Color Impact

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Schedule subject to change

Featuring ISCC Members from a range of fields and practices, 
speaking on how they define color in their daily workflow.
Q&A to follow each session

A panel discussion with the speakers will follow the presentations.

We will wrap up the day with Colorful Connections, a fun and informal opportunity to network with ISCC members and Symposium attendees.

Science Presentation - A Brief History of CIELAB
Ann Laidlaw, ACL Color Consulting, LLC

What is CIELAB? Why do we use it? And can it solve my color problems? Ann will provide an overview of the good, the bad, and the ugly regarding our favorite color space.

Ann Laidlaw worked in industrial color communication and management during her career with SheLyn, GretagMacbeth, X-Rite, and as an independent consultant. Her work centered on global supply chains, mostly in the textiles and apparel industries. She is a recipient of the ISCC Nickerson Service Award, the AATCC Chapin Award, and the AATCC Education Award. She served on the boards of ISCC, AATCC, and CORM. She is now retired in central Georgia, and enjoys a life-long hobby of sewing.

Industry Presentation - Color Matching Tolerances for Visual Quality Tools
Jerald Dimas, Director of Color Science Applications, Color Communications, LLC

Color consistency is essential to product quality and brand integrity. Join us as we examine how color standards are defined, measured, and controlled through practical tolerance limits that help manufacturers achieve reliable, repeatable results.

Since joining Color Communications 42 years ago Jerald has made consistent contributions helping to make Color Communications a world-class leader in the production of Color Cards, Color Tools, Color Systems and Color Control Programs for the paint, coatings and fabrication industries. Direct responsibilities include Quality Assurance, Technical Support, New Product Development and Innovation Team Lead. A member of the Inter Society Color Council since 1987 where he has held leadership positions of Director, President, Past President and currently serves as Treasurer. A member of the Detroit Color Council since 1994 and ASTM Technical committees D01 Related Coatings, Materials, and Applications and E12 on Color and Appearance.

Industry Presentation - The Language of Marketing
Sue Kim, Director of Color Marketing, Sherwin-Williams 

Sue Kim has spent over two decades shaping how consumers experience and understand color. As the long-time forecaster of Valspar’s annual color trends, she is passionate about viewing color through evolving lifestyle and cultural landscapes to create livable, meaningful palettes. Her role also includes crafting engaging retail color experiences and designing color at the intersection of art and science.

Industry Presentation
Justin Laird, Principle Color Engineer, Apple

The focus in this talk will be on the dimensions of appearance in color measurement and the difficulty in defining color standards to meet appearance expectations in the design and manufacture of products today. Further, why spot-based color metrics fall short of capturing real appearance, and how we should communicate a more complete picture of color in an industrial setting.

Justin Laird is a color science practitioner with over two decades of experience spanning research, display technology, and manufacturing. He earned his graduate degree from the Munsell Color Science Laboratory at RIT in 2005, where he built a rigorous foundation in color perception, measurement, and appearance modeling. After school, Justin joined Philips in Eindhoven, where he applied color science to display and lighting challenges. From there he moved into manufacturing at Gunlocke, spending several years developing hands-on expertise in industrial color quality and process control — a pivot that would shape the rest of his career. In 2014, he joined the Apple team as a color quality engineer in manufacturing. His current focus is on surface color appearance and metrology — essentially making sure that the color and finish of Apple's hardware looks exactly the way it's supposed to, every time, at scale. His work at Apple sits at the intersection of color science fundamentals and the messy realities of industrial production. That intersection is exactly what brings him here today. Justin'spresentation explores how we communicate color in an industrial setting — a deceptively simple problem with some genuinely complex answers.

Design Presentation - Lost in Translation
Sandra Sampson, Vital Color™ by Simple Modern Style

Color is one of the most powerful tools in design — and one of the hardest things to talk about precisely. Sandra Sampson shares her methodology for bridging the gap between what clients imagine and what actually gets built, anchoring subjective preference in shared color language.

Sandra Sampson is the founder of Vital Color™ by Simple Modern Style, a multi-disciplinary color design and graphic design studio. With an insatiable thirst for creative exploration, she transforms consumer preferences,color trends, and market research into captivating color palettes and design that successfully engage targetmarkets across industries. During her over twenty-year tenure with the Color Marketing Group® (CMG), Sandra has served as Board Member, Executive Committee Member, VP of PR and Communications, and Immediate Past VP of Education.

Most recently, Sandra has volunteered on the Education and CMG Summit Planning Committees and was a speaker at the 2025 International Summit - Chromatic Connections, ColorContext Workshop.

Sandra holds a BFA from Art Center College of Design and completed advanced color design studies at the Eiseman Center for Color Information & Training. She serves as a Board Member of the Inter-Society Color Council and is a past Fellow of the Royal Society for Arts, Manufactures, and Commerce (RSA).

When not in her studio, Sandra enjoys reading about color and design, sailing along the Southern California coast, and playing with Kitt, her Alaskan Malamute.

Education Presentation – Problems of Colour Terminology in Portuguese
Robert Hirschler, Colour Literacy Project - Team Member and Consultant

Starting last year, a team of Brazilian university color educators took on the task of translating English colour terms into Portuguese. The process involved research into existing terminology in both Portuguese and English and recommendations for aligning the two languages with up-to-date references. Robert will share a few of the fascinating finding that emerged along the way.

A graduate of the Technical University of Budapest, Hungary in chemical engineering and textile chemistry, Robert presented his first paper on computerized colour matching in 1967.  Actively involved in colourimetry and colour science ever since,  he is the past chair two CIE Technical Committees, the AIC Study Group on Colour Education, and the ISCC/AIC Colour Literacy Project. He is an active member of both ProCor (Brazil) and the Hungarian National Colour Committee and a past member of the AIC Executive Committee.A senior editor of Color Research and Application, his current research interests include the teaching of basic colour science to architects, designers, and artists and the colour theory of neo-impressionist painters. He currently leads a team of Brazilian colour professionals working on translating colour terminology from English to Portuguese.

Education Presentation – Colour Literacy in the 21^st Century
Luanne Stovall, University of Texas at Austin

Artists, designers, scientists, and other specialists often speak different color languages. This presentation explores how 21st century color literacy builds common ground for communication.