I would love to go to a lecture on color! My questions are probably very basic...

I personally would love to learn about hues and lighting. How colors play off one another. How to do monochromatic and make it interesting to the eye. How to tell if a color is neutral, warm or cool (sometimes hard) and where/how to apply that info. The difference between shaded or muted hues, is there a difference? How is it my mother sees a green undertone in every tan color?!

The biggest problem I have with color is with value. I am also a quilter, and it is really important in fabric selection to have light, medium and dark fabrics (if you want to have an interesting finished quilt). I find the same issue in home decor. Rooms that I love seem to have a purposeful color selection with this criteria in mind. Yet I find it very difficult to place colors along the spectrum. I assume you will have props of some kind?

Lynn

I would like to hear about limiting colors and surfaces. Some designers successfully combine a wide variety of colors in a house--or even in a room-- and it's fabulous. Others strictly demand a limit, say three colors or six different surfaces. I'd like to hear both sides of the debate and see slides of successful, as well as failed, examples of both.

In my experience, many design professionals are grossly lacking in the basics of color. Not many will admit that.
From graphix-types to faux finishers to interior designers to architects. Not sure I would assume that this group is bringing a solid foundation of color basics and will be able to keep up with you if you try to go too hi-level thinking you really have to bring it to keep them interested.

I try to work in little sound bites of basic color theory. It's not in your face Color Theory 101, but I know darn well by looking at their faces that if I go too hi-level I lose a lot of them because they don't know stuff like the difference between value and intensity or about the four points of color contrast. Things I consider vital basics of good color design.

Other thing is language. Arm 'em with paint store how-to's, language, and color info so they can feel confident walking into any resource of color and be in control of color instead of the other way around.

Many of them use one brand because it's all they know and they have established a relationship with "their guy" at the paint store or their favorite contractor. It's easy and it's a dependency to an extent because they are afraid that as a design professional their lack of color knowledge will be outted -- the guys they depend on usually aren't that much better off in the color knowledge department than they are, but the mutual relationship helps keep it all safe and contained so everyone can continue to fake it on many color fronts.

I really believe that most of them know that they need to learn more about color or want to grow their knowledge base of color into the advanced arena, but are afraid to seek the education out since there's this unspoken assumption that because they are an interior designer or whatever, then they are automatically suppose to be some sort of color expert as well.

When there is a core group and a nice color seminar is offered as part of their conference or meeting, there's excitement that the opportunity to learn more about color has been safely and inconspicuously made available to them. They all secretly hope that it's going to be more than how to pull colors from an inspiration piece or lame color psych stuff like yellow rooms making babies cry and presented in manner they can easily understand and take notes.

It can be hard to draw people out to ask questions or participate because no one wants to out their lack of color skilz. You'll have no problem hitting that 60 minute mark and if it's possible to ask the attendees to submit questions to you anomously in advance. Once you get a few of those rolled out, then you'll find more people feeling comfortable asking *stupid* questions on the fly. An hour might not be long enough. :D

I know you'll do great.

ojoy ! I see green undertones in beige too !!! It makes me crazy. I bug the paint guys when I pick up paint chips to look up the formula for me so I know if there really is green in there. ( I think they think I'm a card short)
amysrq I would like to know the difference in muted vs clear colors. why do muted shades always look muddy to me?
How can you tell which shades of complimentary colors go best? is it talent or does it come down to formula?

I would love to go to a lecture on color where the information came from real knowledge & experience, but, sadly, most of the ones that I've had the misfortune to have to sit through have been Crying-Baby-Yellow level: that is, not only was the info basic but much of it was worthlessly anecdotal. The good news about that is that it means that anything above that is a step in the right direction--even if it's a baby step.

So my suggestion is not about your subject, since I'm no expert on using color--merely its historical usage--but about how to present material that your audience should know but may not know, without, of course, revealing that you know they don't know it. It gets tricky. No one gets as huffy at the subtle implication that he doesn't know what he's talking about as the guy who really doesn't know what he's talking about. The hyperventilating indignation is always the clue to the poseur. Like Shakespeare says, "The lady doth protest too much."

Anyway, if you present your material not as knowledge per se aimed at them, but as an approach that they themselves can use to present it to their clients, things will go fine. That is, you talk as though they already know everything you have to say--and that you know they know (even though they may not)--and that the only thing that your audience lacks--because they're visual, not verbal experts--is the ability to explain important (and sometimes complicated) color concepts & theories in such a simple way that even non-professionals can understand them. It's the decorating version of the old "Doctor-a-friend-of-mine-has-a-problem" approach, except you'll be playing the part of the dcotor, and you'll tell them how to explain color things to their "friends." It's silly but it lets everyone keep his self-respect.

I've never had to perform this little charade in regards to color, but I frequently have to do it with groups of architectural students & their professors, who, amazingly enough, often know almost nothing of architectural history. It's actually pretty shocking.

Anyway, when I do, I preface the whole thing--and my spiel can be pretty heavy-duty: I once transcribed it and then annotated it with my sources and when I got done it had almost 200 footnotes for an hour talk. I don't dumb it down for anybody--with "for those of you who already know all this"--and here's where I give the profs a smile of affirmation that they are, indeed, much more knowledgeable than I am--"please be patient, since I want to make sure the first-year people have the background here, too." Then I sprinkle what I say with plenty of asides: "You already know that Chicago is built on marshland..." & "Think of the Guggenheim Museum's entry sequence..." & "Now, you probably remember know that Louis Sullivan went to school in Paris..." which, things, unfortunmately, many of them don't know, but they don't want to admit it. This way, however, I provide the information they need to understand what they're seeing, but only on the basis that they're merely being "reminded" of what they already know, not that they're being told something for the first time.

And there's another benefit of verbally expressing your assurance that most of your audience already knows your material--even when they don't--it eliminates all the head-bobbing that comes when I mention something that they do know, and they want to make sure everyone in the audience KNOWS that they know it. That drives me crazy. It's like hollerin out "Amen"s in church.

At any rate, if you can package your info--whatever it is, and good luck on that--into a format which makes it easy for your audience to pass it along to their clients & employees, then you know they're bound to absorb a lot of it themselves, without ever having to admit that it's the first time that they themselves understood it. Best of all, in the future, they'll look to you as an authority.

Ah, the games we're forced to play to avoid damaging anyone's precious self-esteem...

Regards,
MAGNAVERDE.

Thank you everyone. This is great information and really encourages me to accept the offer.

MV and FC, I really appreciate the reminder that so many professionals seem to be missing some of the foundation which I know I can provide...um...right....reiterate! Since I am relatively new to this field, I tend to think that the longer-term pros know more than I do. But, my learning has been strictly about color as it applies to the built environment, so my knowledge is quite focused.

I think I will call my lecture "How to Talk Color with your Clients" or something along those lines. Thanks!

Sadie, ojoy, Lynn and KD, thanks for your questions. Your concerns and curiosities were my own five years ago when I first started looking for help with color and interior design. When I couldn't find someone to help me, I decided to educate myself. Thanks for helping me get back to my roots, as it were.

Lynn, I do a tiny bit of quilting, too. (My best friend is a quilting instructor and she has sucked me in!) As for visuals, I may add some fabrics to my talk, just to keep it interesting. Thx!

I think all the above topics would be interesting to me and surely an education. Also, want to learn what colors not to put together, i.e., oak paneling with taupe painted walls. I lived with this for 20 years and then y'all told me I shouldn't have. I didn't know. It looked fresh and pretty and I didn't have a clue it didn't really go. Ignorance is bliss as they say.

I wish I could attend your talk because I'm fascinated with color.

I finished painting all my rooms at my new house, haven't even moved in yet and am thinking about other choices I could have made. Don't tell DH!!

Dang, MV, excellent advice. I'm borrowing some of those ideas!

Amy, I wish I could attend too. Maybe you and MV should go on the road. It'd be one heck of a twofer. :D

How to Talk Color with Your Clients--------I love it.

I also love the idea of taking our show on the road, except that Funcolors woud have to be in the lineup as well, since having someone with actual experience in applying color to a space would probably be a good idea.

Overloading the schedule with theorists & long-winded historians is like a ball team's relying on the pitcher to knock one out of the park.

A road trip with Magnaverde and Funcolors....I think Ed McMahon will be knocking on my door any moment now!

sadie709 - that is so funny! My mom talks about the "green room" in my old house and describing this or that and I am in a totally different room thinking what is she talking about? That and my "green" furniture. I was starting to think she was messing with me. I think I'm the opposite and can't see green. Picking green I tend to get blueish green.

Please take the show to WI, I'll be first in line!

magnaverde
i feel so sorry for you having to baby your clients and worry about egos. as a laywer when im in court i get to look at the other guy with the "im smarter than you are and now everyone in the room now knows is too smirk" but i guess thats why everyone hates lawyers. ps i do have to be careful of not giving the "look" to the judge. thank goodness they dont tempt me that often.