Colors have an immense effect on people, businesses, cultures, and things that we don't even realize. From being a kid in school and getting your test back with a lot of red marks on it, to finally getting that green light after a long wait in the car, color surrounds us and influences us in all that we do. It can be a powerful tool that impacts your behavior, mood, and your thoughts. When someone asks you the first color you think of when they say the words Coca-Cola, you instantly think of red. Businesses like Coca-Cola pay millions of dollars to create and protect the brands that are often built around a color. Where did this power of color stem from? Why does it play such an important role in our daily lives? This is exactly what we dive into with the latest LINcast podcast.
Our latest podcast guest, Kerry Rowe, is a color expert and the owner of Kerry Rowe Design, LLC. Rowe is a color, material, and finish designer who works with companies to build color palettes and choose the right materials and finishes to help customers connect with their products. She deeply understands the role these decisions have in how customers perceive and value a business and what color and materials can provide customers.
“Color drives consumer decisions,” said Rowe. “And if a color is not right on a product, most consumers will dismiss that product immediately. So, color is really important and therefore tracking and predicting color trends is a huge business.”
We may notice the influence of color a lot more as we grow older, but Rowe also says this power starts shortly after we are born. The first color we perceive as babies is red, and this is linked to basic survival skills. Purchasing decisions are just a drop in the vast bucket of influence that color has.
With all this power, you would think that companies could easily get consumers to buy their products. But the challenge is, predicting trends can be a very difficult task. From global tragedies and scientific discoveries to personal challenges and local events, trend forecasting is very multifaceted. To accurately predict a trend, you must get in the heads of consumers and try to get ahead of their thoughts to understand what they see as culturally relevant.
A great example of this is how the world is looking to escape some of the heavy topics right now and look beyond by exploring other planets like Mars. These new scientific discoveries and engineering capabilities are exciting and pull us in to a new world and all its powerful colors. The landscape is covered in rust hues and deep red accents, which are calmer and more subdued versions of the energetic oranges and reds. This is just one illustration of how current events can impact what is relevant to color trends.
For her clients, Rowe puts together a color and trend forecast presentation each year that helps make decisions around color, materials and finishes easier. During this episode of the LINcast she goes over three major trend categories she sees as not only having an immediate impact on color choices and design, but also the future of trends and how they will be potentially slowing.
“We're shifting away from this throwaway culture and it will absolutely affect the trend cycle in terms of how frequent things shift,” says Rowe. “I think individual colors themselves will change slower…The change will happen more in terms of what color combinations are happening, how they're combined or what they're combined with because with the fashion industry and even commercial interiors is, to some large degree, a fashion industry. We want the newest, the best, and that doesn't really go hand in hand with sustainability.”
Learn more about Rowe’s three trend categories and how they will be impacting the workplace on the LINcast podcast. Watch, read, or listen to this episode, The Power of Color in Design, at linak.us/powerofcolor or on all your favorite podcast platforms.