• Creating Color Palettes: Monika Fecht - Trend As A Cultural Reflex (Mood Boards 2007)
• Creating Color Palettes 3: Monika Fecht - Color Me 2008
• Creating Color Palettes 4: Monika Fecht - A World Of Contrasts (Mood Boards 2008/2009)
• Creating Color Palettes 5: Helen Gurura - A Functional Approach to Color Use
• Creating Color Palettes 6: The Business of Color at RENOLIT

The Making of an Exterior Color Palette

How do color stylists create color palettes? In the second of our series, Helen Gurura, Color Design Consultant for Tinta Paints, South Africa, gives us her thoughts.

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By Helen Gurura

Color palettes consist of a set of colors that have been selected for use in particular design fields such as fashion, textiles, cosmetics, graphics, plastics and the coatings industry (including automotive and painting areas).

Creating an exterior color palette for a paint range involves a lot more than merely opening up a color atlas and choosing colors that meet the ‘design objective’. This article will take you through the stages a professional color designer should essentially go through in creating an environmentally compatible exterior color palette.

It is of utmost importance to get acquainted to the target community’s cultural, social and communal relationship with color. Is there anything the color designer should know about the community’s past color usage and experiences? What is the color history of the community one is designing for? The color designer should also be aware of the universal color associations that exist which outweigh any cultural and personal color relationships that may be unearthed in the probing process. This investigative process could take the form of personalised interviews and/or community based questionnaires with closed and open-ended questions regarding color usage, associations and preferences. Color chips should also be made available for reference where appropriate.

Understanding human experiences of color and reactions thereto should not be forgotten either. Color is known to affect cortical activation, functions of the autonomic nervous system and hormonal activity, thereby arousing definite emotional and aesthetic associations.

A professional color designer should take into consideration three main factors laid out by The International Association of Color Consultants and Designers from the onset of the design brief. The association was established in 1957 and is a key advocate in creating colored environments that benefit the end user psychologically, physiologically and emotionally. The three factors are:

1. The Neuropsychological Effects of Color

Here, one should be wary of the physiological effects of extreme monotony or sensory deprivation in colored spaces. Color is known to have an effect on pulse and breathing rate, blood pressure and even on muscular tension.

2. The Psychosomatic Effects of Color

The term is derived from the mutual union of two words: ‘psyche’ - from the Greek, meaning ‘of the mind, spirit, soul and life’; and ‘somatic’ - from the Greek, meaning ‘of the body’.

Psycho-neuro-immunology (PNI) gives proof that there exists a close link between the ‘psyche’ and physical well-being. Designers have an impact on emotions through environmental and color design and are therefore responsible for creating environments that will not prompt emotional tension and/or anxiety; rather creating surroundings that give the impression of being friendly and inviting.

3. Visual Ergonomic Effects

The complexity of viewing color as a whole is hereby considered. This includes having an understanding of the role of successive and simultaneous contrast as well as the role that light plays on color. Though complex, these factors are essential not only in helping one choose colors for a palette but also in determining the sequence order by which colors on the palette will be arranged for an aesthetically attractive color display.

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