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THE COMITE FRANÇAIS DE LA COULEUR
Boosting creativity through observation
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Colour is a matter of light and sensation, inner experience and multiple perceptions. Multidisciplinary and multisensorial, the CFC’s research explores all fields to set vibrating the tonalities that reveal sensitive areas or the harmonies that arouse the senses.
Seeing, touching, feeling, tasting and hearing colour… are all ways of enriching our visual vocabulary. As it awakens the senses, colour plays a role in aesthetics and functionality. It catches the eye, but also stimulates touch, hearing, smell and taste. Arousing the senses is a sure way to add soul with colours which speak to our conscious and subconscious selves. Boosting creativity through observation means firing the imagination through feeling.
For over fifty years now, the CFC has been exploring colour and its applications in a wide range of economic sectors: fashion, textiles, beauty care, luxury goods, telephony, the automotive industry, interior design, decoration, domestic arts, gastronomy…
Fashion designers, industrial designers, art directors, plastic artists, researchers, journalists, writers and even “rainbowologists” form a prospective think tank working in the interests of creativity and colour within this original “club”, chaired by Olivier Guillemin since 1993. Together they think about the evolution and expression of colour in relation to lifestyles.
Twice a year, the CFC visualises the changing colour of our environment, publishing a colour range which has a wide audience among trade fairs and member companies. The CFC is well known outside France and carries the “Colours of France” at INTERCOLOR, an international colour group with representatives from some fifteen countries.
The members of the CFC regularly participate in wider investigations of the perception and evolution of colour from a sociological, cultural, historical, industrial or marketing perspective, which focus on topical themes such as: masculine and feminine colours, the colours of luxury, colour and the senses, the flavour and smell of colour…
The CFC also develops communication and educational events. This involves organising conferences, seminars and exhibitions for professionals with the idea of reaching out to the general public through spectacular operations, starting with “The Colour Circuit” in Paris in 2004.
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News
The CFC explores the colours of the present and the future by organising conferences and events, and meetings between experts in various fields, professionals and journalists. These theme meetings stimulate thinking and reactions on topical issues. A sample of events:
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"Matter and Colour"
Designers’ Days – Parcours parisien du design
16 June 2008
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The Comité Français de la Couleur has joined this major annual design event with meetings on the theme of “Matter and Colour in Design and Architecture”. Chaired by Chantal Hamaide, director of Intramuros and Olivier Guillemin, chairman of CFC, these meetings will approach the theme from three angles:
Matter and Colour
Architecture and Light with Dominique Jacob and Brendan McFarlane, architects, Yann Kersalé, a light designer and Philippe Fagot, a “rainbowologist” and CFC member.
Matter and Colour
From Nature to Artifice with Patrick Blanc, a botanist, researcher at the CNRS and plant designer, Pierre Bonnefille, a decorator and colourist and Jacques Lafait, a physicist and director of the colour research group at the CNRS.
Matter and Colour
A Language for Design with Alessandro Mendini, an architect and designer, Jaime Hayon, a designer, Annie Mollard-Desfour, a linguist at the CNRS and CFC member.
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"The Colours of Porcelain"
Sèvres, Between Heritage and Innovation
5 July 2007 – Manufacture Nationale de Sèvres
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The Sèvres porcelain factory is the guardian of an extraordinary artistic and technical capital; it keeps alive exceptional expertise and enriches national and international heritage in the field of porcelain making. Standing at the crossroads of the past, present and future, the factory encourages new aesthetic and technological approaches to produce innovative forms and colours.
Its colour heritage is very rich (but not widely known and far from confined to the famous Sèvres blue) and is continually extended by experimental work and the talent of contemporary artists.
During the day, participants visited the factory’s workshops and museum and took part in a debate between Sèvres staff, key players in the dye industry and artists, who shared their experience of working with colour at Sèvres, on the theme of the creative encounter between the historical heritage of the porcelain industry and the factory’s contemporary approach to colour.
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The Comité Français de la Couleur invited by the Fashion Group. Roundtable on the theme of "Colour as Sense and Colour as a Sign"
25 October 2006, Paris
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With Matalie Crasset, a designer
Françoise Dassetto and Michel Gutsatz, chairwoman and managing director of White Spirit
Philippe Fagot, the founder and head of Couleur Management Conseil, CFC member
Oliver Rasquinet, CEO of Minale Design Strategy
Ute Wegener, a designer and chairwoman of Au-delà de l’Idée, CFC member
Hosted by Dominique Cuvillier, chief editor of the web magazine Trendmark.fr, secretary general of CFC and Olivier Guillemin, a designer and art director, chairman of CFC.
In our highly visual and beauty-oriented consumer society, colour has become a familiar medium. It is no longer simply a decorative covering, a veneer, it asserts itself as an active principle, the impulse which stimulate the senses… and makes things meaningful! By extension, it brings its full dimension to communication and plays a leading role to convey sublime and subliminal messages. This roundtable gave a technical and artistic slant to the “communicational” approach to colour.
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RANGES
WINTER 2008/09
BACK TO THE FUTURE
Chromodiversity or monochromy : an end to nostalgia ! Colour optimises the futur and sends out positive vibrations which encourage creation and innovation.
Chromodiversity is on the move, ready to serve personalisation. Radical monochrome is back and transcend the astonishing evolution in materials.
Metals punctuate the ranges with subtle reflections and modern flashes. A certain warmth lights up an even wider range of classic neutrals.
WINTER 2009
THE SOUND OF COLOR
A season sensitive in search of sens, sensitive to the sound of colours : colours harmonies or symphonies, melodious or lilting, whispering or silent, cacophonous or thunerous.
The music of colours for summer 2009 leads us into worlds of sensation in which noises and sounds take capital importance.
Constantly searching for something different, we want to give our lives meaning, find unprecedented solutions to the questions that assail us.
By tuning in to colours, ou sensory perception and creativity orient us better in our environnement.
Happiness is not to be found in the far distant future but in the urgent need to live the present intensely…
COLOURFUL EVENTS
The Comité Français de la Couleur organises a wide range of trade events every year (conferences, round tables, activities, publications) some of which are open to the general public. The aim is to show that colour is thought-provoking and has a wide range of applications. A selection of a few colourful events:
“The Colour Circuit”
15-21 November 2004 - Paris
On the federating theme of “Colour for Pleasure and Pleasure in Colour…” the Colour Circuit brightened up Paris with all the colours of the spectrum and explored the colours of the city in the course of an amusing, interactive treasure hunt.
During this special week, designed and coordinated by the Comité Français de la Couleur with the support of the City of Paris, fashion and beauty care professionals as well as decorators, designers and chefs “gave colour the works” in fifty original events for the general public.
A circuit designed to stimulate the senses by lighting up the city in a feast of vivid, creative, innovative colour. An event packed with surprises seeking to inform, astonish, dazzle and entertain.
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