A Q&A with Color Expert Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman
Spotlight articles shine a light on designers and design materials we admire. We ask designers about their work, their design journey, and what inspires them. In this issue we speak to Interwoven’s founder and principal designer, Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman, a design consultant and educator with expertise in wearable technology, functional apparel, and soft goods design. In addition to her work at Interwoven, Rebeccah Pailes-Friedman is a co-founder of SEArch+, Space Exploration Architecture, a professor of industrial design at Pratt Institute, and worked for over 20 years as a corporate Design Director for premium athletic brands, including Champion, Fila, and Nike. She is the author of Smart Textiles for Designers: Inventing the Future of Fabrics and speaks internationally on design and innovation. She also recently launched a handmade ceramics company. She is passionate about color and it shows in everything she does. We asked her about her color design process, the cultural context of color, and how to be an advocate for color.
Q: When do color considerations come into the design process for you?
A: I want to back up because I think it’s got to be said that I absolutely love color. It’s my favorite part of the design process. So when I think about integrating it into my process, it’s more like my process starts with color. Not only does it define the context but it also can set the mood, it can determine your very first impression of the product or environment or whatever it is you’re experiencing. Color is almost on a gut level. The first reaction that you have is going to be in response to the color, the texture, and the materials, they’re intertwined.
When I think about color, I start with a mood. I think, What is the mood that I want to feel when I’m looking at this product or this room or this environment? Once I have the mood, I start thinking about the colors that inspire that emotion, and then I start to analyze. If it’s a product for a client, I ask, Is this going to hit the right demographic? Is this going to communicate the right look and feel? But all of that stuff comes after the first initial emotional reaction to the color.
Q: What role does cultural context and user demographics play in your color palette development process?
A: Cultural context is core to the development of a product. It’s important because you want a product to be successful. When I was design director at Nike and I was developing the color story for a product, I would determine where and in what market that product was being sold. Even just in the United States there are micro markets. What should the palette be for a group of stores in the south of the United States? How is that different from the Pacific Northwest? How is that different from the New England region? Everybody has a different take on what feels culturally appropriate in that area, and you have to understand these nuances so that you can build a color palette that will answer to all of those different demographics. And this is not just in the United States, it’s global. In the Far East, there’s a different sort of flavor to color. It could be as fundamental as the quality of light. Depending on how close you are to the equator or how the Earth is rotating, the quality of light can really make a difference in the way that you perceive color. It can also be influenced by the vegetation in the area. Parks look different when you’re near the equator than they do when you’re in New England, so your idea of a green palette is different. All of these things play into determining the colors that people are going to be most receptive to.
Q: Could you walk us through your process for researching potential color directions for a project?
A: There’s research and there’s inspiration. I’m a big believer in using forecasting in my research. I don’t just randomly pick a gray, the classic black-gray-white pop-up color palette. I start by thinking about the colors that have been most popular in the past three to five years. Forecasts predict trending color for anywhere between one and three years out. Where do they see color going? What do I see when I look at retail product? Each one of those is an area of research. There’s the color forecast. There’s historical reference of color progression. And then there’s the context of what is happening currently in the market. I take all of those things into consideration, then I mix it with inspiration. The inspiration is: what do I personally love? What am I trending towards and in terms of the colors that I’m finding interesting? Then I meld those two together and plunk it into the cultural context of where I think the product is going to be.
Q: How do you balance insights from color forecasting with insights from landscape surveys, design constraints, and client preferences to determine a color direction for a product? How do you weigh the importance of each element of the decision?
A: The hardest thing for clients—when they’re thinking about color and don’t really have a lot of experience with color—is being comfortable with risk. Most people that are launching a product want it to be successful, so they tend to be conservative on the color front and they’ll want it in the most basic colors. That’s why there are so many products that are white or black or gray, because those are the most basic. I like to tell a story around color. I build evidence for a narrative of why these colors are good. That evidence can be successful products that have used color, and it may be a more risky approach than the client might have imagined. If I do a good enough job telling the story, they’ll take a chance. A really good example of that is the pop of yellow we used for HeroWear. I knew that they wanted a black and gray product and I thought, That’s not going to stand out in the marketplace. Then I thought about all the different pop colors that might be suitable. I realized that the best way to tell that story was around how that product is built for safety and how safety is associated with yellow. I started doing research into the particular type of yellow, hunting for a yellow that I thought would be brand appropriate for them: friendly and sunny but not necessarily danger-related. That’s how we developed that yellow color that we suggested for the HeroWear Apex Exosuit.
Q: What methods do you use to communicate color choices effectively with clients or stakeholders who don’t necessarily speak the language of color?
A: I spend a lot of time building the palette. I’m constantly looking at color and really thinking about how to develop it. Then the narrative is important, but showing examples of how the color could be used on particular products is critical for people to understand how a color palette could be applied. So there’s the development of the color palette, then there’s the narrative around the importance of that color palette, but the most important thing is the practical application; how that color palette can be applied to that particular product. And ‘product’ might be more than just the physical product. It could also be the branding and the marketing. Showing applications becomes a concrete way for the client to understand how we would want to use the color.
If I just showed a color palette, which is boxes of color with descriptions underneath, it’s really hard to understand what that means. Most people are literal, they see a box of color and they imagine the product painted that color. I need to show them a vision of just a hit of pink on the lining in this particular piece, so it will be a surprise when the client goes to put it on or take it off. It builds on the narrative but also shows the context of how the color would be applied. That’s critical for the client to understand not only how the color palette was made and why it’s important, but also how we are going to use it. That gives them the comfort level to maybe take a color risk that they wouldn’t necessarily have considered otherwise.
For example, when we were asked to come up with a number of color combinations for a cooler product, I thought about a dark combination, a light combination, and a neutral combination. A combination for a person who drives a big pickup truck, a combination for someone who’s going to the beach in the Hamptons…colorways that would be appropriate for all of these different user contexts. When we showed them to the client, they responded quite well to three or four of the different colorways. I think that’s the most important thing, to show how the color would be used.
Q: What considerations do you take into account when designing for accessibility and inclusivity, ensuring that color choices are inclusive for all users?
A: That’s really a great question. Color is understood on a spectrum, and everybody understands color in a different way. When we talk about inclusivity, we have to think about people who are hyper color sensitive—and I would say that I fall into that category—as well as those who are less color sensitive, as well as those who are color blind, and can’t see much in terms of the contrast between red and green. That’s an especially difficult color combination for people who are color blind, and there are a surprising number of people who are color blind. For most people who aren’t in the creative profession, it’s not something that affects them except when they have to go pick out their clothing in the morning. But there are a surprising number of designers who are color blind. One of the things I try to do is have a sense of contrast. When somebody is less color sensitive, they really rely on the contrast between the colors as much as they do the color shift.
The question is, how can you create products that speak with elegance and feeling and still have enough contrast so that people of all different abilities can process the surface and texture and composition of that product?
Q: To what extent is your hyper sensitivity to color ingrained as opposed to something developed over time as a designer?
A: I think I was born this way. I can share an anecdote. When I was maybe six, my mom was putting new wallpaper up in one of the rooms of her house, and she needed to match a paint color to the wallpaper color. She called me over to help! Rebeccah! It is something that people can develop but I definitely feel like it’s also something that has to be inherent to some degree. It’s physical. It’s about the way the cones in your eyes are built. I know that I am in the very small percentage of people who process color in high detail. Another anecdote: Pantone can come to your office and test the color sensitivity of all the designers. When I was design director at Champion, we had the entire design staff tested for color so that we would know who could approve the lab dips. I only got one wrong and that’s because I did the entire test that was supposed to be done in 20 minutes in 5, because I was too busy and I didn’t have time.
I think that applying color to a product is risky, and if you aren’t confident in your ability to choose colors that speak to multiple people and address a cultural context in the right way, it’s harder for you to be an advocate for that risk. In general, people think color is risky. The number one thing I hear from people is, I’m so afraid to use a color. Part of that comes from confidence. Yes, I think I was born with the ability to process color at a high level, but also, I think I learned how to apply color with confidence. That is something you can learn whether you feel like you’re good at color or not. You can learn to feel good about using color. You can learn to be confident in your color choices.
It can be hard for people to overcome fears around color, and that can create a bias against specific colors. There are some particular colors that I really don’t like very much, but then I always seem to find a way to use them. Invariably I can find a context in which I actually would kind of like that color. I don’t really like blue cheese…but there have been times when blue cheese tasted pretty good.
Q: How do you think about balancing time-tested or trusted colors with new, trending colors?
A: Think of it like a layer cake. Your foundation always has to be in these classic colors. No one feels at risk with black, white, gray, and navy. And maybe, if you’re talking about clothing, some sort of neutral color. Think of that as the base of the layer cake. Then the next step up is the colors that you would pair with those colors (other than each other and navy or white). What would be something else that you could pair with one of those colors? That would make the palette feel still accessible but not too risky. And then, what are the right pops of color that you want to add to that palette? The pops don’t have to necessarily be literally bright colors but they could be, or they could be interesting or unusual in some other way. The pop color is not a color that’s going to last for 10 years in the marketplace, but maybe it’s a color that will last a year or a year and a half in the marketplace. You layer these on top.
So you have this layer of the foundation colors, then you have a mid layer that’s going to be core colors that you can see lasting in a product for three to five years, and then you have the pops that will last one to two years. Then you think about how you are going to mix them in a way that will create a sense of comfort. Let’s say the navy gives the comfort of having something neutral, and you add an interesting secondary color that is still understandable while making that navy look a little fresher. Then you add the pop of something really unusual so that you can stand out in the marketplace.
I use this approach regardless of the product category. Most of the products that I’ve designed in my career are consumer products, so I tend to think of the end consumer using it, and then some of the products that we design are B2B. But even if they’re B2B and they’re wearables, then a person is eventually wearing it, so still it’s ending up with the consumer. Across product categories it’s a way to keep freshness in the product without it feeling like just another basic thing. You want the product to be able to stand out but you also want to give people this comfort level so that they don’t feel like they’re going to stand out. Not everybody, of course, because there are bold types and crazy influencers on Instagram that like to be photographed with their orange hair and their green sunglasses. But the majority of consumers don’t want to stand out to the point where people are staring at them. What they want is for people to almost do a double take and say, That looks kind of nice. Wow. You’ve got something new on. So the idea is to create interest that creates newness without alienating people.
Q: What advice do you have for designers looking to improve their color skills?
A: The advice that I would give people who are trying to figure out how they can expand their use of color is for them to just start. They should make notations to themselves about the things that they’re attracted to. I personally love to look at fine art because fine artists never think about color any other way than in abstraction. It’s another element to create their composition, whether it’s a sculpture or a painting. It’s there for a purpose, not to create a product. I look at the pieces of fine art that really speak to me and I think about the super unusual color combinations they feature and how I react to them. I take a thousand million photographs that have to do with color and how it’s used. I suggest that people look at a lot of things and take a lot of pictures to look back on what really spoke to them. Then, once they have a series of photos, they can see, Look, I went to the Whitney and I photographed 20 things. Of those 20 things, nine had this pink in them. Then they can start looking around, seeing where else they observe that pink.Or green, or blue, or whatever it is. Once you have an observation like this about yourself, you’ll start to wonder if you can use that color that is interesting to you in some way, and then you can start building a color palette around it.
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