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The Road is Clear for Colors – an Interview with Lieke Ypma

By Katharina Altemeier

Since last year, Dutchwoman Lieke Ypma has been Senior Industrial Designer at Vodafone. She deals with the material trends, tactile qualities, form and user-friendliness of cellphones - and naturally with their color.

© Christopher Fein, Essen 2008

Ms. Ypma, I have just caught you on your cellphone. So what color is it?

(Laughs) At the moment it is dark metallic brown.

That means you do not fit in with the sex-related cliché. As a woman you ought to have one of these bright or pale pink cellphones with glitter.

No, it might be a huge trend with bright and pale pink but that is not to my own personal taste. And to my mind a classic brown is more elegant.

Bright and pale pink for women, black and brown for men. Why does this cliché still function? The so-called "image-driven consumer electronic industry" is still relatively young compared, say, with the auto industry. Which is why the clichés are serviced first. The cell-phone has developed into a high-tech product, and high-tech colors go with that. Now the road is clear for colors, though I feel pink is just the start. In a way, pink is the lead-in for cellphones for women - you could say that women are now being recognized for the first time as consumers. From here things will either continue in an elegant style as in the Samsung Device in brown and with golden garlands. Or in a sporting direction, as in the new violet Sony Ericsson W380.

Motorola is currently plugging its Moto U9, a small, round, shiny cellphone available in pink and lilac. In the Motorola ads you see the cellphones together with pink colored nail polish and lilac colored lipstick and the text: "Gentle or sensual? Which color are you?"

Of course that shows how very personal cellphones are - much more so than cars or desktop computers. Like a lipstick, a cellphone is kept in a woman's handbag. And if you then provide an association with lipstick colors like pink and lilac, it is only logical that you use a color spectrum with feminine connotations.

You also worked for Audi previously. Does the cellphone industry set its own trends or is it influenced by other industries such as the automobile industry or fashion?

It is very difficult to say which industry sets the tone; it is more a case of interaction. Of course, the auto industry sets trends that are relevant for cellphones. Many colors and materials you find in car interiors are transferred to the design of "male cellphones". For example, the LG Secret is one of the first cellphones with a carbon casing. But there are also trends created by the cellphone industry itself. You need think only of Sony Ericsson's green T650 cellphone. A green cellphone is nothing you can connect directly with any other product category. Not with television, not with cars, not with handbags, and I find that very exciting. You can truly talk about trends, which then last for a year, and naturally a lot of inspiration comes from fashion. After all, fashion is very colorful again, and this is why you are seeing more bright colors in the cellphone area. Funnily enough, in the early phase of cellphones, around 1997, they were very colorful, then the colors disappeared again completely. Now they are staging a gradual return.

Is there a certain color that should be avoided for cellphones at all costs?

No! Until recently I might have said green. But now Sony Ericsson is making green cellphones, Nokia too. Green has become socially acceptable. So green is a future color for cellphones. What other colors do you expect in the near future? We will see more white cellphones because the iPhone was recently launched in white. Apple is definitely driving the market. And not because they were the first but because they have chosen such a wonderful technical white and the finishing is just first-class. Cheaper cellphones in white immediately look like unvarnished plastic, like Tupperware. As such, the color alone is just not enough!

Editor’s note: Lieke Ypma was a jury member for and Vodafone a sponsor of the XYMARA™ Design Award.

Originally published in form magazine #222, September/October 2008, reproduced by kind permission.