The meaning of Colour in Marketing. And in Interior Design.

A few days ago I found this interesting Infographic on the meaning of colours applied to marketing. I'ts a good brief that can be perfectly applied to Interior Design. And since color increases readership, recognition and comprehension, I hope it will be helpful for you. Enjoy!

The Meaning Of Colour In Marketing infographic by AttwoodDigital.

Isabel de Yzaguirre, 

La Colorista.

Moià's Architectural Colours (1).

Moià is a small village 50 Km. away from Barcelona, right in Catalonia's countryside. This is where I live. I haven't been doing my colour palettes for a while and I was truly missing that. A few days ago I went to the Medical Center and I could capture this image from there. I have a project in mind. It is about studying the colours of this place, both in landscape and in architecture. I'd love to do the same with some places in Catalonia, and I have a specific idea about Barcelona's Art Déco colour palettes. Time to time.

What did I love from this image? The citrus yellow in the old small house against the blue mediterranean sky. I could extract this olive green which pairs well with yellow and yellowish white. Together with pastel and sky blue and dark blue, they make a happy, luminous and well balanced colour palette. I'd love to gather my own collection of colours!
Enjoy!

AzkoNobel's Colour for the year 2012, Juicy Ripe Berry Red.

As I said a couple of days ago, I have interesting news from AzkoNobel's Color Futures 2012. And here it goes. Colour of the year 2012 proposed by this Company is:

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Juicy  Ripe Berry Red!

This  lively and radiant colour is at once whimsical and serious,dynamic and soft, and in such a changing period of history reminds us not to look for simple solutions.

Color transitions

It evolves from paler tints of colours of previous years into something more confident to warm our hearts for 2012. I feel  we need that in such a troubled days we all are living!

"Within a palette of hues, red allows contrasting one colour, another to recede. Or it brightens a cool quality in the next one. It can change the game in an instant!"

A powerful mood modifier,red is held in high regard around the world for its many symbolic purposes. In China it is associated with good fortune; in India signals marital bliss... In many Western societies is the colour of passion, power and festivity. Children prefer it clearly and we grown-ups admire those who dare to wear red in public. It conveys value and meaning and is also used to alert us to danger.

Red family 2012

The KEY WORDS for the Red Family proposed by AzkoNobel are: BERRY, RIPE, ROMANTIC, EDIBLE.

It's KEY COLOUR is defined as " a deep-warm blush of pinkish, tropical red with a subtle hint of peach and a misty aspect... Quite a chameleon: reassuring or edgy, solft or bright, depending on what it is paired with."

Red's transition

"The intense fiery quality of 2011's red is toned down by a misty, dusky veil, making the new red slightly more enigmatic and versatile".

I can't but relate it to Pantone's 2011 Honeysuckle Pink  and think about it as a logical evolution. Pantone has not published it's chosen Colour 2012 but will do soon, I guess. In the meanwhile, I admit I fell in love with this Berry Red at first glance!

If you need to consult any question related to Color, feel free to contact me :)

NOTE: All the images shown here have been extracted from AzkoNobel's Color Futures 2012, linked at the beginning of this post. And written information has been quoted from there, sometimes literally, sometimes interpreted under my judgement. Therefore, original images and information belong to AzkoNobel. And this Blog Post remains propriety of the Blog's Author. You can quote and reproduce, only please recognize and be gentle to link back here! Thank you :)!

Focal Art: Vitaly Geyman, Photographer.

I've mentioned before how thanks to the net I have become acquainted to wonderful people. This is how I met Vitaly Geyman, by the way.


Vitaly is an internationally published and licensed artist, devoted to photography.Born in the Ukraine, Vitaly spent the first twelve years of his life in Kiev, a colorful and culturally rich city replete with old cathedrals and large oak trees. At the age of twelve his parents decided to leave what was then the U.S.S.R, as political refugees. After spending time in Italy they immigrated to Australia where Vitaly spent his formative years. The beauty and vastness of Australia touched his heart and it is where he began his love affair with nature. However, it was not until his move to the United States in 2003 that he began to fully immerse himself in the art of photography.


It is Vitaly's belief that "great photographic art transports us into another dimension". His artistic journey is an ongoing exploration of the beauty, simplicity and wisdom of nature.Vitaly’s soulful, dreamlike fine art photography would suit perfectly any place you'd love to accent in your home, business or office.


I have chosen some of the prints he offers in Gliclee Art Prints from Art Prints America to show here. From his Flower  Prints this Sun Flower. Wouldn't it glow in a child's room, for instance?

Sun Flower II

Wouldn't that make a beautiful contrast with some kind of burgundy or wine red? I even would match it with a wider colour palette, a very whimsical one!

Clic on photos to enlarge and better appreciate colour palettes.

This is only one of many  possibilities...  Paler yellow and blues, more subdued reds and terracota or earth brown would work well here.

Vine Leaf Romance

From the  Fall Leaves Gallery this is one of my favourites, a color feast for one's eyes! What colour palette will glorify  it? Let's see...

These richer and more subdued hues would make the Art Print pop-up and create a sophisticated look for a room. The rest of elements, should coordinate with these. Bright red is the exception -II'd keep it for an accent.


Vitaly publishes White and Black photos on different themes. Among them, I have  chosen this gorgeous Magnolia Duet.

If you want to create a contemporary sophisticated look with White and Black Art, go for a dynamic palette that combines black and white with grays and a rich jewel hue  like one of these:

I have a strong preference for flowers, but you can find other Nature related themes in Art Prints America. You can create awsome focal points with Tree Bark Art Prints and you have Fall and Winter Art, together with Ocean and Waterfall Giclee Artprints.

In the following video, Vitaly explains what Giclee Art Prints are and why they are better quality ones:



And here he gives some valuable tips to shoot beautiful Botanical photos. I hope you enjoy them!

 

If you are willing to create a wonderful focal wall in your home, office, commercial or healthcare and need some help, feel free to contact me!

(Information provided by Art Prints America, to whom I'm not affiliated but yes very thankful for their letting me to create Color Palettes with their Giclee Art Prints.)

Mediterranean coastal architectural colour plaettes 1

This week I went to visit  Vilassar de Mar, a catalan coastal village. I've always been in love with our seashore resorts, I'm fond of their old summer villas and their colours. About a year ago I did something I was wishing to since long time ago. And I did it with the guidance of who has become my paint teacher, Mrs. Marina Berdalet. I dived into the Color World.

La Colorista

I also learned how to create Color Moods for Interior Design with Kate Smith. And thanks to my contacting many Color Consultants worldwide, I  came to discover how Architectural Color for Exteriors is so well worked out in other countries.

Back to my trip to Vilassar, I was fascinated by a collection of old beautifully painted villas raised in the late years of XIX th. century.  Lucky that I had my Android, for I hadn't thought of taking my cam! I shot plenty of photos, pretty enough to begin writing a series of posts on Architectural Color in Catalan coastal villages . Colours here are warm and luminous as our Mediterranean sea...

I will begin with this building, known as  Ca l'Amat, designed by an unknown architect.

Isabel de Yzaguirre, 2011.

As you can see in the archs and can be checked in Wikipedia, this is a XIX th. century building, a historicist one, that mimics arab style. Sgraffitto and ceramic tiles are their more outstanding decorative characteristics.

Isabel de Yzaguirre, 2011

We can see them around doors and windows. Their richness and chromaticity bring the memory of the broad heritage arabs left in Spain many centuries ago.

Isabel de Yzaguirre, 2011.

This is the rich colour palette that was used in this villa's façade: 

Colour palette by La Colorista

This palette has some luminous colours and some muted ones. They are typical in the Catalan Seashore villages and  were most used in the end of  the XIX th. and beginning of the XX th. centuries. They were usual in the period that we know as Modernisme Català, .

I will go on extracting colour palettes and will do a post about some fascinating doors and windows I saw, even if they are not straightly related with colour. Here is one of them, aside of which I left a testimonial of my visit to Vilassar.

IdY, La Colorista.

If you need an improvement or redo in you Architectural Colours, feel free to contact me. I will be happy to help you!

To create a colour palette out from a beloved object

One way to begin a Colour Consult is to choose an art object we love and create a colour palette to enhance it. This object becomes inspirational because we love its colours, its texture, maybe the memory it awakens or the desired atmosphere we would  like to create around us. At the same time, we could attempt to design the proper scenario to show our treasure at its best. And we would need to choose the right colours for furniture, walls, floor and so on.

This is what I did with this Art-Déco candy box I bought some years ago. And I extracted this collection of beautiful muted rich hues:

La Colorista

I  added some colours of the surrounding furniture to those of the candy box . The palette plays with some complements from the yellow and violet family. There are some analogous as terracotta orange, and silvery and golden hues and  olive green make a great family. Maybe  I will have and accent wall painted in dark red violet and then I will pick the rest of hues...

Barcelona's Art Déco Palette 1

La Colorista

With this one, I begin a sequence of posts on the colours from Barcelona.At the same time that  I try to capture hues, I will explain a few things, in few words, on the chosen places. 

Today I'm leading you to the Modernist or Art-Decó colour palette shown in one of the Houses that were constructed in Parc Güell. Built from 1900 to 1914, the "Parc Güell" was the main work, and the most complete, from Antoni Gaudí, who was comissioned to construct a Park-City according to the model of the ones raised in England in the second half of the XIX th. century. Gaudí, who conceived his work as a closed and fenced residential area provided with all the necessary services, was helped by the also catalan architects Josep Mª Jujol and Joan Rubió i Bellver.

In this photo, correspondig to the so called "Rose House" where Gaudí lived for 20 years, you can observe one of the decorating techniques practiced in this period, called sgraffitto, -in the window borders and also in the façade. It was made scratching through a surface to reveal a lower layer of a contrasted colour. Here we have rich muted tones of rose and red together with sandy beige, which contrast with black in the forged-iron fence and a dark shade of green in the window's wooden blinds. If the day had been a sunny one, this bunch of colours would be enhanced by the bright blue of our Mediterranean sky. I'm sure you would love to visit this wonderful place.

More to come...

P.D. - In catalan we call "Modernisme" the period you know as Art-Déco and Art Noveau in English (I have come to observe that you call Modernism to what we know as Rationalism... Just to avoid misinterpreting!)

Mural project for a School's Yard

Busy as I was with my Colour for Your Home Consultant Certification at Sensationalcolor, I had given up writing in my blogs for an essential lack of time. Now that I have finished my Winter Class, here I am with a very special project I did in 2010-11. This is  a Mural Project to decorate a concret wall in a yard at the school  where I work, in Moià (Barcelona, SPAIN). I began it in summertime and delivered my work in January. I tried to capture the colours that we can find in nature in different yearly Seasons. Then I translated them into an imagined landscape that shows the Seasons in the same order in which we enjoy them at School, from September to June. From the left of the image to its right we go from Autumn to Summer. And from the bottom to the top of the wall are represented the colours from earth to sky, also according to the Seasons. Here is the final sketch:

 La Colorista

This is the wall to be painted:

La Colorista

I picked colours from photos that I had shot in all the annual Seasons and I produced this first messy colour palette ( I have a bit more of phtoshop knowledge right now, but this is a little bit naïve and I love it, between us...) :

La Colorista

After that I translated colours to printable ones  in Pantone Solid Coated, and I arranged seasonal groups and a colour palette for every Season. I have used many colours -not all of them- in the final project. Here you are my Seasonal Colour Palettes:

Winter colour palette, La Colorista

Spring colour palette, La Colorista .

Summer colour palette, La Colorista

Autumn colour palette, La Colorista

As unluckily we are suffering a tough economical recession, our annual  School's budget has currently been reduced about a twenty per cent and we don't know when the mural will be painted. But pupils, parents and my peer teachers seem to love the project and want it done as it is. So I'm feeling happy!!! What else could I ask for?

My next goal is specialising in colour for Architectural Exteriors. Will it be possible for me to fly to USA in 2012? I'd love to!

Colors of the Year 2011: which one you choose?

Citrus Yellow is one of the trendy colors this year 2011:

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Chosen by multinational AzkoNobel, owner of prestigious paint  brands in many countries, as their Color 2011, it contrasts strongly with Pantone's proposed hue, Honeysuckle Pink. In one hand I must state I wouldn't dare to paint an accent wall with such a strong bold color.In the other, I think this pink can work very well in fashion:

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I think also it can lighten  and enhance an Interior as a punch of color in some complements and make it look springlike:

 Font

Citrus yellow seems to work best for more extensive use in Interiors in its different hues, from buttery  to sherbet yellow, from canary yellow to the most bright and saturated hues of it.

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Let's look at this kitchen as an instance. Published in Apartment Therapy Trends 2001 Report it shows yellow in an up-to-date design. Enlightened by white cabinetry and in a bold contrast with the rich brown of the wooden floor, it sems to dialogue by analogy with the peach orange color in the next room. Some punchs of green here and there balance the whole composition.

 In Fashion we can find all kind of clothings and complements in this warm and yet refreshing color:

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 With what I love best from all these I have made my own Trendy Palette 2011. Enjoy!

If you are in Catalonia and would love to update your Home's Color and Décoration, I'm here to help you.
Just contact me and let's talk!

Autumn Tableware Palette

Autumn Tableware Palette

A few time ago I was asked for my friend designer Joan Moret to create a Color Palette for a Seasonal Tableware in Murano Compatible Glass. I made some investigation and through Ceramist Matoko Araki knew of the japanese tradition to change the Tableware according to the Season of the year. In Japan people have special names for the hues of leaves in the Fall Season and I searched for some inspirational images from there.And these are the colors I selected from the pictures. I imagined how they would look in the precious materials that were supposed to be employed to make an Autumn Tableware and I just loved them!

I made an attempt to draw and paint some plates and dishes, with the help of Photshop and this palette, though not being an expert, and they looked like this:

It was a funny exercise to test some possible combinations to do. As you see, I'm not a real Tableware designer, but I enjoyed triying. I even did a Winter Tableware Palette, but I will show when the White Season begins.

My Summer Palette 2010

Original image by courtesy from Hornbeck Design Partners

As everybody interested in design knows, Turquoise Blue was declared to be 2010 Colour by Pantone early in January. Surfing LinkedIn I  got acquainted with Jack Bredenfoerder , Design Director at Landor Associates, and could read three really interesting blog posts on Colour by him. There he talks about colour trends for this Summer and explains the meaning of Blue Hues. To luminous tropical Turquoise reminding of a possible escape to Paradise, Jack adds International Klein Blue, which according to him "relates to people’s search for a global, let’s-work-together unifying color" and "represents not only the environmental challenges we must solve together but also the social and political ones".He suggests also  White, "which reflects a desire to simplify and clear the palette in an uncertain economy",Warm golden yellows, "which are linked to a desire for the stability of a new gold standard", and tropical colours as sunset purples and hot hibiscus reds.

 Interior of Danish summer house by LASC Studio

After reading his proposal, and having learnt that Colour Trends are set about three years in advance, I've made my own reflection on which ones I love for Summer, not only because of trends but looking at our Mediterranean colour traditions. There we have white in seashore houses' walls, and blue, green and even red for wooden doors and windows treatment since immemorial times... And of course browns for furnishings or floors. We only need some touch of colour here and maybe an accent wall there to enlighten a cool and relaxing ambient. Seeing this beautiful photo from Hornbeck Design Partners, a California based Interior Design Studio, I realized that in natural entourage we can find all  these colours in perfect harmony.That ensures the durability of my proposal, which I have made extracting the colours in the palette from those in the picture.

My choice is much of white, with some notes of blue maybe combining a range of them in some walls. Add natural browns in  floor treatments and furniture, and then some colour accents that will make the ambient warm. Do it in cushions, windows treatment, art and whatever you enjoy, from bright yellow to orange or leaves' green and ending in purples.This will make a relaxing but warm place to enjoy your summer season.

Turquoise, green and creamy hues indoors.
Colour accent with bunchs of flowers.

House of Turquoise

Kitchen treatment, from jenjhoner blog and published in

House of Turquoise.

Outdoors come indoors in flowing harmony

Published in House of Turquoise.

The meaning of colour in different Cultures

Image from INFORMATION IS BEAUTIFUL.

Since a year ago I've been learning about Social Media, positioning in Google and so. I've positioned myself in LinkedIn, in Twitter and I'm more and more present in Facebook. Being in that places has lead me to meet wonderful people and designers and to make some discoveries like the one I'm presenting today.

Interior Designers and Decorators have to handle with COLOUR daily, something I personally love. In Spain it is not usual for people to ask professional advice on this issue. COLOURS have different meanings according to DIVERSE CULTURES in our world, as you see in the pic above.This is something to be very careful about when attending a consultancy from a client belonging to a Culture other than the Designer's one.  I thank so much MODENUS, who published the pic in Twitter: this will be very useful for myself. And anybody who needs it, please use it!

Reading blogs in the net I've realized that colour marketing is something carefully planned. I'll be soon publishing my 2010 SUMMER PALETTE, according to tendencies but adapted to my taste and to Mediterranean countries. And long lasting.

Saint George's Day

I'm very pleased to launch my own blog devoted to design this april 23 rd. 2010, Saint George's Day. This is  a lovely day for me, even more since my son bears this name. I begin with an image gently sent by one of my correspondents, Avi Tomàs, a very special person.

This is no day for big words on presenting myself. I'll only tell you this blog will talk about design, interiors, colour and decoration. Saint George's rose reminds us about the beauty of flowers. Flowers can make a day so special, a corner so gorgeous or our workplace so gentle! They fill our life with their beauty. So spread flowers in your and others' lives and enjoy!