Relish the Red

Ok, so my posts are always colour related and almost always connected with interiors but for today only, I am a food blog……only because I was inspired by the colour red.

Very often I will pick up and buy food because I am attracted either by the colour or by the packaging, see net study and clementine wrapper post. Well this week how could I walk past these ruby red jewels?

After reading about the extraordinary health benefits from eating cranberries, I set about making a raw relish. I think it would be a lovely fresh twist on the normal sugar laden cranberry sauce we eat at Christmas time.

I simply piled the following ingredients in a food processor and pulsed for about a minute;

2 cups of fresh cranberries, half an onion, a handful of fresh flat- leaf parsley, juice of one orange, a tablespoon of black currant & rosemary vinegar (I bought  Womersley vinegar because I love the artwork on the label and their vinegars are sublime), 4 fat medjool dates, 2 tablespoons of pomegranate syrup (I used Al-Rabih, Melasse de grenades). That’s it.

Back to normal with my next post – I shall leave food and health blogging to the experts – Kellie’s recipes on Food to Glow are always delicious and her knowledge of what’s good for you is amazing. But meanwhile, if you make this, I’m sure you will enjoy the vibrant green parsley stalks alongside the ruby red cranberries…..well I did.

Choosing External Paint Colours

It struck me that the majority of my posts have been concerned with colours for interiors but of course external colour selection is something I spend a lot of time considering.

I really enjoy selecting colours for commercial shop fronts as studies have shown that certain colours can actually drive more customers through a door. Being able to evaluate the effect of a colour with statistics is a really different way of looking at colour choice and obviously an important one for a business owner.

Position of colour on a building also plays a pivotal role. It is usually more pleasing to have “heavier”(darker) colours closer to the ground and lighter colours above as it helps to “ground” a building and in turn feels easier on the eye. This is normally referred to as “architectural order”. Reverse this and you have “typographical order” – like newspapers which use heavier colours at the top of a page in order to create a banner.

However, you will see some shops displaying typographical order as they may want to create a brand “banner” above the entrance.

And then of course you must look at colour association. It’s no coincidence that many fine wine shop fronts are painted red,

red wine colour

travel agents azure blue,

sea and sky blue

organic food shops green,

environmentally aware green

 spas violet,

purple, regal and spiritual

and this delicate bridal shop,

shell pink oozing femininity

However, a recent client, a farmer, commissioned Shepherd Huts to be hand built by Plankbridge ,a wonderful artisan company based in Dorset. The idea is that she will disperse the huts throughout a forested piece of land on her farm and will rent them out to holiday makers. She was really keen to choose colours for her shepherd huts that would meld into the natural environment – not to be camouflaged as the huts are beautiful but they had to related to the natural colours in the trees around them. On occasions like this, the best way to start is to analyse the existing colours in the immediate surroundings. I am always amazed how often violet grey pops up – a fantastically useful subtle and delicate colour in decoration and one which pairs so well with many other colours.

silver birch bark - Scotland

palm tree bark - Lisbon

plane tree bark - France

So next time you find yourself out shopping or taking a holiday in a Shepherds Hut (!) take a moment to look at the colours – there is often an interesting process behind the selection.

Finding Warmth in the North of Scotland

A strange thing happens to me every October. As many Scots jet off to warmer climes to get a quick blast of sunshine in preparation for the dark winter ahead, I always find myself craving to go further North. Every year I drive to Sutherland in the North of Scotland and gulp in the staggeringly fresh air, stare at the huge skies and walk through forests straight onto beaches while looking at snow capped mountains in the back ground. Yes, it really is that good and you are unlikely to bump into a soul.

Well this year I was paying particular attention to ochres, reds and oranges on my walks as I am really keen to specify a warm colour for the restaurant project I am working on but warm colours don’t come easily to me. They are not “my colours” (I gravitate to cooler hues) although I do have great respect for them and I can see when they are required.

So, where else should I begin my search but at the Glenmorangie whisky distillery where even the air around the village smells slightly smoky, malty and warm.

In the fields around the distillery you will stumble across beautiful carvings left by the Picts (a name given to them by the Romans meaning “painted people” – it is thought that they dyed their bodies with woad before battles…..remember Braveheart….!). The Picts used local red sandstone so the carvings jut out of the tufty fields almost glowing, especially when you see them in the low setting sun.

Inside the distillery the graceful swan necked copper stills stand in line looking proud of the amber liquid they are brewing which will later be laid down to age in oak barrels. Barrels with ends painted a wonderful full-on red,

….the colour of the rose hip berries growing on the sand dunes nearby,

…..and the chosen paint colour of many of the local fishing boats.

I was definitely gathering up a lot of reds to take reference from until I was caught in a beautiful snow flurry while walking up a hill behind Alness – which very quickly transported my back to my default Northern colours….

As this post is rapidly turning into a list of my holiday snaps (sorry), I shall finish up but I have found a magnificent red wool cloth (colour 623) from kvadrat ’s wonderful Divina 3 collection which I hope to use and it certainly transports me right back to those glowing whisky barrels at Glenmorangie….

Colour Notation: the Key to Describing Colour

Considering we can see approximately 10 million colours but only have eleven non- ambiguous names for them – white, black, grey, yellow, red, blue, green, brown, pink, orange and purple, it’s obvious we need a system to accurately describe what we see. Systems such as the German Ral, American Pantone and British Standard (BS) are all widely used to specify colour but the Scandinavian system NCS (Natural Colour System) I find the most logical  by far. When looking at an NCS notation, you can actually visualise the colour (without a key or fan), a very useful trick which I have not come across in any other system.

I’m looking for a blue that reminds me of this magnificent blue sky – a colour I found quickly in the NCS fan because I knew it was a blue with a touch of red (ie purplish blue) rather than a blue heading towards green.

S2060-R80B fits the bill perfectly. I shall briefly explain this notation to you.  ”2060” refers to the nuance. The “20” tells me there is 20% blackness (perceived amount of blackness relative to pure black), the “60” tells me there is 60% chromaticness (saturation of hue). R80B tells me the degree of resemblance between red (R) and blue (B) in my colour. I can see that it’s red with 80% blueness and 20% redness.

NCS also have a fantastic colour picking tool which is free to download – one word of warning though – as it includes an excellent space to create palettes you may find that’s your day gone….

Colour Clarity

What is it about a tube of UHU that is just so appealing? Is it a nostalgic attraction? After all it has looked like this for decades. No, I believe it’s more than that. It has to do with colour selection.

All colours have a “value” which refers to the lightness or darkness of a hue, in other words how much black or white they contain. A hue with no black or white is a pure hue. Red is a pure hue but if you add white you create pink which is a light value of red.

However, pure hues all have different light values. Yellow happens to have the lightest value in the spectrum, in other words it is closest to white. Violet has the darkest value i.e it is furthest from white and closer to black. However, you can change the value of say violet by adding white thus creating lavender. Lavender has a light value which is opposite to it’s natural order so it is referred to as a “discord” colour.

I seemed to have digressed….back to UHU.

Pure yellow has been selected for the background (the lightest value hue), with the graphics in black (strong contrast to yellow). Research carried out by Walter Sargent and M.Luckiesch in the mid twentieth century discovered that the most legible combination of colours proved to be black graphics on a yellow background (black on white was only ranked fifth). So there we have it, a perfect colour combo for trusty old tube of UHU.

Colour expert Edith Anderson Feisner expands on this topic in her book, “Colour, in Art & Design” – a great read.

Crafted Consumerism

I’ve spent this week looking at textile manufacturing processes, both printed and woven and it reminded me of a thought provoking exhibition I saw last year in a superb venue, National Museum of the American Indian, Washington DC.

Artist Brian Jungen looks at everyday items, deconstructs them and reforms them into entirely new objects – a mass of expensive golf bags transform into contemporary totem poles, plastic chairs into a dinosaur skeleton but the piece that really caught my eye was “Peoples Flag”, on loan from the National Gallery of Canada. Here, Jungen amassed a collection of mass produced materials, hats, coats, umbrellas and stitched them together to form a huge red flag.

Partly inspired by banners created by Greenpeace activists and also by a poem, “The Red Flag” written by Irish political activist Jim Connell in 1889, “Peoples Flag” is a beautifully crafted piece ironically made from mass produced consumer items.

A Designer’s Tool, Red

To appreciate red, I find it helpful to have a basic understanding of colour.

Colour is light (or as Johannes Itten puts it, “colours are the children of light, and light is their mother”).

When light hits an object, the object will absorb the wave lengths of light which are most similar to the atomic structure of that object – the remaining wavelengths will bounce (reflect) into our retina and we perceive it as colour.

Red has the longest wavelength in the spectrum – a bigger job for our brains to de-code. This de-coding can actually increase our pulse rate which is why designers use it if they are wanting to create a stimulating environment. It has also been known to increase ones appetite, possibly why it is often used in dining rooms.

Due to its long wave length it appears to “advance” towards us – in other words it feels closer because its wave length is long and reaches out towards us. This is precisely why it can make a room appear smaller. This effect can be used to your advantage. If for example you have a long narrow room or corridor, you can paint the short walls red. The advancing nature of red makes the far wall (short wall) feel closer thus “shortening” the long walls.

A useful tool indeed.

Photo taken at Tent, London Design Week 2010.