday from New York and Philadelphia to San Francisco. Manhattan’s Empire State Building, Chicago’s Sears Tower, San Francisco’s City Hall and Philly’s quaint quarter-mile span called Boathouse Row will be lit in orange; the famous Wall Street charging bull sculpture will be decorated in the color; and the Louisiana Boardwalk fountain in Bossier City, La., will look to be spraying orange water.
It’s the 141st birthday of the American Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals, and people and groups nationwide are donning and draping the ASPCA’s signature color to “celebrate the special human-animal bond,” says Jo Sullivan, the organization’s VP of development and communication.
Read the rest of the story…
Picture: NYC Woolworth Building Lit in Orange
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Authored by Kate Smith
After several months of testing Google has announced that they are officially changing the background color of the sponsored links that appear above the search results from blue to yellow.
I think it is safe to assume that Google found that the yellow background resulted in more clicks thus more revenue.
Have you ever tested the colors on your site to see if a change could have a significant impact? Why not follow the lead of an industry leader and see how the right color can improve your results.
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Authored by Kate Smith
Paul Herzan, chairman of the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum, has decided New York’s taxis need a functional makeover and has founded Taxi 07, a design exhibition to demonstrate the possible improvements to today’s taxis.
Taxi 07: Exhibit at NY Auto Show Opens Friday, April 6th
The Design Trust for Public Space celebrates the 100th anniversary of the NYC taxicab with the Taxi 07 Exhibit, presented by Standard Taxi, at the 2007 New York International Auto Show from April 6-15. This exhibit will showcase innovative new taxis created by major auto manufacturers, designers, architects, and technology firms.
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