Color  

In this guest post, author Daniel Harris examines the fine techniques of color matching that are used in nearly every product manufactured today.  With plastic parts and metal parts requiring seamless design integration in final assembly, color matching is essential to industrial design and manufacturing.

W e’ve all thrown up our hands in frustration with a cry of “close enough!” Sometimes it really is close enough like when you substitute Greek yogurt for sour cream or just use duct tape when that last screw is missing.

But when it comes to production even the smallest mistake can potentially cost millions of dollars. Mistakes with color can easily happen, especially if parts are being manufactured in different plants. Everyone perceives color differently based on mood, age, health, and a host of other factors. When it comes to production, here are some of the biggest factors when it comes to choosing and matching color.

• Light Source: Light changes the most underneath different lighting which is too be expected since color is simply a reflection and absorption of light waves. Different lighting has different spectrums and materials will latterly reflect the changes by being a different color. Imagine you’re designing a sports jersey for a large college or professional football team. The fabric looks great in your studio, but underneath the halogen lights something is off. Products need be tested underneath an agreed upon light source for consistent results.  

• Different Materials: Car manufacturers deal with this all the time. The soft grey on the hard plastic dash needs to be the same soft grey as the plush faux leather seats, but the two materials reflect light differently. This means a different solution is needed for each material to get the same result.

• Different Surfaces: Even though you may have the same material, the material can have different surface textures and finishes. A rough texture will not look as bright as a smooth texture just like gloss will appear much brighter than matte.

  3D Printing  

Designer Jessica Rosenkrantz of the firm Nervous System has been busy experimenting with full color 3D printing. The 'Colony' prints are perhaps inspired by underwater creatures and their vivid colors.

3D printing and design are the specialties of the firm, Nervous System.

Now designer Jessica Rosenkrantz has been busy experimenting with full color 3D printing. Nervous System was founded in 2007 by Rosenkrantz and Jesse Louis-Rosenberg. Jessica currently acts as Creative Director and Jesse as Chief Science Officer. Together they lead a team of seven.

Nervous System's designers create using a novel process that employs computer simulation to generate designs and digital fabrication to realize products. Drawing inspiration from natural phenomena, they write computer programs based on processes and patterns found in nature and use those programs to create unique and affordable art, jewelry, and housewares.

Each print in the new collection is 4 to 6 inches, the meshes are generated by the Processing computer language and 3D printed by Shapeways.

Rosenkrantz must have been inspired by her coral-filled fish tank because these gorgeous "Colony" prints remind one of diving in the Caribbean.

 Matthew Cusick  

Matt Cusick's extraordinary collages use maps to form the geometry and color palette of his work, with the elevation maps and other cartographic images blending into his images.

B ased in New York, Matt Cusick has made garnered a reputation as an artist with his meticulous representations of people, animals, water and landscapes collaged onto panels using recycled maps.

In developing these collage pieces, Cusick slices segments of maps found in old textbooks, encyclopedias, and atlases and then forms the elements together into his compositions.

Most of Cusick's collages use the maps own colors to inform his palette, with the elevation maps and other cartographic images blending into his images.

From a distance, the collages almost look like vector based computer illustration, but viewing the pieces closer and over time reveals the subtlety of their construction.

Cusick explained how he got started using maps to More Magnificent Metropolis:

Frustrated with paint and brushes, I just started experimenting with some maps I had laying around the studio. I found that maps have all the properties of a brushstroke: nuance, density, line, movement, and color. Their palette is deliberate and symbolic, acting as a cognitive mechanism to help us internalize the external. And furthermore, since each map fragment is an index of a specific place and time, I could combine fragments from different maps and construct geographical timelines within my paintings.

Maps provided so much potential, so many layers. I put away my brushes and decided to see where the maps would take me. I think collage is a medium perfectly suited to the complexities of our time. It speaks to a society that is over-saturated with disparate visual information. It attempts to put order to the clutter and to make something permanent from the waste of the temporary. A collage is also a time capsule; it preserves the ephemera of the past. It reconstitutes things that have been discarded. A collage must rely on a kind of alchemy; it must combine ordinary elements into something extraordinary.

Cusick's provocative work below, Malvo features map locations and target imagery that made up part of the sniper's area of operation.