Hasta La Ideas

Valentine’s Day wasn’t always about the pearly pinks and rosy reds. Well, one of the two has shown up every decade almost since the culmination of “Single Awareness Day,” but there have been quite a few unexpected players in the Hallmark holiday. For instance, in the 1890s, you’d likely see more gifts and cutesy greetings in neutral browns and goldenrod than you would royal blue or grey (which make an appearance in the 1950s).

The Valentine’s Day palette of the 1890s.Color swatches via Brandisty

Valentine’s Day colors from the 1950’s

We caught up with Leatrice Eiseman, author and the Executive Director at the Pantone Color Institute to tell us a bit more about the changing colors of Valentine’s Day and her own personal palette for the holiday (whom we chatted with last year at the 2013 International Home + Housewares Show). See what she had to say:

Core77: If you had to define your own Valentine’s Day color palette, how would you describe it and which colors would you choose?

In my book Color Messages and Meanings, I illustrate how to use color combinations specifically for packaging, print and web design to create a mood. Falling under Provocative are a variety of different combinations all of which include “come-hither” colors that cajole the user into what psychologists would refer to as a “high arousal mode.” Advancing forward in the line of vision, a range of colors that prove to stimulate appetites of all kinds in energetic red based shades of cherry, tangerine, cranberry, raspberry, sparkling grape and sno-cone purple. This fresh and modern approach to Valentine’s Day is fun-loving, titillating, flavorful and a little bit flirty—the perfect recipe for a romantic day.

My palette might change ever so slightly if I were going to create this same radiant mood within a home environment. Here I may look to the shades in our PANTONE fashion, home & interiors palette called Hot Pink, Pink Flambé, Lipstick Red, Sunset Purple and Orchid Bloom. A wonderful compendium of red, pinks and purple tones that speak of heat, intensity and passion.

From L to R: Hot Pink, Orchid Bloom, Pink Flambé, Sunset Purple and Lipstick Red

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We’re always happy to hear from Lisa Smith and Caroline Linder, founders of Chicago-based design concern Object Design League, a platform championing ‘small batch’ design products. Their latest project is a collaboration with Brooklyn-based illustrator Jingyao Guo: “Marketplace Posters” depict colorful scenes from open air marketplaces from around the world.

We love open air marketplaces because they mix economic and social transactions between people with a variety of purposes: business, leisure, tourism, and daily shopping. At the heart of every market is the energy of entrepreneurship. Vendors use makeshift tools and ingenious techniques to move their goods efficiently, while customers haggle with expert price negotiators to determine true market price. Many of these markets have been in operation for decades and directly reflect the cultural spirit of their locale.

As designers, we are interested in the way that all the minute details of an environment add up to create a rich and lively atmosphere. We wanted to produce a series of drawings that would represent this, and invite others in as observers.

The series is launching on Kickstarter with three markets in Asia-Pacific region: Raohe Night Market in Taipei, Muara Kuin Floating Market in Indonesia, and Tokyo’s Tsukiji Fish Market (if the campaign is a success, they’ll expand to other continents). Given their axonometric perspective and infinitesimal level of detail, I couldn’t help but think of Li Han and Hu Yan’s equally beautiful A Little Bit of Beijing, though the latter work is more expressly concerned with inhabited architecture. The “Marketplace Posters” take a more anthropological perspective, portraying various individuals interacting with each other and their surroundings.

We had the chance to chat with Smith about the captivating artwork and how the project came about.

Core77: What was the inspiration for these posters?

Lisa Smith: Caroline and I traveled to Taiwan together in 2010, where we spent a lot of time at the night markets. The kernel for this idea developed then—we often reminisce about the special atmosphere of the night markets, and have always wanted to formulate a project based on our experiences.

The project started off with kids in mind. We like the “Where’s Waldo” feel of each scene, and wanted to encourage kids to appreciate observation as a way of “reading” an environment. As the drawings evolved, however, it was clear that they appealed to all age groups, so we aren’t being specific about who or where its for, and let the viewers decide.

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DesignCrowd is the name of a graphic design crowdsourcing venture that bills themselves as “The world’s #1 custom design marketplace.” Businesses seeking designs for logos, websites, T-shirts, flyers, brochures or business cards submit design briefs, then the site’s 133,000-plus designers submit concepts; DC estimates that concepts start rolling in within hours of posting a brief, and that they will typically add up to over 100 submissions per project. Businesses can then request changes of their selectees, and eventually money changes hands. The cynical ID’ers among us can think of it like a version of Quirky where you don’t need to know anything about injection molding. In any case, here’s how it works:

To draw publicity, DesignCrowd recently held an informal, internal design competition asking its users to re-design iOS 7. The submissions are different enough that they’re bound to be divisive. But it makes me wonder if Apple would ever let iOS users choose their own icons, and if people would be willing to pay others for them, as with ringtones.

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While I understand the appeal of the golden ratio as a rational approach to aesthetics most people would probably agree that it’s impossible to reduce beauty to a series of numeric relationships. Yet the myth persists, and it should come as no surprise that these putatively ideal proportions might hypothetically inform graphic design as well—after all, the very premise of digital software is to allow us to create vector images with mathematically unerring accuracy.

And of all the countless logos that we see on a daily basis, Apple’s ideogrammatic fruit is a leading candidate for a hypothetically golden (or hypothetically rational, as it were) logomark. Fed up with the conjecture, Quora’s David Cole recently decided to investigate. We won’t ruin it for you, but it’s a fascinating read, not least for Cole’s highly systematic approach.

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Tokyo is futuristic, but maybe not this futuristic… yet.

I spent a little time in and around Roppongi neighborhood during my first trip to Tokyo last June, but (as is the case with most work-related travel), I didn’t have much time to explore the city on my own. Given the diverse texture of the city and the overflowing stimuli of a new and different urban setting, it didn’t occur to me that Roppongi Hills is a relatively new construction, some $4 billion and three years in the making. Centered on the 54-story, Kohn Pedersen Fox-design Mori Tower—named after the developer behind the entire project—the 27-acre megaplex opened its doors in April 2003… which means that this week marks its tenth anniversary.

To commemorate the milestone, Mori Building Co., Ltd., has commissioned Creative Director Tsubasa Oyagi to create a digital experience, the very first project for his new boutique SIX. Working with a team of media production all-stars, Oyagi created “TOKYO CITY SYMPHONY,” an interactive web app that combines projection mapping with a simple music composition engine to create user-generated ditties with brilliant visuals.

“TOKYO CITY SYMPHONY” is an interactive website, in which users can experience playing with 3D projection mapping on a 1:1000 miniature model of the city of Tokyo. The handcrafted model is an exact replica of the cityscape of Tokyo in every detail.

Three visual motifs are projected onto the city in sync with music: “FUTURE CITY,” conjuring futuristic images; “ROCK CITY” that playfully transforms Roppongi Hills into colorful musical instruments and monsters; and “EDO CITY,” or “Traditional Tokyo,” which portrays beautiful Japanese images. Users could play a complex, yet exquisitely beautiful harmony on the city by pressing the keys on the computer keyboard. Each key plays a different beat along with various visual motifs, creating over one hundred different sound and visual combinations. Each user is assigned a symphony score of eight seconds, of which could be shared via Facebook, twitter, and Google+. The numerous symphony scores submitted by the users are put together online to create an infinite symphony.

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