Color Makes a Comeback for Summer 2013

Oscar de la Renta

Whether graphic designers are willing to admit it or not, fashion does make it's way (sometimes unconsciously) into our design solutions. The cut of a fabric or the way it hangs off a model—important but not as impressionable as color hitting our eyes as it makes it's way down the runway. The choices of hues by fashion designers for an upcoming season can filter down and get picked up in an item such as label on a bar of soap, or a swinging hang tag attached to a garment. Color is always there to arrest us into refocusing on what may or may not be important within our visual sphere. A good designer admires, absorbs and bends it to their own purpose to get their work noticed.

If Vogue’s September issue of 916 pages, didn't seem to satisfy the fashionista within—look no further. Fashion Week is in full swing to help fill the need of those wanting more of the like. Having never really been too caught-up in the overall high-heeled runway madness that grips NYC this time of year, I do manage to monitor the news on color trends for upcoming seasons.

Fashion Week continued its kicked-up a positive stride by showcasing saturated colors with punchline precision. The 1980's fluorescent hues that were reintroduced this summer (on sport footwear, and the like) will have to allow make room for the eye candy colors arriving this upcoming summer.

Lemon-drop yellows (Oscar de la Renta), hot oranges (Narciso Rodriguez), and electric blues (Vera Wang) will all make a bold statement on the streets, in the office and at that vacation venue. Color is the new black! Click here for a more in depth report...

Color from the Ordinary Made Into the Extraordinary: Fabian Oefner

From motor oil to evaporated alcohol Fabian Oefner wields these materials as if they were ordinary pigments found on an artist's palette. Known for driving a Ferrari into a wind tunnel to splatter with neon paint, Hefner does't shrink from using unconventional materials to pursue his fixation with color. Hefner's latest series “Photographic Paintings” was an outgrowth of observing the oxidation of b ismuth that he had melted on a hotplate. The cooled compound created amazing iridescent spectrum of color. Oefner quickly realized that a scraped off layer with a spatula would change the colors and that they would on be present for a brief tine. " You get those colors, which are essentially the colors of the rainbow,” he says. The photographs have a minimal amount of digital editing done to them. Hefner's work suspends your fools us by taken advantage of the interplay of poss...

Color

Taking a more fine art approach, Color draws from past, and present art movements for aesthetic examples on basic color theory application. In depth chapters explore topics such as psychological/compositional effects, color relationships, subtractive/additive media, fine art and applied design. Where Color Workbook by Becky Koenig takes a more “hands-on” approach to color theory, Color presents the realities of color uses from a working artist's point-of-view. Other subjects mentioned include computer art, video, architecture, landscape design, sculpture, and clothing. This book does fall short in two areas; cultural influences and the omission of any suggested exercises for students to back-up the text. This normally wouldn't be an issue, however given the high retail price of $93.00, it would be difficult to justify this purchase to the budget minded student unless it can be aquired via used or heavy discount. Color (Sixth Edition) by Paul J. Zelanski, Mary Pat Fishe...

Another Pinboard to Follow

Having resisted Pinterest for about a year now, I finally dipped my toes into the virtual pool of pinboards. My apprehension was truly misdirected and I've come to find that the concept of organizing visual images/links onto a virtual board has become a great teaching tool. After covering the typical graphic design topics such as typography, and history it was a natural move to include color among the related topics. So here is a link to my All Color Matters pinboard .

All Color Matters

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