Case Study

Chromatic.ly

Project Overview

The forecasting of colors is out of designers hands, relegated to some mystical color theorist somewhere. Current color trends are typically determined by assumptions made from last seasons fashion runway shows. They then trickle down to designers leaving few quantifiable tools for designers to see what colors are trending right now relative to a client's target audience. I've often been desparaged when a design client quizzed me on my color choices, with little more than esoteric subjectivity to back up those choices.

To solve this problem I envisioned Chromatic.ly — a set of comprehensive tools for a designer to compare color choices to those being used right now on the internet as specified on sites around the world. Simply put, it is an interactive art installation & set of desktop tools that allow a viewer to experience color as color is being used right now around the world on the web.

Although it consists of a comprehensive set of design tools, Chromatic.ly was intiailly developed as a gallery installation. This approach was taken to prove the concept and to offer all walks of life a way to discover the impact of color on our lives. A prototype was built using 640 LEDs illuminated over the internet by a WIFI-connected processor.

Ideal gallery space is envisioned to be within two levels. The lower gallery would prepare the viewer for the experience. This is achieved mainly with an artist statement & other typical museum didactics. The upper gallery would be circular and would be darkened to maximize the viewer experience of the Chromatic.ly light installation. Gallery spaces were explored first in sketches followed by scale models of the space using 3D printing techniques.

Once user testing was completed, a full prototype was constructed using Invision App services. The prototype was evolved along the way to consider user feedback and inputs. To understand the logistics of pushing color data over the internet to a WIFI-connected object, I designed a smaller version of the final installation. It is a desktop version of the full installation that allows designers to see colors as they are trending. The Chromatic.ly desktop art object displays live color data to the 20 LEDs within the object. It also displays hexidecimal values on a small OLED display on the base of the object.

Project Details

Client: MFA Thesis Project

Date: 16 December, 2016

Online: Chromatic.ly UI Portal

In a recent University of Loyola study, color increases brand recognition by up to 80% while a full 84.7% of consumers admit color accounts for more than half of their decision when choosing what to buy. Color clearly makes good business sense. Likewise, putting tools into the hands of those who specifiy color is paramount in using color successfully.

Backed by tedious color theory research and a polling of 1M top-visited sites around the globe, 4,300 top-tier sites were extracted and top-use color data from every homepage was collected. This accounts for over 144,000 top colors stored within the preliminary Chromatic.ly database. This tool unlocks incredible insight into how colors are being used right now around the globe.

Presentation Video

Watch the comprehensive video presentation and learn a bit more about the theory behind Chromatic.ly. The presentation also covers a bit of the research that surrounds it as well as how the Chromatic.ly system was developed, built and deployed using wireless connectity to any of the devices within the family of tools. Enjoy!