Coloring outside the lines

As a designer, I’m constantly fretting over color – which can make all the difference in design. Color can make us joyous, hungry, tired. Color can be the difference between purchasing a house, a car, a sweater. It can even change our perception about the world around us. Over 20 years ago the Heidelberg Project (http://www.heidelberg.org/) took this very idea to a blighted urban area in Detroit and painted a fantastical wonderland of houses – bringing with the color a sense of community and hope to an area that needed both badly. The Heidelberg Project continues to serve impoverished communities with it’s motto of “Art-as-Life”.

In the same vein, Dulux’s international outreach project “Let’s Colour” (http://www.letscolourproject.com/) enlivens dreary neighborhoods with blasts of color. I just think these projects are so very cool and a testament to our need for color in life.