How Color Transforms Design

photo courtesy of style.com

      This Fritz Hansen Series 7 kitchen chair's strongest asset is no doubt is the beautiful shade of apple green that gives it an air of sophistication and down to earth homeyness. The chair itself is very simple, a very recognizable modern form: a single piece of heavy plastic supported by chrome legs,  a curved seat and back and rounded edges making it a very organic form, with an added function of being lightweight and stackable.  However this is not a mere mass-produced plastic chair from IKEA. On this modern chair is printed an old fashioned Toile de Jouy print from the 1800's, recognizable by its picturesque illustrations of landscapes and figures. However rather than being printed in traditional Toile de Jouy colors of red blue or black, this print is reinterpreted in a shade of green only made available by modern technology. This juxtaposition makes the overall design more aesthetically pleasing and fits in with our modern lifestyle.
    The green has many elements that make it aesthetically pleasing. This cheery but not piercing shade of green is likely to connect to people associations of "earthiness" and "homeyness" with green. It is also not only limited to one hue: the print is represented in many difference tints and shades of green, from the darkest apple green to a practically transparent, almost yellow shade of green. This gives the color palette variety, and makes the print look more 3D. The fact that the print designs are varied, and don't uniformly cover the entire surface and leave white patches between them emphasize the print more than if the chair had been covered in a busy uniform pattern. The most concentrated shade of the green is purposefully placed on the backrest of the chair, the part the viewer will immediately see when first looking at the chair. The lightest shades of the green are located on the seat of the chair, with a very faint fade of green between the two light and darker areas giving it unity.
    Without this specific shade of green, the design of the chair would not have the same effect. If the print had been printed in the traditional black or blue there would have been too harsh of a juxtaposition between the modern form of the chair and the old-fashioned designs. By making the color of the print a more modern pigment, m.ore unity is created between these elements of the chair 
    The simple sophisticated modern design of the chair itself and the color of apple green juxtaposed with a homey old fashioned print make a chic yet homely design that is likely to fit in with many different home interiors, whether they be modern, old-fashioned, or a little bit of both, bridging the gap between old and new and reinterpreting classic designs to fit society's modern needs.