By contrast, the previous palette had about twenty-five, including O’Reilly Green, Feel the Energy, and Sounds of Nature. Harrington’s palette, which is still Benjamin Moore’s basic contemporary color system, contains nearly fifty light, yellow-based greens, including Yew Green, Apple Green, Snow Cone Green, Spring Moss, Fresh Cut Grass, Lime Green, New Lime, Summer Lime, Eccentric Lime, Tequila Lime, Frosty Lime, Shimmering Lime, Neon Lime, Key Lime, Citra Lime, Fresh Lime, Lime Tart, Lime Froth, Lime Sorbet, and Limelight. Two of its biggest popularizers were Pottery Barn (upholstery) and Martha Stewart (paint and housewares). “It was introduced in small doses as very acid, more of a chartreuse, and it was big in fashion, but we tweaked it over time and it became sort of more. The eighties-it was the height of the gray period, you know?” At the time, Harrington had just begun to notice colors in the yellow-green family coming into use.
“The system had been developed when gray was trending really strong. The system hadn’t been updated for twelve years, and the problem with it, Harrington recalled, was that its colors were “dirty”-in colorist’s parlance, they had a good deal of gray in their composition. That was in 1998, at her previous job, as the director of color for the paint company Benjamin Moore, when she set about overhauling its entire contemporary palette. Her hair is a color she might describe as “mid-chroma, mid-value blond with fruitwood undertoning.” She didn’t invent wasabi green (a distinction that probably belongs to the Japanese), but she got in on the trend early. Harrington, who is forty-four, lives with her husband and daughter in Old Greenwich, Connecticut, though you can hear her Canadian origins in her gently upward cadences. “Everywhere you look-cars, furniture, stationery-you see it: a light, yellow-based green.” “It depends on the context, of course-I wouldn’t expect it to be a huge seller for lipstick-but the biggest color story over the past five years has been wasabi, or any green in that color family,” she said. Her clients have included Crayola, Pottery Barn, and Avon, and she’s currently at work on a statistical survey for a pharmaceutical company, analyzing public reaction to different pill colors. Harrington is a color consultant who helps manufacturers determine the palette of their products and packages. You could say that Leslie Harrington owes much of her success to the rise of wasabi green.
Color forecasts for 2008 are influenced by the war in Iraq and the resurgence of India.
0 kommentar(er)
