Recently my company exhibited at the Retail Packaging Association Tradeshow and Conference. One of the presenters was Leatrice Eiseman. Lee is known as America’s Color Expert. Her perspective is always candid and entertaining. Lee looks at color from many perspectives and she has helped companies from home textiles to high fashion with product development, logos, brand imaging, web sites, packaging point of purchase and any other application where color choice is critical to the success of the product or environment.
Lee is head of the Eiseman Center for Color Information and Training and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. She has authored six books on color and is widely quoted in consumer publications and media outlets. I have listened to Lee’s presentation for the past three years and she always has some great information on color forecasting in the near and far term.
A thread that run’s through Lee’s work is her use of words which creates wonderful images in the mind. Her words evoke a sense of how the color will be perceived and how it interacts with the object in is on or the objects around it. Lee challenges the viewer to “raise the bar on color”. Lee states, “Look at color from the way others would and not necessarily what your likes or tastes are.”
Our perception of color is personal and subjective. Whether it’s selling a flower or a can of spray, we use words to evoke how we feel about a color. Below are some of the words that Lee used to communicate a hue. See if you can picture the color in your mind and if the words associated with it strengthen the image or the company it’s associated with.
Color - Words - Company
• Red - Expensive, Rich - Target
• Blue - Consistent, Integrity - IBM
• Green - Natural, Organic - Starbucks
• Yellow - Happy, Sunshine - McDonalds
• Orange - Vibrant, Stimulating - Home Depot
• Purple - Regal, Mysterious - Hallmark
• Brown - Earth, Comfort - UPS
• Black - Classic, Solid - Missook
• White - Clean, Brilliant - Apple
Thinking beyond the standard is what I like about Lee’s work. She challenges me to juxtapose colors and words to create new combinations and opportunities. This fresh translation inspires and helps to innovate. How can colors influence your products acceptance? What are you doing to get your products noticed or purchased, using color? Weather it’s breast cancer awareness, (pink) or AIDS awareness, (red), color evokes imagery that can make associations and statements about what our products are, how they can be priced and where they can be marketed. Have you “raised your color bar” lately?
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