"Fiery colors begin their yearly conquest of the hills, propelled by the autumn winds. Fall is the artist.” Takayuki Ikkaku, Arisa Hosaka and Toshihiro Kawabata
Last week Berit Bergström from Scandinavian Colour Institute lectured at UID. She has among other things written the book Colour Choices and tutored the students about NCS and colour schemes in industrial design. The students’ assignment was to decide colour schemes for a laptop and a vacuum cleaner for different target groups. On their examination on Friday 15th they described the choices they had made and why.
Berit Bergström is currently the president of AIC, The International Colour Association and she gives lectures and attends conferences all over the world. This week she is going to Kuala Lumpur and Bangkok. She has worked with the Scandinavian Colour Institute for 20 years and believes one of the reasons she still loves it is because she gets to travel all around the world – she has been to all continents. In Hong Kong, where she has been four times to lecture and to participate in conferences, she is currently helping to decide the colour schemes for the new buildings so they harmonise with the nature and the surrounding buildings.
There are a lot of ways to communicate colours; with fantasy names, e.g. baby blue and rose red; cultural names, e.g. sky blue and military green or with paint material names, e.g. indigo blue and cadmium yellow. Since we are able to see approximately 10 million colours and have no way to communicate all of them it makes sense with a colour system with which you can be sure to have the same references. The Scandinavian Colour Institute, established 1946 has the rights to the NCS – Natural Colour System, a result of long and skilled research.
Eva-Lena Bäckström tutored BA1 about chromatics and also the students in BA1 had their presentations on Friday. Their task was to make a colour scheme for mobile phones for children. Inspirations for the students were among other things comics and space. Some of the students emphasized the importance of not reinforcing the notion that some colours are for girls and other for boys.
Since 1989 Eva-Lena Bäckström is specialized in eyewear, sunglasses and optical accessories. Her specialities are brand development and product colour and ornament.
