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A MAGAZINE FROM Iggesund paperboard ISSUE 47 2014A MAGAZINE FROM Iggesund paperboard ISSUE 47 2014
addressIggesund PaperboardSE-825 80 Iggesund, Swedenphone: +46 650 280 [email protected]
publisherJessica Tommila (responsible under Swedish press law)
editor in ChiefElisabeth Ö[email protected]
editorial committeeVéronique Lafrance, Lydia Lippmann, Winnie Halpin, Ian Huskinson, Staffan Sjöberg, Elisabeth Östlin
publishing agencyOTW CommunicationPO Box 3265, SE-103 65 Stockholm
editor and project managerAnna-Lena Ahlberg Jansen, [email protected]
art directorJessica Sunnebo
ContributorsMichael Dee, Petra Dokken, Sam Eichblatt, Isabelle Kliger, Anna McQueen, Cari Simmons
photos and illustrations Eva Hjelte, Jann Lipka, Fabian Oefner
TranslationsComactiva Language Partner AB
prepressDone
printingStrokirk-Landströms, Lidköping, Sweden Göteborgstryckeriet, Sweden (cover)
Issn 1404-2436Inspire is printed in English, Chinese, French, German, Japanese and Swedish
Inspire, a source of inspiration,provided by Iggesund Paperboard,home of Invercote and Incada.
Inspire aims to inform and entertain with stories and photos that are not restricted to the scope of Iggesund's own business. As its name suggests, the idea is to be inspirational and not to infringe on a company's or person's image rights or intellectual property. Products that are made with Invercote, Incada and other paperboard from Iggesund are marked in the text.
Colour loveI love colour. especially strong, bright colours like red. It’s a colour that makes me happy. What’s your favourite colour and why? does it evoke feelings, as for me, or do you prefer it for professional reasons?
nowadays we take colours for granted, and we’re surrounded by colourful communication in digital media and print. In just a few decades, colour reproduction in print has been simplified dramatical-ly. Calibrated screens and a chain of custody from the designer’s monitor to the printing press have made everything so much easier.
The richness of colour is so natural and well developed that what used to be the norm – the black-and-white photograph – is now more of a departure we use to create a different, exciting effect.
someone who uses colour differently to show off everyday miracles is photographer Fabian oefner. He recreates sound waves, gravi tation and natural phenomena analo-gously, by filling pools with layers of paint. see the fascinating results on pages 15-18.
It is clearly not just me who likes colour. The glo-bal network Colourlovers, for example, has more than 4 million members. read more about them and other digital aids on page 20.
Here in the northern hemisphere, summer is just around the corner, hailed by an explosion of inspir-ing colours in nature. The town of Iggesund is in a climate zone where we are lucky enough to have four distinct seasons. so after every colourful summer comes an autumn with lovely red leaves and after that a winter of severe climate and dazzling snowy land scapes, a sight that can truly cleanse the soul when combined with a winter sun. and remember, white is a colour too.
JessICa TommIla, MANAGER MARKET COMMUNICATIONS, IGGESUND
THe Cover This issue is printed on Invercote Creato 240 g/m2 in four-colour offset with a dispersion varnish. The colours used are:c30m0y100k0c0m100y20k0c100m0y48k0c40m0y30k0
THe grand dame oF ColourLidewij Edelkoort has been a successful trend oracle for more than 30 years, with no signs of stopping. She is constantly on the move to forecast the colours of tomorrow. page 4
duTCH TreaTsMany Dutch designers have a special relationship with colours. Why is that? Meet design studios Raw Color and Scholten & Baijings. page 9
speCTaCular messesPhotographer Fabian Oefner documents the beauty of everyday natural phenomena, using pools of paint and dye. page 15
no room For errorFor Akzo Nobel the challenge is to print physical samples that the consumer can translate into paint on their walls. page 17
a paleTTe For plaToEvery colour was chosen for a reason, explains Genís Carreras who designed a series of graphical illustrations on philosophical themes. page 19
goIng onlIneIn the digital age, online communities focusing on colour, patterns and design have emerged. Today they are a hub for million of users world-wide. page 20
brIgHT pop-upA promotional pop-up book for an Incada event got its palette from the landscape in England's Lake District. page 22
a World oF WHITeViews on whiteness of paperboard change with geography and market. Here is what you should look for when selecting paperboard. page 24
Homage To THe squareColourful squares became a signature for artist and teacher Josef Albers, whose colour theories still are in use today. page 26
In THIs Issue
Inspire #47
pHoTo: gianni pucci / indigital images
From the catwalk, Chanel spring/summer show 2014.
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TomorroW
TexT: petra dokken IllusTraTIon: eva hjelte / woo
lIdeWIJ edelkoorT Is one of the most renowned trend forecasters of today. Time magazine named her one of the world’s 25 most influential people in fashion. Edelkoort, a 63-year-old Dutch national known as Li, has a sense of what colours, fabrics, shapes and styles will be in fashion two years or more in advance. When she talks about her work, she refers to the gift of intuition – being able to feel the trend before it can be observed in the public sphere.Tell us about your mission. How do you work?
“I feel it. Like most trends, you feel it before you can observe it. Then, later on, you will find the references in current art exhibitions, musical lyrics and so on. When you look at the future, I say, try to improve it. Always try to improve whatever we are doing, which does not neces-sarily mean doing more. It can mean doing less, doing something differently or more responsibly. That has been the mantra of my existence – to improve the future.”
At her Studio Edelkoort in Paris, she works with some loyal co-workers who have been with her from the begin-ning, as well as a number of young talents. Have the conditions for trend forecasting changed since you started?
“When I first understood that I had this talent, it was a different time. Since then we have sort of overdone things, overproduced and overconsumed. Now we can see a
not many people can predict what hues and styles will be in fashion months or years from now, but lidewij edelkoort has a special insight that has given her a reputation as a trend oracle. Inspire spoke with her about her work, her tastes and her mysterious intuition.
different mentality, and we are definitely changing in the way in which we consume, so trends will adapt.”
We meeT edelkoorT in Stockholm on the evening before she is to give a presentation on trends for 2014–2015. As she is almost constantly on the road, she picks her hotels carefully. A new favourite in Stockholm is the luxury bou-tique hotel Ett Hem, which was decorated by her friend Ilse Crawford. It is intimate and cosy with scented candles, a fireplace and fresh flowers. She is dressed in black with red lipstick, her dark hair accented by a striking grey high-light in front. Colour is your very special subject. How do you pick up on the colours of the future?
“When I do colour cards I am completely an instrument. I just know, and it has nothing to do with my own taste. For example, I am not particularly fond of turquoise, but I have talked a lot about it lately. So why do I pick up that beige and not the other? It is very mysterious, of course. But when I meet with other colour specialists, we always have the same ideas, so it is nothing personal.”You have to keep your work at arm’s length?
“Yes, abstract and remote. My intuition works strictly professionally, to make business for others. It is a require-ment, I guess, since what I do is my personal opinion.”
the colours of
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How important is colour to us?“I think it is vital. It is a mood maker, a shifter, and some-
times very important for our psyche. I can actually see how colours are becoming lighter and lighter, as things are be-coming better and we leave hard times behind a bit more.”For you personally, are there colours that you like to wear or that you like to be around that keep coming back to you?
“On the darker end I like navy, aubergine and black to wear. Black is easy since I travel so much. I love grey – it seems to be able to bend itself to other colours. Even bright colours come to life next to grey. Green is another colour that I like. At my house in Normandy I even collect ceramics in green. Perhaps a shot of yellow too. So I like very stable colours, but of course I also get the seasonal urge. I just bought a lovely pale green sweater, but that is the icing on the cake.”
Some 20 years ago Edelkoort ventured a forecast of the year 2020, looking at different aspects of society. She says the forecast is looking remarkably accurate, marking the first time she was really able to assess her long-term predictions.
Her suCCess, WHICH has lasted for more than 30 years and shows no signs of slowing, is clearly founded in a unique mind. Her extensive travel schedule helps her stay current. She doesn’t mind travelling, she says, “even if air-ports can be awful”, but she tries to stay at hotels that she likes. She also takes time off in the winter to stay quietly at home in France or at her favourite spot by the ocean in Morocco, enjoying long dinners with good wines and good friends. These are the periods when she creates and writes the books that are published each season, focusing on trends and colours.so what are the big colour trends ahead?
“We will have to consider how to give colour to a thing, so it is not so much about the colour itself as the way you distribute the colour. I just did a whole book on colouring that looks 10 years ahead. What is new is that you don’t leave the colours plain. The next things to consider are dip-dyeing, spotting, brushing, tie-dyeing, block printing, painting plains and making lively monochromes so they are not hermetic.
Bio lIdeWIJ edelkoorTLidewij Edelkoort started as a fashion coordinator at the Dutch department store De Bijenkorf in the mid 1970s. She soon became a pioneer in trend forecasting and founded the network Trend Union in Paris in the 1980s. Trend Union presents forecasts every season in works such as Trend Book, Key Book, Pattern Book and Colour Forecast. Twice
a year it goes on tour to cities such as Paris, London, Milan, Stockholm, New York and Tokyo, giving audio-visual presentations that set the agenda for various industries. Studio Edelkoort is a creative think tank that does trend forecasting and market studies for clients in a wide range of industries, from cars to skin care.
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greY This is perhaps the colour most associated with Edelkoort’s work. “I did a whole trend book for summer with only grey and greyish colours,” she says. “That was of course very brave in the ’90s, but I trusted my intuition.” Projects related to this prediction included a series of raincoats and clothes as an answer to a fore-cast of floods, as well as a project to work on a trendy retirement home with an architect in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. “We worked on different grey tones for different personalities, types of people from blond grey to mousy grey. It was an amazing project, and it made me look forward to growing old.” Grey is now an ever-present colour that has no gender boundaries. As Edelkoort says, “Grey keeps growing on me.”
gold “I did the whole cover of my 2000 Trend Book in gold,” Edelkoort says. She predicted the importance of the colour in fashion, tex-tiles and interiors, but also foresaw the precious metal as an investment tool in the early 21st century. Now, 14 years into the new century, with times easing up a bit, we’re seeing an explosion of the colour gold with the general public. “When it comes to investing in gold, I recommended it to everyone else but forgot myself.”
nudes Nudes is the name for skin colours. “A very cool range of colours that does not take a wrinkle,” Edelkoort says. “We see new nudes all the time, and it is an ab stract range that is also very daring. Nudes will ne-ver be mainstream. Instead, the colour range will stretch itself in time.”
Twice a year, Edelkoort creates a collection of trend books for the textile and fashion industries. Her recent book Beyond Colours is a book on how to distribute colours in pattern, beauty and lifestyle for the summer of 2015.
“The whole idea is that everything needs to get a life. Stripes, checks, windowpanes – having fun with colour. To be more liberated, considering colours an ally instead of an enemy – that goes for both consumers and businesses. Colour will become another way of expressing, a simple way of doing so – you don’t have to do it all the time. And that is really all there is to it. It is actually de-dramatizing colour and at the same time making colour much more cultural, aesthetic and exceptional. This is my new theory.”
How does a colour trend get a life? Where is it born?“Out of the zeitgeist, I guess, all over the planet. My job
is to catch it early on and say that it is burgundy and not bordeaux, because this time around the colour is lighter, fruitier and more lively.
“Colour trends go in big waves. Sometimes the colour trend shifts from dark to light, or very light, but there are really no rules. One thing is certain – black and white is always there. As we speak, pink is still modifying itself in its 19th year. Today it does not have to be cute, but it can be monumental, it can be art. And yellow, which I call the new pink, is in its fifth year. I expect yellow to go the same route as pink has.” Your name is huge in fashion, but you work in many different fields. do you also have experience in working with paperboard or paper?
“I have a long relationship with cardboard. In the very first trend book I ever did, I made textile textures inspired by cardboard. The zigzag folds made the textiles very elastic. Over the years I have worked with paper many times in many ways. It is really a passion of mine.”are the colour trends different for different businesses – one trend for fashion, one for interior design and so on?
“Not that much. There is a large correlation between cars and cosmetics, lingerie and food. It seems that these domains are going hand in hand. It is a development we can see over maybe the last 20 years. If you buy a bright yellow coat or you drive a bright yellow car, it’s sort of the same thing. You want to say, ‘I’m sunny side up, I’m bright and optimistic.’ ” are we seeing more colours overall?
“Yes. Colouring is in a rapid expansion, I think. I under-stand that we are able to see more colours than 50 years ago. The eye is actually becoming more refined. Stucco, greyish white, greenish grey, beige grey – a while ago we would have said that these are the same colour, but they are not. Consumers are getting more sophisticated concerning colour.” ❤
Three important colour ranges in time, predicted by lidewij edelkoort:
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holland’s fields of flowers are world famous for their breathtaking beauty. dutch designers, perhaps inspired by the natural beauty that surrounds them, are known for using colour in vibrant and unexpected ways. here we meet a few of these designers and ask them about their approaches to the universe of colour.
raW Color Is a multidisciplinary design studio based in Eindhoven, the Netherlands. Its designers move with remarkable ease and sophistication between graphic design, installation, Web design, photography and interior design. And what unites it all is colour, explains Christoph Brach, who founded the studio in 2007 with Daniera ter Haar. You work in a wide range of design fields. Why?
“It’s the influence of our education. Daniera and I met at the Design Academy Eindhoven. It doesn’t have the strict, classical division between product design and graphic design that’s so typical of other design schools. Each department has a theme, a DNA. ‘Man and Identity’, for instance. This generates identities expressed in textiles, accessories, styling, photography or colour forecasting. We applied the same approach to our studio.” Where did the name raw Color come from?
“Initially we used our own names, but it felt a bit clunky. Raw Color was actually the title of our first pro-ject, some visual research into vegetables and their powerful colours. The vegetables were pressed, and the colours were preserved on colour cards and made into an installation. Then we started getting emails from people who thought that Raw Color was the studio’s name. We decided to use it. Colour is a very
TexT: michael dee
raW ColorBeyond the rainbow
Raw Color took its name from one of Christoph and Daniera’s earliest projects, shown as an installation. Vegetables were pressed, their colours turned into ink used for printing, using a new printing process. The visitor could watch posters of the vegetables being printed slowly with their respective colours.
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Together with Ru-bia Natural Colour, a specialist in the development of natural dyes, Chris-toph and Daniera combined existing colours to create new shades. The research was also presented as an installation called “Tinctorial Textiles”, where 13 curtain panels overlap-ped each other to create colour blends.
Raw Color was asked by the Dutch company Arco to create a new pa-lette for its “Balance Table” to celebrate its 25th birthday. Four new colours were chosen: natural, grey, deep green and pink.
In “Paper Shades”, Raw Color com-bined traditional techniques with cutting-edge technol ogy. Five carefully selected shades of wood were simplified to the smallest fibre.
The dust, originating from one plank, was trans formed into a pile of paper. By combining the classical medium of handmade paper with the contem-porary produc-tion technique of
laser cutting, the ab stracted leaves of each tree type were cut out of the sheets. Through this, the shadows projec-ted different shades onto each piece.
Graphic identity for the store AOO in Barcelona. The letters represent the words Altrescoses, Otras-cosas and Otherthings in Catalan, Spanish and English.
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Eindhoven has a natural history museum, but its collection of stuffed animals cannot be shown due to lack of space. “Stuffed – Peep” aimed to bring the collec-tion to the public through photo-graphs and cards with cut-out letters representing the sounds of different animals.
“Colour is a very visual thing and it unites everything that we do.”
visual thing and it unites everything that we do. Raw indicates purity and simplicity, and our work is very direct.” dutch designers increasingly regard colour as a para m-eter in their work. Why do you think that is?
“I think it’s a reaction against what went before. The 1990s were very black and white as far as interior design was concerned. Plus, in Holland we had Droog, a design company where the early designs were monochrome, conceptual and dry with an ironic twist. Designers wanted to work with something new, and colour has so many possibilities.” do you do research into colours?
“Yes, but mostly because of our own curiosity. But we have also done research for commercial purposes. We teamed up with Rubia Natural Colour, a Dutch company that specializes in natural plant dyes. They had developed many colours over the years, but they had never combined them to make new colour shades, which we did – blue and indigo, light pinks and oranges. Those shades are now on sale. From this collaboration we also made our own project called ‘Tinctorial Textiles’, where 13 curtain panels executed in semi-translucent wool overlap with one another to create colour blends between the panels.” are your clients always sophisticated enough to un-derstand what you’re trying to achieve for them through the use of colour?
“Most of them are, but then we work mostly for companies in the creative fields. We did an interior for the Royal Dutch Touring Club. It has a very distinctive blue-and-yellow palette as part of its identity. It was a really big challenge to use those colours in an interest-ing and unexpected way.” Colours are of course sensitive to changing trends, whether it be fashion or advertising photography.
“We always keep that in mind, and it’s especially important when it comes to company identities. There are, however, certain colour combinations that we al-ways avoid. Hard colours. Black and red. Black and yel-low. Blue and yellow. Combinations like that remind me of budget shops and supermarkets. But those colours can work if they’re combined with a subtle, sophistica-ted tone.” You work with some very interesting shades. For me they often evoke memories and sensations, in an almost proustian way.
“The ingredients of a shade are not always so obvious. We are working for a Dutch textile company right now, using only shades of grey – colourful greys, I would call them. Black with a little bit of yellow, or black with little bit of blue. Subtle and yet very excit-ing. Each tone with a story to tell.” ❤rawcolor.nl
Yearbook for the TextielLab. The book is executed with an open spine incorporating the distinguishing logo of the TextielLab and TextielMuseum, formed from the combined letters T, L and M.
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THe duTCH desIgn duo Scholten & Baijings are known throughout the international design world for their functional products and exquisite use of colours, whether for bed linen, furniture, glass or porcelain. Stefan Scholten and Carole Baijings met in 1998. “We fell in love and founded our design company the next year,” says Stefan. dutch design has been dominated by conceptual think-ing since the 1990s. You’re an exception.
“We tried working conceptually early on, but it didn’t suit us. We feel that a design must be functional and work in everyday life.” You put a strong emphasis on colour.
“With most designers, colour is the very last thing they think of in the design process. For us, colour is there from the beginning, and we put enormous effort into getting every shade absolutely right.” The colours are often very subtle, as in the porcelain collection for 1616/arita.
“1616/Arita is one of Japan’s oldest porcelain manu-facturers. Our task was to create a collection that ap-pealed to the contemporary market while connecting to the company’s tradition and fantastic palette. We turned the use of the company’s existing palette up side down – made it lighter or darker by applying thinner or thicker layers of glazes. We also made use of the unique grey-white clay that is sourced locally for the porcelain.” Your use of colour is often surprising.
“We often ask ourselves how we can make a product more transparent, create an illusion of lightness. Asym-metrical layering is one way, as we did with the bed linen and towels collection for Hay. It took a long time to get the colour tones spot on, but we also discovered that the layers were very difficult to reproduce. This was a great advantage, as illegal copying is a big prob-lem in the design world.” What inspires you in your work?
“We love going to museums, and the Victoria and Albert Museum in London is our favourite. What we have seen can suddenly emerge in a new project. We were asked to design a new toilet seat for Pressalit. Our seat has a subtle dot pattern that seems to light up the bathroom. The colours were based on colours we had seen in illuminated manuscripts from the Middle Ages. Going to museums is certainly time well spent.” ❤scholtenbaijings.com
sCHolTen & baIJIngsexquisite and surprising
The owners of Japanese porcelain company 1616/Arita contacted Scholten & Baijings for a new collection to “revive their for-tunes”, says Stefan. “They even showed us photographs of their grandchildren, explaining that
they wanted to leave them a healthy business! Luckily the collection was a great success. We based it on company’s existing palette but made it lighter or darker.”
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“For us, colour is there from the beginning, and we put enormous effort into getting every shade absolutely right.”
Scholten & Baijings were asked to cre-ate a new and more colourful collection of sideboards and shelving systems for Dutch furniture company Pastoe. “Shift” has sliding doors in translucent acrylate.
The collection for the Danish company Hay earned them first prize in the Dutch Design Award 2011. “Hay were very patient with us,"
says Stefan. “There were many trials and errors before the colour tones were right.”
At London Design Festival 2013, Scholten & Baijings made an installa-tion at the Victoria and Albert Museum, resembling everday living rather than objects displayed on pedestals and in glass showcases.
more duTCH TreaTsGraphic designers in the Netherlands are exploring new worlds of colour as they push the boundaries of form and function.
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ok200OK200 is an Amsterdam-based graphic design studio founded by Mattijs de Wit and Koen Kne-vel in 2010. They work with vari-ous projects, from printed media to Web design, always with a strong focus on typography. The name comes from the server response code that means your request has succeeded. ok200.nl
sTudIo kluIFPaul Roeters and Jeroen Hoedjes founded Kluif in 1999. Today the award-winning studio consists of 12 designers working with pack-aging design, creative strategy and identity design. studiokluif.nl
sTudIo dumbarStudio Dumbar was founded by Gert Dumbar in The Hague in 1977. Since then the studio has grown and now has offices in Rotterdam, Shanghai and Seoul. “Looking for the pure essence” is at the heart of the studio’s philosophy whether it’s branding offline or online. Colour is part of that essence, as can be seen in their work for Universite Twente and Alzheimer Nederland. studiodumbar.com
TexT: michael dee and anna-lena ahlBerg
almosT modernA graphic design studio in Rotterdam , founded in 2006 by Jorn de Vries and Markus Rum-mens. Known for their typed posters. almostmodern.com
our polITe soCIeTYA graphic design studio based in Amsterdam and Stockholm, formed in 2008 by Jens Schildt and Matthias Kreutzer. The duo design graphic identities, books, magazines, posters, exhibitions, record sleeves, websites and more. They made the graphic identiy for the museum Bauhaus Dessau, Germany. ourpolitesociety.net
brIgIeT van den bergYoung graphic designer working in Amsterdam. Finished her stud-ies in 2011 and has since then designed books, annual reports and graphic identities.brigiet.nl
maTTHIJs van leeuWenWorks with graphic design and visual communication/branding and has a strong focus on typog-raphy which can be seen in his campaigns and poster designs. matthijsvanleeuwen.com
THe sTone TWIns A creative partnership estab-lished by Declan and Garech Stone. The Stone Twins' business idea is concept-driven, strate-gic design solutions that work across the full spectrum of the media landscape. Their acclai-med book Logo R.I.P. is part of the collection in the Cooper-Hewitt National Design Museum in New York. stonetwins.com
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photographic art By FabIan oeFner
artists and designers around the world are pushing the frontiers of the virtually infinite universe of colour. meanwhile, colour engineers are finding
new ways to ensure the exact reproduction of paints and pigments. Here are a few of these pioneers who are expanding our
awareness of what colour can do.
a swiss photographer uses colour to reveal the unseen miracles of daily life.
It’s testament to the boundless capacity of nature to amaze that, even in an age where we can create almost any image by digital means, Fabian Oefner’s striking photographic work stands out as somehow profoundly different.
Created in a studio, but without digital manip-ulation, his photographs document the ephemeral beauty of every day natural phenomena like sound waves, gravity, centrip-etal force or iridescence. The Swiss artist describes his use of vivid colour as “bait for the viewer”:
“It’s the first thing you notice, but then it makes you start thinking about what’s really happening in the image. It’s the anchor that draws you deeper in.”
While he had an artistic background (his mother is a painter), Oefner had also always been curious about the natural world.
“I only found out later that’s what they call science. Sound waves were the first phenomenon I observed that really in-terested me. I was fascinated by the possibility of turning an audio signal into a visual signal.”
Despite the pristine surfaces of his work, his process uses prosaic materials such as paint, dye and salt, and is very analogue — and occasionally, very messy. The “Orchid” series was created by filling a small pool with several layers of paint, and a top layer of black or white, into which he dropped a ball bearing, capturing the multicoloured splash with a high-speed camera.
In “Dancing Colours” he put dyed salt on top of a speaker and turned the music on. The bouncing crystals are a visual manifestation of the sound waves travelling through them.
“As you can imagine, playing around with all those colours, you get a huge mess,” he laughs.
“I’ve had to repaint my studio three times already this year. The images look simple, but it sometimes takes dozens of tries before you get it right.” ❤fabianoefner.com
TexT: sam eichBlatt
FabIan oeFner
not your usual nature photos
For akzo nobel, accurate colour reproduction is critical when printing swatches, samples and fan decks.
a Home deCoraTor needs to know that the shade on the swatch is the same as the one that will come out of the paint pot. That’s why companies like Akzo Nobel take real care when selecting a printer.
“Through our retail and trade brands, including Dulux, Flexa and Sikkens, we sell paints, coatings and lacquers in 50 different coun-tries,” says Heleen van Gent, head of Akzo Nobel’s Global Aesthetic Center, who handles the company’s “colour collateral” or everything they use to describe their colours. “Our challenge is being able to produce samples that consumers can translate into paint they can visualize on their wall.”
Peter Rotteveel, team leader for colour infrastructure and process -es at Akzo Nobel Coatings, is responsible for the company’s colour infrastructure, colour tools and colour databases.
“In terms of our samples for paints and coatings, we cannot oper-ate without colour accuracy,” he says. “When we introduced a new collection 18 months ago, we wanted to be sure that the samples we were going to produce were 100 percent aligned with the recipes in the market.
“Visual colour assessment is very subjective,” he says. “It varies between people and even with the same individual, depending on the time of day, the day of the week and any number of other factors, including how close to deadline they are. So we defined objective approval criteria based on colour measurements. Now it’s yes or no – there’s no debate.”
akzo nobel used to provide physical samples to colour collate-ral producers, but they weren’t always accurate enough. “We still use physical samples, but the target is now digital, in the form of an electronic measurement we take of a sample using software we devel-oped in-house,” Rotteveel explains. “This measurement also serves as reference for the development of our recipes. Through this we ensure that our recipes accurately match the produced colour collateral.”
Another change Akzo Nobel made was no longer approving matches during the production process. “They aren’t relevant to us,” Rotteveel says. “We’re buying an end product, and how printers get that result is not important as long as it meets our criteria.”
Akzo Nobel limits the pigments its printers can use to the colour-ants they used in their paints to ensure the best match between col-lateral and recipes. “Our printers seem to like the process,” Rotteveel says. “They are more in control, and the process is more efficient.”
Heleen Van Gent says Akzo Nobel’s colour accuracy techniques mean that when the company develops product recipes, it has the same reference all over the world. “The key thing is that the colour the customer chooses on a swatch is what they’ll see on their wall,” she says. “That’s where we and our printers can’t fail.” ❤
Akzo Nobel’s fan decks are printed on Invercote.
Chasing the accurate swatch
TexT: anna mcQueen
nCsNatural Colour System codes match how the human eye, rather than a computer, perceives hue and nuance (blackness and colour saturation). First outlined by 19th-century German physiologist Ewald Hering, it identified six basic opposing colours the eye recog-nizes – white/black, red/green and yellow/blue – and defines all other colours as composites of those. For example, the NSC notation for the blue of the Swedish flag is NCS 4055-R95B: 40 percent darkness, 55 percent saturation, 5 percent red and 95 percent blue. NCS is the reference norm in 19 countries, including Sweden, Norway and Spain. ❤
defining colours is a combination of art and science. Here are just two of the many approaches in use today.
ralUsed predominantly in Europe, the RAL Classic System began as a 40-colour set for varnishes, powder coating and paint. From there it has grown to a colour-matching system comprising 1,625 shades and a variety of effects. Increasingly, its digital offering is expanding as it offers software for architects, decorators and design-ers to integrate these colours with graphics and CAD programs. The RAL numbering system is based on nine colour subsets with sequential numeric codes, starting with the yellows (RAL1000 Green Beige), running through the rest of the rainbow and ending with blacks/whites (RAL9023 Pearl Dark Grey).
a world of colour systems
TexT: sam eichBlatt
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a “visual dictionary of philosophy” uses colour to convey big ideas.
At first glance, the bold, bright colours and deliberately simplified shapes of Genís Carreras’s Philographics series might appear playful. However, they are the young London-based Catalan designer’s visual shorthand for some of the biggest philosophical concepts human kind has ever wrestled with.
The 95 works are graphic illustrations representing different philosophical schools – each an “ism” – from Existen-tialism to Feminism to Capitalism, plus a few that only students of philosophy may recognize, designed in the international
typographic style of a 1950s modernist poster.
“Colour is maybe the most important thing in the project, because I was using the minimum of visual elements,” says Carreras. “Everything was chosen for a reason. For example, Hedonism, which is pink and red. It’s the colour of flesh, and candy – a tempting colour that conveys a taste, sweetness and desirability – where-as the blue in Altruism suggests goodness and calm.”
However, he says, his choice of colour was largely intuitive. “I can’t generalize that blue means ‘this’ and red means ‘that’. There’s not a universal code to ex-plain the colour choices in the project.”
Originally Carreras’s final-year univer-sity project, Philographics raised more than four times its Kickstarter goal (65,217 British pounds, or 79,200 euros), allowing the designer to launch a book, art prints and postcard sets – and a professional career. But the use of vibrant colour has remained consistent in his work.
“Bright colour triggers something in my brain that makes me happy,” he says. “As a consumer of visual culture, that’s what I like. I can always justify the reason I’m using it in my work, so it’s become an im-portant part of my style when I design.” ❤geniscarreras.com
TexT: sam eichBlatt
a philosophical paletteScepticism, Pluralism, Idealism, Optimism and Emotivism are some of the philosophical schools interpreted by Catalan designer Genís Carreras.
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TexT: sam eichBlatt
Color scheme designerCreated to generate an eye-pleas ing palette for website designs, Colourschemedesigner utilizes a colour wheel to allow its users to pick their basic hue. It will then generate a palette based around different shades of that colour, or variations on complementary or analogic (i.e., similar) hues. Finally, it has a simple one-click function to test how the resulting colour combi-nations will look when applied to a mock-up of a basic website template.colorschemedesigner.com
kuleradobe Creative Cloud tool kuler is an online community that gives its users the freedom to choose colours from a wheel, and then post the resulting “theme” for sharing and com-menting. users can limit their palettes to analogous, mon o-chromatic, triad or complemen-tary colour rules, but the tool’s point of difference lies in its ability to let them visually tweak the theme’s rgb values by click-ing and dragging on a sliding scale. kuler.adobe.com/create/ color-wheel
pinterestThe surprise success and rapid upward rise of the visual bookmarking site – it was the fastest site in history to clock more than 10 million unique users – has led to increasingly sophis-ticated boards with content collated and followed by design-ers and ordinary users alike. The proliferation of online colour palette generators – including design seeds, degraeve.com and pictaculous – means that anyone can display and link back to both a beautiful image and the colour palette it inspired, side by side. pinterest.com
one of the greatest benefits of the digital age is that the images, text and symbols that are the currency of design are now infinitely reproducible. they can be shared around the globe, creating a fast-moving and international visual language.
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We asked members of Iggesund’s designer club about their favourite colours and digital tools.
andrea meJeras, paCkagIng desIgner, argenTIna
“My favour-ite colour is orange. It’s light but not very bright, warm but not hot.
It fits with other cold and warm co-lours, and it contrasts well with black and white. Also, the spot colour (PMS 151) and the CMYK are very similar.”
“In Illustrator, I like to work with curves using the arrow tool – I feel free to make everything with it. In Photoshop, the adjustment tools like levels and colour balance are very useful, and I use the clone stamp tool to improve images.”
CHarITY d’amaTo, Founder oF CHarTreuse desIgn sTudIo, usa
“My all-time favourite colour is also the name of my company.
Chartreuse is so versatile. It can be a great neutral, working nicely with greys and taupes, but it can also swing towards the bold, punchy colours of fun and loud designs.
“I love my trusty iPhone for snap-ping images for reference and inspira-tion. I can’t get enough of Instagram with the help of photo apps Over-gram, Rhonna, VSCOcam and Photo-Collage. Like every designer, I use all sorts of Adobe soft ware for my work, but I love my mini portable Jawbone JamBox to take my tunes from place to place to pump me up for those challenging projects.”
maYda FreIJe makdessI, desIgn eduCaTor, lebanon
“White is the main colour I use, be-cause it can resonate with quiet, cool elegance at
times, and other times is crisp, stark and edgy. It is complemented with printing techniques such as blind embossing, and die- or laser-cutting.
“My scanner is my favourite tool, because a big part of my work, such as calligraphy and illustration, is done by hand, and it allows the transfor-mation from the handmade to the digital form.”
The online community Colour-lovers began as a small start-up based in portland, oregon, in 2005. over the past decade it has mushroomed into a global hub for more than 4 million users who create and share new colours, palettes and patterns and follow inter national colour trends through a range of online media.
originally conceived when found er and microsoft alumnus darius a. monsef Iv was conside-ring the intriguing concept that colour perception is subjective and that every human sees and experiences colour differently, the site evolved at the same pace as other social media. It now offers online tools as well as a wealth of user-generated content – in effect, a digital version of the largest and most consistently updated swatch and pattern book in the world.
The content is grouped in various ways. If you’re interested in fashion-related hues, you can search through the Colourlovers fashion channel to find palettes ba-sed on the latest collections from milan, or search via Trends, which does the same using street fashion. The same goes for the latest in branded packaging design, print colour trends, homes and interi-ors, weddings – anything, in other words, that that might be useful for a designer’s mood board.
members can also use the site’s proprietary software to generate their own palettes. The free tools range from basic to the advanced Copaso palette maker to pHo-ToCopa, which allows members to upload personal or royalty-free stock photos from which colours are sampled to generate new palettes. colourlovers.com
ColourcodeThis nifty, minimal online tool lets designers create swatches consisting of up to 10 colours, simply by moving the cursor across the screen and clicking to select the hue and its corresponding Hex code. “Freebuild” a swatch by moving the mouse horizontally to change the colour or vertically to change the lightness, or you can constrain the selection by selecting monochrome, comple-mentary, triad or quad swatches. colourco.de
Read the article on Josef Albers's book Interaction of Color, now also avail-able on iPad. See the last spread.
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dictionarymonochrome: One colour or shades of one colour.Complementary colours: These are opposite each other on the colour wheel. When placed next to each other, they create the strongest contrast. analogous colour schemes: Use colours that are next to each other on the colour wheel. They usually match well and create serene and comfortable designs.a triadic colour scheme: Uses three colours that are evenly spaced around the colour wheel, for example, purple, orange and green. a tetradic or quadratic colour (quad) scheme: Uses four colours, consist ing of two sets of comple-mentary colours. swatch: A small sample of colour, or colours.Hex code: Six digit colour code mainly used for web.CmYk: Four inks used in some colour printing: cyan, magenta, yellow and black.rgb: Additive colour model with red, green and blue light, mainly used for web.
Colourlovers
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pop-up book creators Papersmyths designed this vibrant pop-up book for Incada to show how this folding boxboard is produced. Titled From the seedling to the board, it was originally used as a giveaway for a promotional event at the mill in Workington, UK.
“The colour palette, based on a promotion al video commissioned by Iggesund for the launch of the new Incada grades, was chosen to rep-resent the unique characteristics of the Lake District,” explains paper engineer Iain Smyth, the book’s designer. “It combines a light palette with grey stripes and bright colours that jump out in the pop-ups.
“The board maintains the saturation of
colour,” he says. “This is one of its great proper-ties, along with its brightness, foldability and stiffness. The book is an excellent promotional tool, as it really demonstrates the outstanding qualities of the board from which it is made.”
Incada products are widely used for book covers, greeting cards and packaging of food, cosmetics, chocolate, pharmaceuticals and to-bacco products. Smyth, who has been designing and creating pop-up books for the publishing industry for more than 25 years, says Incada is ideally suited for this kind of application.
“The board really performs well,” he says. “This is primarily due to its brightness and stiff-ness, which make it perfect for pop- ups.” ❤
designer: Iain Smyth Illustrator: Jakob Dawodprinting technique: Four-colour offset printing Finishing techniques: Hot foil stamping with silver and holographic foils, embossing, cutting, creasing and gluingprinter: Taylor Brothers, Bristol, UKmaterial: Incada Silk 350 g/m2 (cover) and 220 g/m2 (pages and pop-up details)
pop-up paper board
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Have you designed or made exciting packaging or a graphic design product using material from Iggesund Paperboard? Or perhaps you have some tips for these pages? Don’t hesitate to contact us with samples and information: Inspire, Iggesund Paperboard, SE-825 80 Iggesund, Sweden.
expo obJeCTs
bold But never regular For the cover of its 10/13 issue, the design magazine Novum decided to do something unique, presenting the theme of typography using a filigree type never before seen in magazine publishing. The cover was created by Munich-based agency Clormann Design, using laser tech-nology to communicate the message “Be bold, be light or be italic but never regular.” The inner page sparkles in a copper tone printed on Invercote G Brushprint Silver. The black letters are printed on the reserve side of the Invercote G, giving it an uncoated tactile feel. ❤
Company: Novum magazinedesigner: Clormann Design Studiomaterial: Invercote G Brush Print Silverprinting technique: Four-colour offset printing on the reverse side of the board (used on the outside of the cover), a copper tone printed onto the metallic surface on the print side of the board Finishing techniques: Laser-cut filigree lettersprinter: Kessler Druck & Medien
spin masTers“Pirouettes”, the most recent addition to Santoro Cards’ 3D card collections, is an innovative collection of cards
based on a rotating, interactive spinning top. Their rocking base invites you to tap, spin and turn the card, constantly
discovering something new and hidden within the artwork. Despite their complexity, the eye-catching cards are intui-
tive to open, placing no demands on the recipient. “With its consistency, rigidity and stability, Iggesund’s
Invercote Creato lived up to all our rigorous requirements when creating the Pirouettes collection,” says Lucio
Santoro, founder of Santoro Ltd. ❤
Company and designer: Santoro Cardsmaterial: Invercote Creato 350 g/m2
printing technique: Four-colour offset printingFinishing techniques: Die-cutting, creasing and folding
TexT: isaBelle kliger pHoTo: jann lipka
Inspire #47
24 Inspire #47
TexT: cari simmons
why is it that two white paperboards can look so different? and as a consumer of paperboard, what should you look for?
if you’ve ever selected paperboard, you know how difficult it can sometimes be to choose
one white paperboard over another.
WHITer THan WHITe
“We Have no visual memory for colour at all, so I recom-mend that all customers take their time when comparing samples,” advises Daniel Hawkrigg, a senior research scientist at Iggesund. “View samples in pairs, select one, then close your eyes for a while or move the sample out of view for a few seconds – and then look at it again. If you have a light box, use it.”
It sounds a little like doing the Coca-Cola versus Pepsi blind taste test, but these small efforts can help make the difference when selecting paperboard. It’s also helpful to be aware of a number of underlying factors that affect a paperboard’s whiteness. For example, whiteness can be subjective, which is why context is so important.
“Views on whiteness change with geography and market,” Hawkrigg says. “As you go south, people tend to prefer a greener white. Here in the North they like a blue or pure non-tinted white. A reddish tint is preferred in China, perhaps because red is considered lucky there.”
geograpHY, markeT and personal taste all affect people’s perceptions and preferences when it comes to whiteness. At the same time, some consumers rely strictly on cie whiteness figures when it comes to selecting both paper and paperboard.
cie whiteness is a standard that is recognized world-wide in the pulp and paper industries. While the cie figu-res are important, judging a paperboard on the numbers alone can be misleading, Hawkrigg says. A high whiteness value is no guarantee that a customer has selected the best paperboard for the occasion.
“A cie whiteness value does not specify a particular colour,” he says. “It indicates a plane in the three-dimen-sional colour space used to define colour, and this plane encompasses a range of visibly different colours.” The cie whiteness value does not correspond to how white a sample is, but rather how white it is perceived to be. “Per-haps counterintuitively, there is not a direct correlation between proximity to the physical property that is white and the human experience of whiteness,” Hawkrigg says.
A high cie whiteness level is often achieved by using large amounts of dyes in the paperboard. So while the sample has a high value, the paperboard can in fact look dirty. Adding a lot of dye to paperboard can also affect the print quality. This is why achieving a high lightness level can often result in a more desirable whiteness.
l*a*b* Is a three-dimensional system for describing colour that is designed to correspond with the perception of the human eye. The l* corresponds to lightness and a* and b* to the colour-opponent dimensions. A sample with high whiteness obtained through an aggressive use of dye will have a low l* value. A sample with a similar white-ness value obtained without the aggressive use of dye will have a higher l* level.
Invercote g currently has the highest l* values for a mass-market paperboard for packaging. Invercote g is also lightfast – that is, resistant to fading and colour change. “There is normally a negative correlation between
achieving lightfastness and whiteness, but we have achie-ved both,” Hawkrigg says.
“Iggesund is very good at manipulating obas (Optical Brightening Agents) or fwas (Fluorescent Whitening Agents) to give us high levels of fluorescence, which in turn lead to the perception of higher whiteness without having to add dye,” Hawkrigg says. obas have been used in paperboards for many years, but there has been a trend to increased levels in recent years. Paperboard producers have been adding increasing amounts of oba , in partic-ular in the surface-size and baseboard, in their efforts to increase fluorescence levels while still maintaining the stability of their products.
JudgIng Colour Can be a complicated business, so Hawkrigg keeps it simple for those considering whiteness when selecting paperboard. “Don’t worry too much about the figures,” he says. “Look at the samples and select what looks good to you.” ❤
“view samples in pairs, select one, then close your eyes for a while or move the sample out of view for a few seconds – and then look at it again.”
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Bio JoseF albers (1888–1976)Originally an art teacher, Josef Albers joined the Bauhaus in 1920 and became a professor in 1925. One of his early collabo-rators was Paul Klee.
When the Bauhaus disbanded under Nazi pressure in 1933, he left Germany for the United States, where he became, with the help of architect Philip Johnson, head of the painting programme at the Black Mountain Art School in North Carolina.
In 1950, he became head of design at Yale University, where he developed the budding graphic design programme. He continued to create and exhibit his ab-stract paintings, photography and printmaking.
He was elected a Fellow of the Ameri-can Academy of Arts and Sciences in 1973.
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When the abstract painter, theorist and bauhaus educator Josef albers published his seminal book Interaction of Color in 1963, the digital revolution was in its infancy.
Fascinated by the way we perceive and use colour, Josef Albers originally created the book Interaction of Color as a teaching aid and a handbook for graphic artists. It included many of his own vibrant geometric studies and visual exercises, along with folios of swatches and shapes that students could manipulate as they followed the text, in order to explain complex colour-theory principles.
This interactive element has recently al-lowed Albers’s book to make the leap into the digital realm. Yale University Press has released an iPad app for Interaction of Color, which adds deeper levels of interactivity inspired by Albers’s teaching methodologies, as well as additional video footage and audio commentary to enhance the original text. ❤yupnet.org/interactionofcolor/
TexT: sam eichBlattpHoTo: arnold newman (portrait), jann lipka (ipad)
The cover is inspired by Albers’s colour theories and his homage to the square. From 1950 to his death in 1976, he produced hundreds of variations on the basic composi-tional scheme of three or four squa-res inside each other.
Now it is your turn to put some of the theories into practice. We’ve
left the back cover empty, so use your imagination and make a co-lourful design. We would love it if you share your design with us on Instagram. Post a photo of yourself holding the cover and tag it #myinspirecover.
We will select one cover winning Albers's book, five covers winning
an Iggesund reference material of choice and five covers winning Iggesund's 1963 kit, featuring typical Scandinavian designs.
Are you curious about the every day life of designers? Follow Inspire on Instagram, @inspirebyiggesund, for editorial sneak peeks, inspira-tion and contests.
a colour classic goes digital
With the digital version of the classic book, you can read all the chapters as well as explore all the visual exercises.
Colour THe baCk Cover oF InspIre – and win albers’s masterpiece!
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CONTEST!
COLOUR LOVELidewij EdelkoortRaw ColorScholten & BaijingsFabian OefnerGenís CarrerasColourloversPapersmythsJosef Albers
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#myinspirecover
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Colour loveLidewij EdelkoortRaw ColorScholten & BaijingsFabian OefnerGenís CarrerasColourloversPapersmythsJosef Albers
Co
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#myinspirecover
