FF@Five'o'clock'ish,7th September 2018
Welcome!
This week I am bringing to you something a little different.
Have you ever wondered how colour trends are created? Do you ever wonder how some people can pull colours together and seem to make them work, though they may not have been colours you may have thought of? Well let’s take a little dip into the world of colour. I love colour and my heart goes out to many in this world who can’t see it for whatever reason, not just blindness.
In the world of colour there is the PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®. You may or may not have heard of Pantone, not to be confused with ‘pantene’ the hair products. I’ve known about Pantone most of my adult/working life. I have worked in publishing, printing and media places where sometimes you have to get the right colour ‘coding/numbers’ eg hex codes so that shades can be mass produced, paint colours mixed, ink batches to be consistent. And yes even colours on a webpage to be consistent. Ever wonder where most modern colour matching/coding comes from? Yep, Pantone©, you got it!
I’ve been subscribed to Pantone’s newsletter for quite a few years. Here is an excerpt from Pantone’s website about them and what they do and how the world uses their powerful colouring ‘tools’
NOTE: this is a quote, I did not write this, I do not claim ownership of this quote...
About Pantone Standards
In 1963, Pantone revolutionized the printing industry with the colorful PANTONE MATCHING SYSTEM®, an innovative tool allowing for the faithful selection, articulation and reproduction of consistent, accurate color anywhere in the world. The tool organizes color standards through a proprietary numbering system and chip format, which have since become iconic to the Pantone brand.
Pantone’s color language supports all color conscious industries; textiles, apparel, beauty, interiors, architectural and industrial design, encompassing over 10,000 color standards across multiple materials including printing, textiles, plastics, pigments, and coatings.
Pantone Standards are available both digitally and physically. Integrated workflow tools such as PantoneLIVE and Pantone Studio, ensure market-relevancy and color achievability as technology continues to transform the design process.
So why am I writing about this today? In my Pantone newsletter overnight, this is one of the photos that stood out to me, it made me go wow! I go wow a lot but a light bulb went off and I just had to write about it.
Stampin’ Up! is so on the ball and I know from conversations I’ve been privy to in the presence of Sara Douglass, SU’s CEO, that they work way way in advance to bring you what is going to be on trend and current. Most of the time 2 years ahead, I kid you not!
When this year’s latest ‘in colours’ came out in the current annual catalogue, the 5 in colours really stood out to me more so this year than many others. It goes back to when I worked in publishing. To when I helped my son through his uni degree in graphic designing. I thought of the Mondrian style of colour blocking, all things we learned together and things I learned through my working life (oh and as well as art history in high school). Recognise this colour blocking in the photo below? Yes, that is Piet Mondrian, a Dutch artist who was very influential in 20th century modern art.
If you are around my age give or take 10 years older or younger, you may remember a certain brand of hair spray that used this colour blocking on their white tins. I loved it during the ‘big hair’ days LOL.
So what I’m trying to get at with today’s post is this. If you feel matching colours is beyond you, if you feel that you could never get the results some artists get because you get overwhelmed with trying to match things, let Stampin Up’s colour suites help you. Let Pantone© help you. Use what you see around you in design and media, shop front window displays, doona cover designs, what ever. Let it speak to you and think yeah, I CAN do that!
soooo, til next time,
Happy stamping, colouring & creating!
