INTERVIEW: Leatrice Eiseman, International Color Expert at Pantone – Episode 021 - a podcast by Brandi Sea

On this weeks episode we interview the one and only Leatrice Eiseman! She is the director of the Pantone Color Institute and an actual, international color expert! She is from Seattle, travels the world, and has written 10 books!

4:05 First question! What does Leatrice tell people when she’s sitting on an airplane and she has more than a few minute to talk to someone about what she does?

Leatrice wears a few hats. She truly is a color expert. She knows what each color means and why color is an integral part of what we do.

6:00 What would you say to designers who pick a color based off it “feeling right”.

Feelings do enter in to a certain extent, but there are so many more things to evaluate. Like: who are your competitors, The psychology of color, and what are the upcoming trends? It’s a thoughtful process, because as a designers you have to explain WHY you chose those colors.

*Brandi is super validated right now*

8:16 Do color meanings evolve over time?

Yes! They can! There are some that “never” change. One that has is the color brown. Over time, from a historical perspective, it went from being described as “dirt” and “dirty.” But Martha Stewart came out and taught us a few things and then pop culture/artsy movies like Chocolat came out and started changing how people see the color brown.

12:25 Would you say that there is such thing as an ugly color?

To Leatrice, this is a very personal question. She dives into the psychology of why people consider colors ugly.

14:23 How does color influence pop culture, or does pop culture influence color?

The people who work on films are very well versed in color. So color gets into a film because the makers know about it. The movie comes out, and the consumer/viewer of the film sees the colors on the screen, and then they want the things and colors that they see on the screen,

Example: The new Peanuts movie, The colors are a lot more vibrant and pop a whole lot more than it did years ago when the original came out.

20:00 How does color stretch across all forms of creative and design industries?

It used to be that whatever came down the runway was what the colors of the season were. That has now changed. In the 90’s we then saw Mac computers come out in different colors, and that sort of made people think “wait, maybe I should jump on that.”

It turns out, you can’t just read specific things that address your specific niche of an industry. You have to keep your eyes open. Something that Leatrice reads often is Wired Magazine. It came on the scene as a very electronic based thing but is a great source for upcoming trends. Gathering information from unusual places is a good thing to focus on.

24:25 Leatrice is NOT a color dictator! She’s more of a… “color guru”.

25:00 How do you choose the Pantone color of the year?

She (and the other people who work on it) stores away information all throughout the year. She travels throughout the world, and is constantly on the look out for patterns and trends. You see colors everywhere. Everyone involved in the choosing process observe artists who are getting a lot of attention, and they also look into the psychological effect of the color. The meaning of the color is very important to them!

29:30 They have some ideas for the color of 2018 but NO spoilers!!

30:10 How are colors going to change in 50 years?

As long as children are given to crayons to draw with, there will always be color in the world.  It’s a part of who we are!

33:26 Do you think a persons favorite color says some...

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