The Language of Colour

A few minutes into our video call interview, Daniera ter Haar excuses herself to accept a delivery at her front door. The live-work studio home Daniera shares with her partner (in life and work) Christoph Brach is in a formerly abandoned, post-WWII Phillips factory, and with Daniera attending to her package, I am left with an unimpeded view. My eyes move from a red and pink lamp to the moss green plinth supporting it, then the multi-coloured scraps of fabric and paper taped to the wall in rows. And from there I begin to reckon with where to begin a conversation that could account, not only for all these different mediums, but the hues too. Colour, after all, is in their name.

If you’re not counting their three full-time employees and one intern, ter Haar and Brach make up the two halves of Raw Color – a Dutch multidisciplinary studio they founded in 2007. The Eindhoven–based studio practices across the fields of graphic design, product design, installations and photography, and in addition to their numerous self-initiated projects, has worked with the likes of Kvadrat, Sancal and IKEA. And the thread that ties all these disciplines and distinct collaborations together? You guessed it. Colour. Along with a singular determination to spread more of its vibrancy into the world of design.

Tell us about Raw Color – where and how did it all start?

Christoph: We met at Design Academy Eindhoven, during a “Man and Identity” course to be specific. I had done graphic design beforehand in Germany where I’m from and studied some product design at DAE too. Daniera had a background in visual merchandising. It was after graduating in 2007 that we really began working together in this way.

Daniera: When we started, we made a business card that said Raw Color and nothing else. I guess this is more common today, but it was unusual at the time. We wanted to be a multidisciplinary studio so the benefit of this was that it didn’t box us in – it really encouraged a multimedia approach from the start. This mix was what shaped our identity. Colour really became the basis of everything we do, so whether we’re working on websites, publications, visual identities, products or exhibitions, we imagine it as the centre point. Colour is our handwriting.

I love the idea of colour as handwriting. It highlights an important distinction between tool and craft. Like, in the same way that handwriting is a tool to tell stories, you use colour to create visual worlds across different mediums.

Daniera: Exactly. Colour is a language, and it offered us a foundation to work on. It takes way more time than if we were just working in black and white, but it also opens up so many opportunities. You mix new things and you get excited again. It’s red and pink – sure – but on different materials, so it feels new. There is much more to that though, as well, because it’s not as if you can just take the same colour code for a fabric as you could for plastic. There’s a lot of trial and error to translating these hues across digital, print, textiles, plastics. And then there’s scale ...

It’s almost as if colour is a language that needs to be translated across mediums and contexts, which must be all the more difficult when working across different cultures and platforms.

Christoph: Colour is, on one hand, a universal language. We all can agree that the sky is blue, plants are green, the sun is yellow. The layer of cultural conditioning can make it complex due to its local interpretation of colour meaning. Sometimes it is impossible to do it right for everybody globally. In our collaboration with IKEA, for example, they shared insights about how yellow evokes positive reactions in countries with cooler climate and less sun, while the same yellow evokes a different feeling in hot countries with a lot of sun. In these situations, we tend to stay close to ourselves. Which combinations do we enjoy and what makes us happy? Hopefully people feel this energy and the good intentions in the designs.

Can you tell us about the Tesammans Collection you created for IKEA? I’m interested in how you made everything work as a stand-alone piece but also as part of a greater whole.

Christoph: Each object is designed to tell a colour story. For example, the lamp is about reflection and absorption of different tones. Dark absorbs, light reflects. The knit blanket is about visual blending of colours in the eye due to small lines. So we do look for nice combinations individually, but across this collection of 20 pieces, we tried to spread the 15 colours used evenly to create that sense of balance.

So where does shape fit into all this? The LOOP and LINK seating you created for Sancal come to mind. It's clear that colour not only plays a role in making these pieces unique, but in directing their form too.

Christoph: Yes, the relation between colour and shape can’t be disconnected. If you put paint on paper it has to be in a shape. Shape enhances colour and vice versa, as seen in the LINK poufs. But those weren’t strictly about colour, they are also our way of reflecting on alternative furnishing solutions. By breaking down all formal borders, they are meant to be freeing – to trigger anarchic sitting.

Why do you think it’s so important to create colourful and playful design offerings?

Daniera: If labels don’t produce items, buyers don't buy them. It’s sort of a chicken and egg scenario. With more availability, people would dare to do it more. There’s another side to it in terms of what you surround yourself with or who you follow online but at the end of the day, it’s about being “brave enough”. Colour is one of the first things we use to identify something.

Colour is one of the first things we use to identify something. Or, it will be the thing that pulls us in: it’s the red dress in the window that makes you stop and enter the store, but then once you’re inside you buy the black one because it’s safer.

Or, it will be the thing that pulls us in: it’s the red dress in the window that makes you stop and enter the store, but then once you’re inside you buy the black one because it’s safer.

Christoph: I agree – people unlearned the use of colour. They seem to be afraid and scared of using it. We have the impression that it can be considered immature and childish. I guess there’s a similarity to singing and dancing. Many adults often feel uncomfortable doing this. The thing all have in common is emotional expression, and this could be part of the fear: being different, being seen and being too emotional. We’d like to be part of changing this.

I also wonder whether it has something to do with a fear of making the wrong colour choices or pairings; a fear that things will go out of style. What’s your creative process for staying on the right side of colour clashes?

Daniera: In the beginning, we always had a huge research inspiration board for every project, but over time our process has become more streamlined. We have a huge collection of random lids or bottles, brick or wooden bars assembled in what we call our “Colour Library”. When working on a new project, we’ll refer to these objects in terms of their shape, colour, size, matte or gloss. Then we’ll create models using coloured paper to get a sense of how these colours work together at different scales.

Was the Colour Library in use for your textile project with Kvadrat? I read how the inspiration for this palette began with 3D objects. How did you begin to translate those?

Christoph: Indeed. We were inspired by our collection of found objects. Then swatches were painted to understand the construction of colour. These were scanned to define the dyes. Each colour group has four tones to be able to combine – as seen in our LOOP series, actually. Today these textiles can be bought and applied by anybody.

Where else do you turn for inspiration?

Daniera: Anything: daily things, things you see or place together, but beyond that we’re always looking at websites, magazines, publications and museums when we can. Our weekends these days are filled with children things (we have two young sons), but if we do go to a museum, we make a deal with them that afterwards we’ll go to the sea.

Christoph: We also look to other designers like Ronan and Erwan Bouroullec. It is really brilliant what they have created over the years. The Eames too are fascinating – they have such a wide and beautiful body of work.

Daniera: Oh, and after lunch our team will go out to the park for a 20–25 minute walk. Just being out in nature that’s always changing in different seasons is inspiring