Karim Rashid isn’t afraid to show his love of colour
Every designer knows the importance of colour choice. As Karim Rashid noted before delivering the keynote at Decor + Design 2016, ‘Colour is life for me. It is one of the most beautiful phenomena of our existence. It is a way of dealing with and touching our emotions, our psyche, and our spiritual being. Colour is not intangible – it is very real, very strong and has a true physical presence’.
Well, designers rejoice! Colour inspiration has just been given a super-streamlined digital makeover. If you haven’t already downloaded the new Pantone Studio app, walk your fingers into the App store right now. Pantone may have passed the golden age of fifty as a company but they’ve well and truly flung themselves into the digital age with this new offering.
It is an exciting game changer. Users are able to reference a digital library of Pantone’s 10,000+ colours, which will be indispensible for designers from all disciplines but especially for those in the interiors game, who will be able to apply virtual swatches to a project.
Pantone Studio. Image: iTunes App Store
For this new venture, they consulted with over 2000 designers from around the world. As part of this they carried out extensive market research with the emerging designer subset – a younger group who may be familiar with the colour gurus as a brand name but are unaware of the full scope of what Pantone have to offer.
Pantone usually hits the design news annually with their authoritative colour trends forecasts. Their 2016 picks of Rose Quartz and Serenity have filtered into textiles and interiors everywhere. They will carry that forecasting through into the Studio app, which is loaded with insights and articles across different design disciplines, making it an essential research tool.
The dedication that Pantone have applied to the Studio app project is also a nod to the huge part that the digital now plays in design inspiration. Visual platforms such as Instagram and Pinterest are now incredibly influential, along with the delights of the physical world. Designers continue to look at innovative ways to connect the physical and the digital; Pantone have done a brilliant job of creating symbiosis between the two. The app also has a design crowd sourcing feature which allows the user to pull in related project images from other artists in the Pantone ColourLover community.
Users can select colours from the library or take a photo and cross-reference the archive to build custom colour palettes. They will be able to literally extract colour from the world around them.
For more information on trends for 2016/2017, subscribe to Decor + Design online. Next year’s show – Australia’s No.1 Interiors Event – will take place from 21st – 23rd of July in Melbourne.