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When Beatrice Santiccioli was studying art in Florence during college, she took regular breaks in the Capponi Chapel of the 16th century cathedral of Santa Felicita. There, soaking up the cool of the stone interior on hot summer days, she would study Jacopo Pontormo's wood panel, Deposition. The brilliant colors of the Renaissance masterpiece left her in awe. "I would wonder, 'Where did he get the inspiration [for these colors] in the 16th century?'" Santiccioli says. Then, she would wander outside the church, look up at the blue of the sky, the pink of the clouds -- and understand.
Revelations from those school days have led Santiccioli to one heck of a day job. Now in her late 30s, she traverses the globe looking for cool colors. As one of only 2,000 designers worldwide who specialize only in color, Santiccioli makes big bucks picking eye-popping shades for corporations that recognize that the tint of their boxes may be as important to customers as the contents inside. Santiccioli's client list reads like a Who's Who of hot product design. She was one of the primary color consultants (no pun intended) for Apple Computer's wildly successful iMac. She also came up with the colors and graphics for more than 100 Swatch watches, a line of Herman Miller furniture, and a set of Nike eyewear.
Color designers with a golden touch like Santiccioli are paid thousands of dollars to spend a few days searching for just the right shade for a particular product -- anything from fitness equipment to computers to rugs. That's money well spent for corporations, since the right color can translate into millions of dollars gained in market share or customer affinity. For example, when Pat Verlodt, the 55-year-old owner of Color Services & Associates in Huntley, Ill., came up with three hot colors for Igloo water coolers, sales increased 15% the following summer. Annother success story: In 1991, Ford made its Escort GT available in green. The color, unused by other carmakers that year, made a splash, and demand for the green Escorts helped spur a 1% growth in Ford's total market share.
TRUE BLUE. Perhaps the best illustration of the power of color is Apple's iMac. The company's desktop sales jumped 57% the year after the iMac's introduction, according to marketing consultancy NPD Intellect Market Tracking. The colorful computers were a nice change from the ever-present gray and beige motif.
Don't think that other high-tech companies haven't been paying attention. In fact, Apple has sued at least two imitators for copying the iMac's design. Computers and other technologies change so fast that more equipment makers now feel changes on the inside have to be reflected on the outside. Even companies that prefer more somber tones, such as Dell Computer and Compaq, mount exhaustive searches to locate just the right shade for their machines.
But it's not as simple as picking a good-looking tint off a paint chart. Designers say there's much more to finding the right color than prettiness. The selection has to reflect a company's image, be appropriate for a given product, and be in harmony with the product's surroundings. Most important, the color should attract the intended customers -- and that's where psychology comes in. In fact, color designers prefer to call themselves "psychologists of color."
Designers point to studies that show people associate "sky blue" with constancy, stability, and dependability. Thus, many insurance companies, brokerage firms, and political organizations use "sky blue" in their logos. After all, the sky isn't going away, explains Leatrice Eiseman, executive director of color consultancy Pantone Color Institute. Purple signifies creativity and spirituality, Eiseman says, while silver connotes modernity. Eiseman's own favorite color is purple with a warm undertone (which signifies dynamic, creative, and magical).
TANGERINE DREAM. In picking colors, designers are creating personalities for products -- and for the people who buy them, says Santiccioli. "Each color creates a story." Recently, Santiccioli came up with "laser red" and "scuba blue," just two out of six colors for one of the world's first disposable cell phones from San Francisco-based Telespree. Looking at "laser red," Santiccioli hopes consumers will think of lights and "contemporary freshness," she explains. "Scuba blue," she hopes, will remind users of a warm sea.
But designers like Santiccioli have to make sure such associations hold true around the country -- and worldwide. Colors are notoriously fickle and regional. Even within the U.S., "tangerine" iMacs were a hit with Texans, while "blueberry" was the top-selling iMac color in most other states, says Greg Hinzmann, design director at Design Edge in Austin.
Finding a color that users everywhere will find attractive is no picnic. To pick the right shade of gray for its computers, Dell designers traveled around the globe three times, conducting focus groups. The company decided on "midnight gray" (a black-gray mixture), since consumers as far as India and Japan felt the color signified "strength of the brand, a certain degree of stability, and technical sophistication," says Ken Musgrave, director of industrial design at Dell.
TOMB TONES. Santiccioli travels abroad at least three times a year to scout new shades for her customers. She has found inspiration in the rainforests of Costa Rica, peering at bright green and blue poison-arrow frogs. And she has scoured the countrysides of India and New Guinea, camera and water-color kit in hand, examining the tones on everything from crafts to graves.
Many other designers take their cue from an influential industry association, the Color Marketing Group (CMG). The CMG consists of 1,700 color professionals worldwide and forecasts the popular colors for all industries. Unfortunately, deciphering the meaning of these predictions is akin to cracking the Rosetta Stone. In 2002, the CMG predicts that "rosa roja," "tiger lily," and "tangy" will be hot. The exact shades are kept secret from outsiders.
That's par for the course. Color designers are generally a secretive lot. Santiccioli won't reveal how exactly she comes up with colors. She is working on a project for Apple Computer but won't discuss specifics. She will reveal this much -- her next scouting expedition might be to Africa. Chances are she'll find something with just the right eye-appeal.
By Olga Kharif in New York Edited by Alex Salkever
Copyright 2001 , by The McGraw-Hill Companies Inc. All rights reserved.
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