Case Study: Lee Eiseman
Occupation: Executive Director, Pantone 
Color Institute
Gear: Two iMacs, two MacBooks, and a 
PowerBook G3. Most-used apps include Keynote, iPhoto, and iTunes.

Eiseman formulates her color predictions through research and staying on top of societal and cultural shifts.

Don’t tell Leatrice Eiseman that yellow agitates adults and makes babies cry.

“After hearing that story once too often, I tracked its source and discovered it was based on false research,” she says. “Yellow evokes sunshine, warmth, and happiness—not arguments or crying.”

What people really think about color is important to Eiseman—please call her “Lee”—head of the Eiseman Center for Color Information and Training and executive director of the Pantone Color Institute. Her job is to choose the hues that will be wildly fashionable next season or next year, as well as the colors that will compel consumers to buy her clients’ products.

Eiseman doesn’t spend her working days locked up in a room crunching data or aiming darts at a brilliantly hued board to see where they land. Rather, she identifies color trends by synthesizing history, current events, psychology, marketing principles, fine art, pop art, and street fashion, along with all the information culled from her own color surveys.

“Right now, I’m researching the color preferences prevalent during previous recessions,” Eiseman says. “What I’m finding is that neutrals are preferred during economic downturns, especially for big-ticket items. People don’t want to invest in trendy-colored items when times are tough. They’re looking for stability and longevity.”

Nevertheless, Eiseman says that flooding the market with beige items isn’t necessarily the right approach right now. Instead, manufacturers should focus on coming up with new ways of combining neutrals with livelier colors to “tweak the consumer’s eye and spark interest.

How to Avoid a Marketing Blood Bath.

In the never-ending search for the new and exciting, it’s important for companies to understand how their target audiences tend to respond to specific colors. Some years ago, Shiseido hired Eiseman to consult on colors planned for use in the Japanese company’s American line of bath and beauty products. The first thing that caught Eiseman’s attention was the rejuvenating bath salts tinted bright scarlet. In the States, red-tinted water in the tub would likely conjure up visions of a blood bath, likely to appeal only to gloomy goths. Apparently the Japanese aren’t in the habit of offing themselves in the bath, but Eiseman says 
it wasn’t easy to convince Shiseido to go with a soft orange (though the peach-colored bath salts ultimately became a best-seller).

Eiseman suggests “pungent colors” in this spread from Color: Messages & Meanings, a Pantone Color resource guide that she wrote.

Cultural issues are easier to deal with than having a color scheme rejected because the CEO (or his spouse) hates a particular color.

“It’s not about what you or I happen to like,” says Lee. “You may despise green, but that’s not a valid reason to banish its use from the product packaging, unless you are also the target audience. And even then, you can’t just pick whatever hues appeal to you with no consideration of what those colors are communicating.”

Apple's Color Code.

Eiseman says Apple is a company that really knows how to use color effectively.

“Apple has revolutionized industrial design and made powerful technology personal through the use of color,” says Eiseman, who took a consulting gig with a major PC company some months before Apple released the first Bondi Blue iMac. She suggested that they release computers with colorful cases, but the company felt that no one would be interested.

For her part, Eiseman is a devoted Apple-tech enthusiast. She has two iMacs and a number of Apple laptops in her collection of home and office computers. She uses Keynote for all of her presentations, and her assistant, Bobbi, uses Leopard’s Spaces feature as well as CoverFlow to create online training materials. Eiseman also uses iPhoto to organize the image collections she relies on for inspiration and uses her iPhone to syndicate blog updates from anywhere in the world. She says she loves iTunes because “sometimes, mindless entertainment is the most essential application of all.”

The "Starbucks Phenomenon."

Eiseman stresses that color associations aren’t set in stone. For example, not too long ago brown was a low-rent color associated with dirt and introverted people. Then, in what Lee calls the “Starbucks phenomenon,” café culture became popular in the United States and we developed a whole new language and set of associations for brown, which is now affiliated with words like “rich,” “soothing,” “robust,” and “earthy,” as well as environmental awareness, comfort, and luxury.

“It’s a whole new world for brown now,” Eiseman says, adding that the other colors to watch in 2009 include fuchsia and other rosy hues, purple as a power color for men, and the clear, clean colors used in Japanese animation (Eiseman just designed an anime color palette for Pantone).

With all the colors that are available to us, Eiseman says she’s puzzled by the proclivity that some artsy types have for dressing head-to-toe in black. 

“Granted, black is an empowering color,” she says “And it’s an easy color; there’s no need to put a look together. But I feel that creative people who dress all in black all the time are missing the opportunity to hone their skills by working with color on a personal level. Try pushing the black to the back of the closet for awhile, break out some color, and see what happens.”

For more information on the Pantone Color Institute, see www.pantone.com. For info on Eiseman, check out colorexpert.com.