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“X” Marks The Spot! #14
By Le Vin Chin, with additional material by Ania Dardas
We already featured COLOURlovers – recently named one of TIME magazine’s 50 Best Websites of 2008 – as a great resource for finding, talking about, sharing and analyzing colors and palettes and their use in “X” Marks The Spot! #9. COLOURlovers also has great blog posts on the relevance and emotional meaning of colors – so important and central to the work of designers – and in the meantime, I’ve found a few more such resources. Did you know that, as recently as 70 years ago, pink was the color for boys and blue the color for girls? Color Matters has great essays on the symbolism of color and its effects on the mind and the body. Fellow Color Marketing Group member Kate Smith’s website Sensational Color also contains a section on Color Meaning & Symbolism – but then it also has so much more on color, color trends and the use of color.
| Meanwhile, Arno Nel 2.0 (“the Web Monster”) has an excellent listing of web resources and so does this page. Googling “color meaning” or “color symbolism” generates more commercial sites – many companies dealing with the color industry, paint manufacturers for example – but also more esoteric and “wellness” sites, which feature helpful guides to color meaning from their perspectives. | “X” Marks The Spot! in … |
Lastly, here’s a report on a recent marketing study on what the color of your car says about you …
Graphic design news: the historic Roosevelt Hotel in mid-town Manhattan welcomes you to the ICON5 illustration conference being held from July 2 to 5. The theme this year is “the big picture” and it reflects the conference’s aim to examine and discuss the current creative and economic forces being faced by illustrators today. ICON was founded in 1998 to promote the use of illustration in all media, to provide illustrators and imagemakers with a platform with which to address issues, form a network and community and devise new approaches to the historically significant profession of illustration. Among the subjects discussed at the ICON conferences are copyright, product development, children’s books, promotion and contracts. Over the years ICON has grown and today offers pre-conference tours and workshops in addition to the conference itself.
 | The conference provides wall-to-wall presentations and lectures on everything from inspirational teaching, your rights as an illustrator, promotion in a saturated market to illustration as art, the art of icon illustration and fulfilling the needs of children’s book editors. |
If you still have the energy, sign up for one of the conference tours led and moderated by fascinating tour guides.
In other graphic design news, a new software tool by ColorViz could add layers of design complexity and revolutionize the way you work. MyColorViz Creative Pro allows the user to simulate a printed surface in 3-D, under various lighting conditions, to visualize the “real” final effect. The simulation takes color separation into account (including metallic spot colors!), so you can send the final separations directly to your printer. Full disclosure: ColorViz is also a part of Ciba, but we still think the tool is incredible!
| More design blogs! We’ve just discovered cool, sleek Yanko Design, which features many of the stories we’d love to feature. Their focus seems to be on technology and product design, but it’s the way they talk about design that keeps us coming back. And then there’s Reuben Miller – always worth a dip into … |  |
… And ever more on concrete! Two months ago, we featured a few unlikely uses for concrete in “X” Marks The Spot! #12, last week, we featured an interview with the young designers of 10 Liter Design, who work predominantly with concrete, while our recently launched INMYX 5 contained an article on the Finnish interior architect Samuli Naamaka, with his “Graphic Concrete” pieces. Now comes Concreteworks with their beautiful pieces for interior and exterior use. Check out their site, which will expand your thinking on what the material can do and where you can use it!