The only thing that gives colour geeks a bigger hard on that Pantone is applying Pantone to another equally geeky product. If that product happens to be the retro-kitsch game-playing goodness of a Rubick’s Cube, then you’ve pretty much got a designer’s wet dream. From industrial designer Ignacio Pilotto.
Via Swiss Miss
In an interesting and lovely cultural colour project, Todd Falkowsky, co-founder of the kick-ass Canadian design collective Motherbrand and one of the forces behind the must-visit Canadian Design Resource, set out to capture the visual identity of Canadian cities through simple Pantone colour palettes in his article “Revealing Urban Colours” for Walrus Magazine.
Using computers to figure out the predominant colours from landmarks and landscapes from each Canadian capital city, he then built individual palettes to create a kind of chromatic identity for each city. The end result is a multi-faceted colour theory study, with results similar to the palettes created by people on one of my fave sites, COLOURlovers,
As with the work he contributes to at Motherbrand, there’s an intrinsic simplicity to this whole project that I love. I’m a colourphile, and any work of art or science that examines our relationship with colour gets me going. On top of that, there’s something very Canadian about it. No huge fanfare and glossy pictures of monuments and other stereotypical urban signifiers (“oh, look, the CN Tower, they must be talking about Toronto…”), the colours and the entities they represent are all subtle and true. More so it’s that these are the shades of the things that make up a place but don’t necessarily overwhelm it. These are the hues of things seen and known but not always looked at or thought about…
Sometimes hockey and football, sometimes water and rock, these colours represent natural pulls to the land where these cities lie, to the cultures fostered there, and each one is chosen not for it’s glitz but for it’s purity of presence. These are real things. Solid things. Look at Whitehorse and you first see “Aurora Borealis” and “Fireweed” – it doesn’t get much more elementally beautiful than that.
Each palette has been personalized out of a genuine reality and not out of an urge to impress. Being a Torontonian, I can’t think of any colour more omnipresent than the slightly annoying sanguine red of the TTC (Toronto Transit Commission). Pretty? Not necessarily. Affection-inducing? Most people’s opinion of the TTC lies somewhere between detestation and apathy. But it’s presence is undeniable and a visual colour-thread for anyone that lives here – and capturing that reality is, I think, exactly what Falkowsky set out to do.
Thanks to Hannah + Matt.
My inexorable march towards total design geekdom becomes shockingly apparent when I find stuff like this and it entertains me to a point that I almost want jump up and down and call my Mom. At least it also proves that there are others like me out there…
Just like creator RIVET_sf says on his hilarious Pantone Matching Flickr Set, “Everything has it’s own Pantone colour. It’s just a matter of finding it.” If you’ve ever wondered what the Pantone code was for a can of Dr. Pepper, now you know. Finally!
Brit designer Tim Fraser Brown got together a bucket of KFC and some friends to reproduce Manet’s “Bar at the Folies Bergere” with 5000 unused Pantone colour chips. It took four nights, and I really respect not only the mania that made him want to do this, but that he actually managed to convince people to assist him. Awesome.
Thanks to Meeta for sending me this!
It’s becoming clear to me that I need to spend more time letting the ink from pens leak into the world around me. First Fernando Brizio beat me to the punch with his stellar bowl and now UK artist Daniel Eatock has followed a similar method for his prints.
He arranged a set of ink pens in the colour spectrum and let them rest upside down on 500 sheets of paper for a month. At the end, the ink had seeped through 73 sheets and created, as you can see, beautiful and organic clouds of colour.
Each of the 73 works was numbered and priced based on how far it rested in the stack. Number 1/73 was furthest from the top (and so got the least amount of colour) and was priced at £1. 73/73, the most brilliant and thickly coloured of the group, was valued at £73. Easy as that.
Besides being astonished at how cheap these are, it’s the wonderful simplicity of the whole project – from the idea to the execution to the pricing itself – that I love so much.
Having been inspired, I’m currently lying in bed with 100 uncapped Crayola markers rolling around my white sheets. I’m hoping for big things. I’ll let you all know how it turns out…
Via NOTCOT
The moment we’ve all been waiting for has finally arrived. Today the New York Times unveiled Pantone’s choice for the colour of 2008. Say a big PFO to 2007’s Chili Pepper Red and welcome No. 18-3943 TCX (a.k.a. Blue Iris):
In a statement, Leatrice Eiseman, the executive director of the Pantone Color Institute, said: “Blue Iris brings together the dependable aspects of blue, underscored by a strong, soul-searching purple cast. Emotionally, it is anchoring and meditative with a touch of magic.”
At least we’re not over-thinking it.
Via Queerty
shape+colour 
