Participants in this workshop will get the chance to experience a selection of the hands-on beta-test materials and activities which are part of the Eye Opener Series for Phase Two of the teacher training program with partner schools. program. The introductory Eye Opener Series is focused on the first two Colour Literacy Project Cornerstones – Experiencing and Describing Colour  - with hands-on exercises that are designed to increase awareness of the major role colour plays in our lives, expand terminology for describing colour, and explore colour as non-verbal communication. The workshop includes activities on seeing and naming colours, sorting colours and ordering colours in three dimensions. 

Dr. Robin Kingsburgh

David R. Wyble

This class is an introduction and best practices guide for color measurement. To help us all speak the same color language, we start by defining the terms describing the instruments and quantities used in color measurement. Besides instrumentation, you also need to know about what you actually measure: samples and sample preparation. After you take that measurement, you get data, and lots of it. You’ve probably heard of RGB or HSV data, but those data are not going to be as useful as you might think. We will cover color spaces that relate the instrument data to how people see colors and color differences—which is the ultimate goal of color measurement. When we are done, you should understand how to take a measurement (there will be real instruments on hand) and how to interpret color data (we will take measurements and look at the results). Physics and math will be at a minimum for this straightforward introduction to an often intimidating topic

Fritz Horstman

Horstman will present his book Interacting with Color: A Practical Guide to Josef Albers’s Color Experiments, published in 2024 by Yale Press, which will lead into hands-on experiments with the color experiments described in the book. 

Josef Albers’s 1963 Interaction of Color is often presented as an overarching theory of color, but it is actually a method of learning how to better see and understand color—many of the color exercises illustrated in Interaction of Color were devised by Albers’s students: cutting and pasting, looking, pondering, and learning. This workbook companion is a teaching tool designed to enable readers to engage in the kinds of tactile creativity and exploration that characterized Albers’s own classroom.

Focusing on eight of the most important lessons in Interaction of Color, this book invites readers to learn by doing, using only simple materials. Core instructions for each exercise are enhanced by additional tips, references to Albers’s original text and illustrations, and stories about how Albers presented the ideas in class. Participants in the course will use Color-aid paper to engage with such color phenomena color relativity, reversed grounds, illusions of transparence, and more.  

Kimberly R. Mercier

The most challenging communication channels require application of multiple areas of expertise to navigate the inevitable misunderstandings successfully.  So, how do color scientists understand building design professionals (like architects, lighting designers, interior designers) better?  Although we speak a different “language” of color resulting from differing color educational backgrounds – our objectives are the same.  

In this program, Kim will share her opinions about the likely sources of miscommunication, present ideas to smooth the communication turbulence, and suggest ways in which we can all facilitate more effective working relationships while achieving built environments that effervesce their color expression in ways that are immersive, communicative, and celebrated.  All color sciences, material sciences, building sciences, and fine arts professionals will benefit from participation in this communication workshop…the more diverse the experience of participants – the more we will all learn about communication!

The Detroit Colour Council is a professional society based in the metropolitan Detroit, MI area, which promotes communication and education around color and design quality issues with emphasis in the color industry. Members represent a wide variety of professional functions including engineers, designers, sales people, scientists, consultants, lab technicians and students. The presentation will provide the participants with an understanding of the complexities of color harmony in the automotive realm.

Within the environment of a vehicle, there are multiple materials and processes required to obtain the finished product. Often times these processes pose substantial challenges to the supply bases. Understanding industry standards for color and materials approvals is critical to the overall color harmony. There are so many factors that impact color such as textures, material properties and many more.

The course objective is to help students obtain a good understanding of the nature of colors and how to measure and control them, provide fundamentals of visual color match evaluation and color measurement for industrial color control. Teams use a spectrophotometer and portable Macbeth lighting on projects that demonstrate proper lighting, observer testing, objective terminology for color difference and determination of tolerances.