An inspiring podcast on everything you need to know about color!
Stay tuned for our next podcast with Mexican designer Fernando Laposse live November 26!
Brutal Honesty with Zuzanna Skalska
With Zuzanna we talk about just everything that is strategic design thinking to how to get out of our comfort zone to color-matching in plastics, to being the only woman in the room and how businesses need to understand that their brand is made of people. And all that while being brutally honest.
Zuzanna started her career in 1998 at Philips Design and for years she contributed with SignalS of Change analyses to international visionary design projects. Then for almost 15 years she was involved in Design Management & Trends consultancy at a leading Dutch design consultancy Vanberlo (today part of Accenture Industry X.O). Since 2014 she has been a founding partner of 360Inspiration, working for clients from various industries, including many blue chips and market leaders. Zuzanna's core expertise areas include Up-Front Innovation, Industry’s Cross-fertilization, SignalS of Change and Strategic FutureS Thinking. Her research and consulting activities concentrate on 8 crucial industry fields: CE, DAP, Home, Healthcare, Mobility, FMCG/Retail, Urban and Finance. She works closely with CEOs and decision makers on strategic scenario’s development as well with R&Ds/in-house creative teams on specific projects. With almost 25 years of experience Zuzanna skillfully translates her knowledge into actionable innovative programs, using many of her own, self-developed tools. Simultaneously, she has been engaged in promotion of creative industry as Member of the Board and then Advisory Board member of Dutch Design Week as well in the international design education, as a lecturer at TU/e University in Eindhoven and at Parsons School of Design in New York. She is a co- founder of School of Form – a design academy in Poland.
Skalska has been a jury member at many prestigious design competitions like IF Design Awards and a keynote speaker at many recognized business conferences and economic summits. She is an active journalist and contributing editor to leading design and lifestyle magazines. In addition, together with her partners Greenhat Innovation and Blue Media/Autopay, she publishes an annual book - a comprehensive volume on SignalS of Change research.Her professional and public activity has been often recognized not only by the prestigious world’s design awards. In addition, in recent years she has been granted prestigious titles, such as one of the 50 most influential women of Eindhoven region, one of the strongest contributing expats in Eindhoven or one of the best professional speakers in Poland. Born in Warsaw, Poland, Zuzanna has been living in the Netherlands since 1992.
Design Experience with Xiaojing Huang
Xiaojing is the first person on the podcast to talk with an Asian perspective on color, design experience and CMF as she talks about the many differences between eastern and western consumer trends, preferences and color perceptions. As one of the most well-known CMF designers in China, Xiaojing will give her view on what is happening in the field and not just in China.
Xiaojing Huang is a renowned design strategist and trend expert, strategy director and partner of YANG DESIGN, chief editor of China Design Trends Report.
Winner of Red Dot Design Award, IDEA and Design For Asia Silver Award, Influential China Young by Linkedin. Chief editor of China Design Trends Report, which is by far the authoritative annual trend report for the Chinese market since 2013. The report has successfully forecasted well-selling Chinese design trends including gradient, purple, copper green and iridescence. She is curator of CMF TREND LAB, and design column writer of magazines including md. Invited speaker of many design events including TEDx, Color Marketing Group, NCS color forecast and Semiofest. Xiaojing studied in Guangzhou and Berlin from experience design expert.
As strategic director of YANG DESIGN, the forward-looking design consultancy in China, she has been leading the strategic team to build the CMF Lab and UX Lab , defining design strategy to realize business value for companies in different development stages. Her clients are leading brands including Boeing, BMW, GM, Nissan, Hyundai, Didi, Samsung, Microsoft, Huawei, BOSE, Haier, vivo, Schneider Electric, Unilever, Vanke, DuPont and 3M.
Shaping Color Moods with Ruxandra Duru
Ruxandra Duru is the creator of Color Moods, a tool that shows you how to create color combinations but also how color influences your mood. In this conversation Ruxandra will testify to the power of color and the effects it has on our emotions, feelings and decisions.
Ruxandra Duru researches, documents and experiments with color, beauty and mood.
She currently lives and works in NYC. A third culture person, she was born in Romania, spent her childhood in Morocco, moved during her teens to Canada and in her mid-twenties to Barcelona, Spain where she resided until 2021.
She worked in the editorial graphic design field until 5 years ago, when she became increasingly interested in how colors, among others properties, can create different atmospheres and improve our well-being in a variety of contexts including graphic design, art and architecture.
On top of her own practice, she also uses her color knowledge at Google NYC.
Additionally, she makes music and takes photographs, spaces where mood is also an important element.
Accessibility via Color with Erika Kelter
How can color be used to make devices more accessible, user-friendly without compromising the design? How important are sensory experiences in today's world and what role do neuro-aesthetics play in the field of CMF. Erika Kelter will share her thoughts on how we may use color, material and finish to create a more sensory experience in a tech world.
As a Colors, Materials and Finishes Design Specialist Erika continues to foster her life-long passion for creating multisensory experiences through materials, colors, light, and texture, and understanding human sensory-emotional relations to objects and artifacts.
Before obtaining an MA from the University of Arts and Design in Helsinki, Finland, Erika had already gained a strong background in crafts by studying ceramics, glass blowing, goldsmithing techniques, and textile design. After graduation she worked in the arts and culture realm as an artist, teacher, and producer before her career as an CMF Designer.
Erika has over 15 years of experience working for brands such as Nokia, Xbox and Microsoft Surface, building quality, comfort, accessibility and sustainability through neuro-aesthetics and materiality.
Speaking Material with Chris Lefteri
Chris Lefteri invites us to the mysterious world of CMF. How do you bridge the gap between material industries and designers. Why does the material come first in the creative design process and what role does color play? What innovation is happening in the intrinsic world of materials and how does this relate to topics of circularity and recyclability? Material guy Chris Lefteri gives insight on how he builds stories around materials and the challenges he encounters in a world in search of sustainable materials.
Chris Lefteri is an internationally recognised authority in materials and their application in design. The work of his studio and publications have been pivotal in changing the way designers and the materials industry consider materials. His books include Materials for Design and six other titles in the Materials for Inspirational Design series. Chris Lefteri Design has locations in London and Seoul and works with multiple Fortune 100 companies. His studio is widely recognised as one of the leading studios working in the field of materials & CMF. In 2018 he launched FixIts, his first materials driven brand.
Shining your Light with Judith van Vliet
This is quite the unusual podcast for me.. as for the first time I am being interviewed myself by Keith Recker who beseeched, almost begged me to let the TCA fans get to know me better by turning the tables and allowing myself to be the interviewee. This fun conversation gives some insights into the mysterious world of color forecasting and its future, how you may identify color for clients and their brand but most importantly, what color can do for you on a personal level once you learn how to work with it. Color is life, color is emotion and above all, it is power.
Judith was born in 1981 in the countryside of The Netherlands. She moved to the urban environment of The Hague for her studies at the age of 17. At 28, when she moved to Milan, she fulfilled a lifelong dream of living in Italy. She still lives there, a participant in the vibrant unfolding of color and design-thinking in one of the world’s creativity capitols.
Her initial dive into color came in her first job as Product Planning Specialist at Kawasaki Motors, where she was the only European and the only woman on Kawasaki’s Japan-based design team. Later, she served as Senior Color Designer at Avient ColorWorks, which designs innovative and increasingly sustainable polymer-based colorants to the manufacturing sector and was Creative Director of ColorForward, a global color forecasting guide. These positions allowed her to travel the world to present social and consumer color intelligence to cross-industry professionals, designers and marketers.
Today she is captain of her own ship as founder and color intelligence provider at The Color Authority. She’s also vice president of membership of the Color Marketing Group, where she’s been very active for over fifteen years in positions including president and member of the executive committee.
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“Excellent series about color. It’s a complex topic and Judith approaches it from a variety of angles with her guests. Always entertaining and insightful. I look forward to listening to each episode and learning something new about color and the visionaries in the color world.”
— Review Apple Podcast