Color Provocations with Keith Recker
Keith says:
“It’s the ways color is used to convince and persuade, used as a rhetorical deceive that concerns me sometimes “
Keith Recker is a color poet and you will hear that immediately when listening to this conversation, even if it's not all roses we talk about. Keith does not refrain from talking about how color continues to create political and social divides and often triggers consumers into buying promises not kept by brands. The mission of his latest book Deep Color is to indeed reveal the misperceptions on color and to disclose the truth about each color in the spectrum. Not all that is white is clean, simple and pure..
Keith Recker brings 35 years of adventuresome, insightful, multicultural experience in marketing, merchandising, trend and color forecasting, and content development to his role as Editor in Chief and Co-Owner of TABLE Magazine. With strong roots in food and drink, TABLE also explores travel, interior design, fashion and jewelry, and other facets of modern living, in both print and digital formats.
Recker is the founder and editor of HAND/EYE Magazine, a print and online publication whose 10 issues cultivated a global following. The magazine profiles forward-looking creators, faraway cultures, ancient craft traditions, and cutting-edge design. HAND/EYE saw humankind’s creative future as handmade, which demands attention the struggle of artisans to earn decent livelihoods through preservation of ancient traditions, innovation of new ones, exploration of new markets, and educating the consuming public about the cultural and economic importance of their work. HAND/EYE is on a pause right now, but ripe for rebirth.
Recker is also a trend and color forecaster whose almost 20-year client list includes global influencers Pantone, WGSN, Stylus, Color Association of the United States (CAUS), and more. For 16 years, Recker has been creative director of Pantone’s annual home publication, PANTONE View Home. For eight years he was on WGSN’s global trend and color team. He serves on the CAUS home forecasting committee.
The revised second edition of his book, True Colors: World Masters of Natural Dyes and Pigments (Thrums Books) was released in September 2020, with chapters already excerpted in London-based Selvedge Magazine, NY Textile Month Journal, and reviewed in many more, including Metropolis. He is co-author of PANTONE: The Twentieth Century in Color (Chronicle, 2012), published in eight languages. His new book, Deep Color: The Shades That Shape Our Souls, debuts in September 2022. His writing on color and culture has been published by the Studio Museum of Harlem (catalog essay about Stephen Burks), Museum of Art and Design (catalog essay about African craft and its messages about the future), Brooklyn Rail (comparing the work of potter Alex Matisse with the performance work of Marina Abramovic), The Santa Fe New Mexican, and more.
He has also worked in the non-profit world as a director of consumer marketing at CARE International and executive director at Aid to Artisans (as well as a board member and volunteer for 22 years). Through his involvement with Aid to Artisans, he has worked side by side with artisans from 50 countries. He has served on the boards of Art in General, Chez Bushwick, as founding chair of The Quiet in the Land (a project which brought leading contemporary artists into communities in the developing world) , and the International Folk Art Market, where he was also pro bono creative director and head of the Marketing Committee from 1996-2020.
