Color Musings
- Posted by Mike Zens on 10/13/11
On my last trip to Portland, I found myself having lots of conversations about color. Not just random “do you like it?” kind of conversations but intense discussions and random musings on color.
We are always inspired by color at 6PH. Alisa is the queen of color. She can pick up a swatch book and have your room color perfectly picked out in under 30 seconds. It is really amazing. And she’s not so bad at finding the perfect colors for logos and package designs either.
So it was with no small amount of glee that I introduced Alisa to my old friends Ginnie Young and Janie Lowe in Portland. Ginnie and Janie are the co-founders of YOLO color house – the environmentally responsible paint company. You may have seen them in “O – The Oprah Magazine” or “Metropolitan Home” or “Dwell” – they are so fancy. And if you are fortunate enough to live in the Portland area, you may have even picked up some of their remarkable paint at Lowe’s. Alisa and I got to spend a glorious afternoon in their house and visiting their studio and gardens – all of which inspired us to think more about color in our lives.
Legend has it that the first color wheel was created by Sir Isaac Newton back in the beginning of the 18th century. He arranged red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet on a rotating disk that when spun, blurred the colors together so rapidly that the disk appeared white. People have been coming up with new and different color ordering systems ever since.
I especially like how at YOLO, Ginnie and Janie have chosen their palettes based on earth colors: air, grain, leaf, water, stone, clay, and petal. But it would be a crime to call their colors earth tones. They call them the “Earth’s Color Collection.” This is right on.
I think I moved to Montana because the first trip I ever took here was in the fall. There is this amazing smell that happens after rain falls down on ground that has been literally dying of thirst and this amazing thing that happens to my mood with the first snap of cold in the air. But mostly it is the colors. Having lived back east, I know that I’m supposed to wax nostalgic about the turning of the leaves in New England. But, seriously, you should see the flaming orange bush in my neighbor’s yard or the bright golden leaves on the trees that stand sentry behind it. If anyone could figure out how to put those colors on my wall, it would be Ginnie and Janie.
While we were driving through the Willamette Valley, Alisa told me, “Color choice is deliberate. It can remind us of something that is comforting and happy.” It made me think about how color and memory are related like music and memory. For example, I just painted the addition we built to our house. When Bridget and I were choosing colors I looked at the palette I had chosen when we painted the old part of the house. I have always been drawn to deep tones - olive greens, rich yellows, clayish reds, with an occasional burgundy thrown in. But this time, I decided I needed something light and soothing. Our new palette is all about light blues and greens. I keep referring to it as my Florida colors because they remind me of growing up on the Gulf. “Color can be used to send a message or create an environment, a sense of place.” That’s another thing Alisa said. She is so smart sometimes.
When I was in Portland in July, I brought some YOLO paint back with me and redid my home office. I used DREAM .06. The notes read: “Peacock feathers. Dreamy and sultry, like vintage velvet. Use in a dining room, or as an accent behind shelves.” And for my trim, I used Air .01 “A solid warm white “ When I told Ginnie and Janie what I had done, they said I was very fashionable. This cracked me up. I told them the real reason I’d made the choice – back to Alisa and her sense of place. There is a room at the Met in NYC just off the little café, past the Rodin sculptures that leads you to all those designed rooms. It is the most amazing color of blue. Whenever I am there, I go stand in that room and it is like all my drained energy gets replenished. Seriously, I get a good five years out of it. This is the color of DREAM .06
Not to keep plugging YOLO but if you go to their website, you will find a “pickle palette” which “pays homage to the canning craze of the locavore movement.” You can build a palette on pickling! This opens up a whole new world for me.
“Sometimes color can become a brand. Tiffany Blue for instance.” Alisa again. We were talking about the amazing color of really good wines and how you can tell a perfect cup of Tipu’s Chai (another plug) just by the color. And how we could never use “Coca-Cola” red. And how we wondered what made Starbucks choose that green? I’ll never forget buying an iMac because I had to have some of that candy colored goodness (RIP Mr. Jobs).
The hardest part about creating our own logo at Six Pony Hitch was figuring out the colors. How do you pick colors that represent who you are? How do you get to the essence of your being – your business? How do you communicate everything that you are and everything that you will be? How do you make a promise to the world? Simple. You let Alisa do it.