The Future of Color Forecasting with Leslie Harrington

When color-minded come together you have great conversations, proof again is my episode with Leslie Harrington. Leslie talks color strategy like very few and explains the major pitfalls in selecting color. She believes the future of color forecasting lays in data to validate intuitively made color choices. How will AI influence the jobs of color professionals and how can the two sit side by side? Listen to this intriguing color talk now!

Leslie Harrington Ph.D is the Co-founder of HueData, a color intelligence company, and the Executive Director of The Color Association of the United States, a color trend agency since 1915 specialising in Fashion and Interiors/Environments. She currently is on the Executive Committee of AIC, a professional member of ISCC, is a professional member of ASID - American Society of Interior Designers. Leslie is the current President of AIC - International Color Association. Leslie has worked in the area of color strategy and color marketing over a 25+ year for companies such as Benjamin Moore and has been published and quotes in numerous publications such as The New York Times, The Chicago Tribune, The New Yorker, Oprah Magazine and aired on Dr Oz Show, CBS’s Live it Up with Ali & Jack, ABC's Good Morning America and many more. 

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Transcript

Judith van Vliet: Hi everyone, and welcome back to the Color Authority. Today I'm going to be talking to Leslie Harrington. She is cofounder of Huedata, a color intelligence company and the executive director of the Color Association of the United States, which is a color trend agency agency since 1915, specializing in fashion and interiors. She's currently on the executive committee of the AIC, a professional member of the ISC, and is a professional member of the ASID American Society of Interior Designers. He's current president of the International Color Association. Now, Leslie has worked in the area of color strategy and color marketing for over 25 years for companies such as Benjamin Moore and has been published and coded in numerous publications such as The New York Times, Chicago Tribune, the New Yorker, Oprah Magazine, and many more. Let's hear what she has to say about the future of color forecast. Good morning, Leslie. Welcome to the color authority. How are you today?

Leslie Harrington: Good, how are you?

Judith van Vliet: Very well. It's extremely hot in Milan, but I'm happy. I know it's hot where you are as well. Right.

Leslie Harrington: I'm calling in, actually, from Greenwich, Connecticut, but I usually work out of New York City.

Judith van Vliet: So, again, thank you for being part of TCA and being part of the podcast. My first question with all the podcast is what is color to you? So I wanted to ask you that very same. Leslie, what is it to you?

Leslie Harrington: It's a really good question for me, actually. I think it's become a way of life. I started really young. My mom and my aunt, who are twins, were in the business, so to speak, but they weren't formally trained. And I went to design school to be more formally trained, but back then they really didn't have much of an education on color. It was actually pretty sad. And from there I managed to, I guess, through luck, land a job at Benjamin Moore Paint in the color and Design department. And I was there for a number of years. That was in Toronto, Canada and the Canadian division. And after about six years. They transferred me to the United States. And I worked there in that department and eventually led that department and then eventually left and started my own consulting firm that sort of broadened what I would say. Moving out of solid. Flat color into consulting in textiles. Automotive. Electronics. Pharmaceutical. Just sort of the whole world of colors sort of opened up in a different way and started to look at becoming a little bit more conscious of research. Validation. More I don't want to say scientific. But we always live much more in an intuitive way with color emotional way.

Judith van Vliet: Yes.

Leslie Harrington: And I thought it was time to sort of bring a little bit more rigors to the profession. And so I guess for me, it's just part of life.

Judith van Vliet: Part of your life, yes, I think it is. For most people that obviously I interview on this podcast but you're the first one to say that, that it is your life. When we met a couple of weeks ago, it was funny because we talked about how most of the people that we all seem to know, because our world still seems to be a small world, we seem to know each other, but almost everybody that we know who works in color works in color by accident. It was my case. I'm hearing that it was also sort of your case. Right. I mean, why is that? Why does this happen? It's a funny way.

Leslie Harrington: I think that most of the time it's because there really isn't a lot of formal training and a lot of well, when we were doing it, formal jobs. It was just kind of, oh, we need somebody to do this. Oh, it's a little bit harder than I thought it was. Maybe we can hire somebody and they would just throw a design person in there that they thought had good taste, let's say, or you just looked like the parts. And I know that in many corporations for a long time, the president or CEO would default to the wife and say, what color would you pick? Or the secretary? Or the decisions were very sort of arbitrary. There was really no formulation around how it was done. And I think as color became much more of a strategic lever for companies, they started to say, oh, wait, maybe we better take a step back and understand this a little bit more. And is there a way for us to differentiate in the industry? Is there a way to pull apart and become more unique and use it as a way to increase sales?

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, when you say you looked like when the CEO had to look at the people in this company and he said you looked like you would be the right person, you're meeting the women right in the company, probably. And there's a lot of women in color.

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, unfortunately, I think it's like many industries in higher education, there seems to be a lot of men. And interestingly enough, there was recently a study done where it looked at the publication of books on the subject of color, and primarily all of them were men. In the top ten books that were cited were all men, except for, I think, maybe one woman sort of crept into the top ten in the something like that. But yeah, the people that work in industry, if you go to a meeting like color marketing group or something like that, is mostly women type of thing. So it's kind of like we're the bottom hard workers, the ants. Indeed, I think really making a difference in climbing the ladder, which is nice to see.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah. What struggles did you come across when you worked in color? Maybe in the earlier days, whether that was Benjamin Moore, also the earlier days in being a consultant. And right now, how do you feel exchange you mentioned a little bit that color now is a hotter topic. Yes, but there are still struggles, I guess.

Leslie Harrington: Still struggles. So I mean when I was at Benjamin Moore, I think that in corporate environment was definitely where I ran into most of the sort of roadblocks, I would say. And I kept sort of saying wait a minute, our department is important, we can make a difference. We can help sell more product, we can help to become a leader in the industry from everything from merchandising color cards to advertise every touch point. The company is about color yet they didn't think of themselves as a color company. It became very hard. So I thought, well maybe I need to talk their language because they obviously aren't interested in talking my language. So because of that I went back to school and got an MBA because I thought if I had an MBA, then maybe they'd take me more serious sitting down at the table with the big table. Yeah, big table. Right. And I think that that did help a lot and it also helped me because from there I became much more interested in the business side of color where very few people were working. And from there I went on to continue my studies and do a PhD in what I coined at the time, which was back in 2006, color strategy, leveraging color to add an extract value to products and brands. And the whole idea of the research was to understand how do you do that? Because color for me actually through the research became a value add. And why value add is so important is that if you don't add value to a product or brand then you can't extract it. You can't just keep taking out value from something you have to put things in. And color I believe is one of those things that you put in and add value to the brand or the product that allow you to extract such as sales and brand loyalty and all that type of thing.

Judith van Vliet: I think that's the perfect messaging indeed that is for everybody who's listening to this podcast caller is an added value but you need to add it correctly. And I think this is where we both struggle sometimes and I think everybody in color struggles or at least our clients struggle to have your clients in our case or maybe my clients internal external to have them accept a color choice. Even if you believe that's an important color and you know how to convey that. And that's what you said, right? It wasn't just you did your MBA just also to be at the big table but also because you want to focus on color strategy. Can you help what that really entails and how you take these companies by the hands and play the color game, make them accept the importance of color as well.

Leslie Harrington: Right? And I think that. First of all, there had to be an awareness in these organizations that color was important. And I think companies like Apple, when, you know, they introduced color into their product line, it really differentiated themselves. And companies were like, oh, that's cool. And everybody loved it because of the new colors that it came out in. Did people tire of those colors? Absolutely. But part of the color game is knowing when to switch it up, when to change, how to move with that. So an example with one of my clients was that they were not in their color game. Their product was colorless. So just because it just came in a primed, kind of plain color, and they decided that they wanted to move into the market of color and to have their product in different colors already prefinished. And they thought, okay, so we're just going to have them prefinished. What the heck, right? And then they started to try and figure out, well, what colors would we have? How many colors do we need? And as they dug into it a little bit more, they were like, oh, this is a lot harder than we thought. Maybe we better call somebody in and find out a little bit more. And so I helped lead them through the process of how to make those decisions and build a strong foundation and answer those questions about what colors do, how many colors do you have, which has a lot to do with logistics, sales, operations, things that people don't think about, because there's also what colors can you make? How do the colors interact? When do you discontinue a color and introduce another color? How do you discontinue a color? Sort of many sort of aspects. And then there's the whole education of your company about color, because people in the company that are selling products that are in color have to understand how to sell color too. And then it becomes educating the customer on what they should use. So it's a really large life cycle kind of question, I think, around coloring. Until people start to work with it, they really don't understand how complicated it can be.

Judith van Vliet: That's true. If you think about pigments being discontinued, let's say that you've imagined this beautiful metallic effect on your coating, and that metallic effect all of a sudden is not there anymore. Yet you are a big OEM out there. Let's say you're a car brand. What are you going to do? I mean, those are all things that you then indeed assist your clients with trying to figure this out ahead of time and plan for this type of issues as early as possible. Because now with the whole supply chain crashing, also the pigment supply chain, it gets a bit tricky. Right, right.

Leslie Harrington: And definitely I think the issue that you talk about is the limitations. People don't think about a product having limitations in what colors can be made. Like, I worked for a company that developed binders and the industry was showing a lot of bright colors in related areas, but you couldn't make those bright colors and binders. So how do you then play the color game to work with the industry when you can't actually copy, let's say, for lack of a better word, because sometimes the way a lot of people play the game is they try to be I call it a fast follower, right? So they look at what everybody else is doing and then they copy them. Very few people are looking to take a leadership position, sort of like Apple did. And that's a really hard place to be taking that leadership position. And then some people just could care less and they put the same colors in the market and they never change them. And they sell, right? Because they sell. And that's the other thing I think that's really interesting, that's changed is that once upon a time, color decisions were really in the hands of the designers and companies. And then I think in 2008, that's when I really noticed it, when everything kind of crashed and caved in. The first people to lose their jobs were in the design department and so all of the work that they were doing usually transferred to the marketing people and they didn't really understand. So then the marketing people, who usually are very number oriented would just go and ask somebody to crank out the sales numbers and they were afraid of taking a risk on introducing a new color. So they would just do the top ten colors that sold the previous year and they would distribute them throughout the whole country with no sensitivity to regionality or to customer segmentation or any of those kinds of things. And then most of us saw the outcome of that, especially in the fashion industry where you'd walk into these retail stores and the whole floor was black and gray. If you do that year over year over year, you flatten out the whole industry. And I remember talking to a mass retailer, remember when those little thumb drives became really popular and buyers just wanted to have a bin of silver and black ones and somehow somebody convinced them to make them in magenta and lime green. And the buyers were shocked that the magenta and lime green sold three to one over black and silver. They couldn't believe that that happened. And it was really an eye opener for that organization that in that product, color was really important to be bright. So color is contextual. You always have to think of it, how it relates to that product and.

Judith van Vliet: To that market and indeed region. As you mentioned before, there's just certain colors that just won't work even if they tend to sell well. I think this is still something that happens with a lot. This still happens. What? You just said it still happens. And that's what makes it so hard, and especially if it's not the right person selecting color in the company. But when we also look at, let's say, selecting the right color, yes, it has this whole strategic part behind it brand legacy, there's a lot to take into account. But what happens to the intuitive part when you're selecting color that still has an active role, right?

Leslie Harrington: Oh, absolutely. And just to kind of qualify a little bit about the fact that some companies still don't take into consider that it's because a lot of people don't have the data. Consider it. They don't capture sales by region, they just capture the sale of red for the entire company. They don't say. How did red sell in Arizona, California, New York, Minnesota. They don't look at that. If they had that data, then they'd have a lot better ability to say, oh wow, there's a big difference here, and they could buy smarter so that they didn't have a lot of excess inventory. But the intuitive part is still as important. And this is, I think, where companies have a really hard time understanding it because it's so hard for people to explain why I think these colors are going to be important in 2025 and there isn't necessarily a lot of data that will project you into the future. So I think that's why when I say color is my life, it's also the fact that every single day everything I look at is being sort of put into these buckets in my brain. And you tear sheets out of magazines and you collect and you sort of accumulate all of these knickknacks or stones or leaks. We have this whole mix of stuff that nobody can quite understand. But eventually they come together and they coalesce into something that really does indicate what consumers will be looking for in the future. And things need to change. And some people are giving color a bit of a bad rap when it changes because of sustainability now. And they also thought the industry just changed for the sake of change sake, and therefore there was a lot of waste in the industry. So we might see color cycles slow down, but we still need to introduce new color, new excitement into product lines.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, sure. It's what I saw in Milan Design Week just ten days ago. It was for one of the very first times I saw many brands, they did not have new products, no new designs, but new colorways. So I'm not saying that that's hugely sustainable, but it is a step forward because that's indeed what I also wanted to ask you. Color has come a long way. If Milan Design Week suddenly brands that I would not consider colorful are very colorful. They're having their installations, their booth, super colorful. We're not there yet because there's challenges like the sustainable facts. The whole business of having to be ecological color wise, design wise, material wise, is that you think currently the biggest challenge that we as professionals are facing.

Leslie Harrington: I don't know if it's the biggest challenge, but it certainly is something that people are designers have to become much more aware of. And bringing sustainability into the color world is kind of an interesting thing because you don't necessarily think of it, but natural pigments and dyes are becoming more important for a lot of companies as sort of one thing. But what I also think companies are thinking of, and it can work within the sustainability realm, is that it's actually easier and less expensive sometimes for a company to change the color of their chairs than to introduce a new design. New designs require new tooling, new molds, a lot of other engineering and stuff. But if you recolore it, it's just the plastic is different and the upholstery is different, let's say. But there's a lot less work, a lot less time involved in money. So some companies are figuring out that we can make our line look totally different and totally new by just changing the color, and we don't have to do all that other hard work, let's say.

Judith van Vliet: That's good for us. Indeed. Good for our jobs.

Leslie Harrington: Indeed.

Judith van Vliet: Where do you think color is moving towards? Because, as I just said, it seems that also Maison & Objet, Milan Design Week. NeoCon. I didn't visit, but I know a lot of people went to Chicago last week, or I think it was two weeks ago, extremely colorful. Where do you think color is moving? Or what future does color have in this world of business?

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, I think that it's a really interesting question. So post Pandemic, and I kind of hate to always center around something like that, but if you look at the history of color, there are always these little bursts or pops of positiveness coming out of major events. You know, at the Color Association, we have archives we're founded in 1917, so we can actually see how after the First World War, what happened after the Second World War, what happened, what happened in the can tie those into key major economic, social events. So it's really easy to start to see that. And coming out of Pandemic, everybody went super color, over the top, supernatural bright. You looked at the designers and it was just POW. It's such a colorful world. And not just designers. I mean, interiors, installations, all those kinds of things were really powerful. We just finished doing our forecast for interiors 24, 25, and while we are seeing the colors taming down, those really bright pops are still there. The happiness, the positive stuff is really there. But it's starting, I think, to become a little bit more grounded. A lot of greens golds coming back. We were just joking the other day. Heaven forbid that we call something Harvest Gold. But the thing that I think is interesting about Harvest Gold is there are probably a lot of people listening to your podcast that have never seen a harvest gold refrigerator in their life. And they don't realize, I always say the scarring that our generation has to them, it's new, it's interesting, it's different. They don't have that association with harvest or avocado type of thing.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, they might be nostalgic even for a period that they weren't even born, which is something that we see a lot with the new generations.

Leslie Harrington: Right.

Judith van Vliet: They're nostalgic for the where they were literally not there yet.

Leslie Harrington: Well, I mean, the appliance industry is a really great example. I mean, coming out of that period where we had harvest gold, avocado, all these things that were extremely popular and sold, there was such a backlash. We went to like stainless steel and west. But now look at all the top brands that are coming out with really high end color. And color is starting to become really popular at super high end, super high end. And very few people I know are putting in white or stainless steel anymore.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, that's what I also saw in Milan Design Week. Definitely in the area of obviously the kitchen area. We both come from color trend forecasting. You just mentioned, you just did your 2024, 2025, an area that has exploded. Yet it doesn't always feel very sustainable to keep doing new color forecast, right? Especially if you're seasonal. What is your vision on this?

Leslie Harrington: I think the term forecast scares people. And trend scares people because especially in our industry, they think of it as some airy fairy kind of pulling out of the air. But I always say to people, there are other industries, the financial industry, they forecast trends and everything marketing, they forecast, they look at trends. So why is it in our industry, it's so airy fairy? I think it's because it's unsubstantiated for the most part. So for me, I really think that the whole forecast trending part of color is going to change. I think that we are going to look to be much more analytical or have data to support that intuitive side so we'll be able to look back in time, we'll be able to see cycles. And it's not necessarily for us to make decisions, but it's for us to allow other people to be confident in those decisions we're making. I think so. I think that the data is going to be really important and potentially a lot of people are going to maybe be even upset with me making this comment. But there is a day that when color trend forecasters may not even be a job anymore. It may very well be taken over by the AI-ing of color, which will happen. It's just a matter of time. And again, a lot of those kinds of decisions are going to be made based on evidence. And also with this idea, the creative side, because you've seen AI programs that write poems, write music, design product, and they do a fairly good job. They're still learning but they're actually doing okay. So I think the designer is going to have more help to be able to do their job and they're not going to do the work they do now, but they'll have support to do that work so they can go on and do the more important work.

Judith van Vliet: Right. Because they're still the human being that gives the input to obviously the machine. Right.

Leslie Harrington: I really think some people are afraid of it. I think it's going to be huge for our profession. I think it's really going to make us be able to make that big move where color is really considered a strategic lever, where it really is respected and valued within organizations.

Judith van Vliet: So Anita, I was going to ask you what would be a possible direction of color trend forecasting? Which would you choose to reply? It's going to be more strategic. It's going to be looking at databases. It's about really getting all that data, reading it and not using just the intuitive part, but really getting it right. Which in theory is a more sustainable direction. Because if you get it right, you'll sell it, obviously, and you won't have stock, you won't have too much stock of pigments or products that in certain points still are going to be demolished.

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, well, the old saying is good color sells and bad color builds inventory. And we can't afford to have inventory laying around in stores. And if people want to see what's selling or not selling, go to a website and look like J. Crew or something like that. Certain colors are regular price and certain colors are discounted. It's not just that that sweater is discounted. Some colors aren't and some are more. Or you go to the table in a mass retailer and you see the piles are this high for red and they're this high for green. Well, that tells you right away that people are buying green, they're not buying red.

Judith van Vliet: That's a good one. I never thought about that. It's true.

Leslie Harrington: Well, that's the whole idea of living color, right? Like shopping for something and you're like analyzing the inventory.

Judith van Vliet: For me that always is a good one because I tend to buy color and then maybe there is certain markets, certain products that people don't want to buy color. Now I'm always happy because that's how I get the discounted stuff. Indeed. So if AI is going to play this very big role, how can we as professionals, indeed still be of service, directing our clients in the right way? If in the end, let's say that all our clients buy such a machine they put in their data, do they still need professionals like you?

Leslie Harrington: And I hope so, and I think so. And again, I think the job or the profession will morph into something different. And again, you can look at many other professions where they've been able to bring in data services or the ability to collect data, not just on sales, but they try to then take that next level down to see the trending, to then forecast and look in the future. But having a data resource, something that you can look into, I think still requires interpretation. It still requires being it'll do some analysis for you, for sure, but then you have to apply it to your product. You have to apply it to your brand. Like I said, the color is contextual, right? And we all have different market groups, market segments, customers, they're shifting. And so I think that, again, to begin with, it's all going to be topline knowledge, top line data that we then have to sit through and make sense of it. But eventually with machine learning, it's going to get better and better. And as people get to put in their own data, it's going to get better and better. And that's all going to be really cool and really interesting to see how that note turns out.

Judith van Vliet: How far out is that? How far do you think you are? A little bit of a futurist as well.

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, I have been told and now I've worked enough years to know that I'm usually a good five years, six years ahead of when something comes to market, sometimes even longer. I remember talking to Benjamin Moore and saying, I said, who do you think your biggest competition is going to be in the future? And everybody is thinking, other paint companies. Right, right. Because they're going to come out with new colors or better paint. And I'm saying, no. I said, I think your competition is going to come from the lighting industry. Because what happens if all of a sudden they can change the color of a wall with light instead of painting your walls? Everybody hates painting. I mean, for the most part it's dirty, it's time consuming, and nowadays it's actually even expensive.

Judith van Vliet: I hate wallpaper more, but still yeah.

Leslie Harrington: What if you could flick a switch and change the color of your wall or your substrate? The walls are made out of are not drywall anymore, they're not paintable surfaces. Then what does the industry do? So all of that thing is kind of interesting. I do think that in the future we'll be able to change environments to different colors with the flick of a switch. The question that people don't think of is just because you can change the color doesn't mean that people know what color to change it to. Job that we have is to say, well, if you're looking for an environment to produce this kind of emotion, this kind of feeling like you're having a party versus you want to relax, what color should I change the wall to? Or when people have the ability to 3D print in their home, a cup or something like that, they have the ability to print, but they don't have the ability necessarily to know what color they should print it in. And the companies will say, oh, we have 1000 colors you can choose from.

Judith van Vliet: And then still the client will be, yeah, right.

Leslie Harrington: So that's, again, where we come in is not helping make people make those kind of color choices.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, that's true. And almost political discussion, I think the color of the year, I think in our market this is like every year. Again, it's an intriguing concept in my personal opinion. I think it's more marketing. But what do you think of today's value still if we are indeed, you mentioned copy pasting colors that are cool, but you're not fast forward thinking in that case as a brand. But what do you think is really the value of having a color of the year still in today's market?

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, I definitely don't want to bash the concept. The concept originated out of the marketing department as a way to show the people that they were a leader in color. That was its primary purpose. And again, like I was just saying is that a company has a thousand colors to choose, but people don't know which one to choose. So color of the year was really a way to get people to say, hey, this is kind of a new direction. Why don't you try this color? Right? And so they just did a broad swipe of Peri Winkle and all of a sudden you had periwinkle and everything. Now, to start with, you never did. But what was interesting is that years later, all of a sudden they would announce the color of the year. And that day you would be able to go to the nail salon and get that color in nail color. You could go to your appliance store and get a kitchen aid maker. You can go at it and all of a sudden that colors everywhere. And it's like, hey, wait a minute. How do these people know ahead of time what the color of the year was? Well, obviously it's a marketing thing and they went and licensed it. They said, hey, you give us the rights, we'll tell you the color of the year and you can put nail polish out in the market and everybody will buy it. So that bothers me.

Judith van Vliet: It's not forecasting, right?

Leslie Harrington: No, I think it becomes too much of a business rather than an aid for consumers. So that's kind of what I have. And then the other problem I have is colors contextual. Does it really work for nail polish, a car, a cell phone in all the different areas? Some colors can and some colors can't.

Judith van Vliet: And that's where it gets a little bit tricky, I think, for certain. Maybe smaller brands, smaller companies, family companies that copy pasting of what is the color of the year, whether it is indeed Periwinkle or many other companies, because many other companies do color of the years as well, is again, without the help. You're going to just put it on your products and not necessarily will work in your market or with your consumer.

Leslie Harrington: I think that the paint industry is actually a really good industry because almost every paint company puts out a color of the year. And if you can go online and search it and everyone has a different color, like, there's no consensus between them what's the color of the year? And if you look at the process to select the color of the year, usually it's either a single individual expert, a consensus of a group of experts. There's no right or wrong way to do it. An individual consensus of a group. Or the other way you can actually do it is you can crowdsource it. You can go out to the world and say, which color do you think should be the color of the year? And so very few people do the crowdsourcing.

Judith van Vliet: Interesting.

Leslie Harrington: And I actually tried that with the Pink company, and we pulled interior designers in North America to kind of say, what do you think it should be? You know, going right to the source of the people that are using it. Most people have moved away from a single individual. Sort of that iconic celebrity kind of color professional. And they're doing some kind of group consensus. Whether it be internal within the organizations. If you have a lot of color and design people. Or external. Where you would bring together a group of either thought leaders or a counsel that a company would put together of industry experts that are cross industry. Right. So you'd have a paint company, a carpet company, a blind company, all the different areas that work in interiors to pull it together. And if they're smart, they've got a couple of oddballs in there that don't work in the industry. Yes.

Judith van Vliet: View artists in there, or photographers, or.

Leslie Harrington: Fashion, or somebody that works on designing spacecrafts, or just people that just are not in that realm.

Judith van Vliet: Interesting. Yeah. You are on the board. You already mentioned a little bit in the beginning of many color associations such as the AIC in the past, Color Marketing Group, just like me. Indeed. And the AISD as well. How important is being a member of these communities and what do you personally get out of it?

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, I think for me, early in my career, again, because there was a really lack of, I think, education. CMG was a really important part of my development, I think, and primarily because I could network. And for the most part, I was one of two people in a fairly large company. Right. So we didn't get a lot of support and you didn't realize there were a lot of other people out there like you. And so going to conference like CMG, you were like, oh wow, I'm not such an oddball. You know, there's a lot of other people out there doing what I do, and they all have the same struggles and challenges. It was also really good because people would bring in what they thought were going to be forecasted and it could work as either inspiration or validation or it was one of the few ways you could actually get feedback or data to support your decision. Now, there's other ways, but it was really important for me and a lot of my current friends or colleagues are all people that I met way back then. So I think that CMG becomes a really good training ground for a lot of people in our industry, for sure. AIC, which is the International Color Association, I know the acronym doesn't match up, I think because it was originally founded in France and it was Association International Polar. So it tends to be an association that was primarily more science focused. It had a lot of the professors, the researchers, people that worked on really important things that people don't think about. Color televisions and calibrating monitors and cameras and all these things that bring color to life, right? But they're also trying to shift a little bit and bring what I call the softer side of color into the mix, which is the arts and the forecasting people, the artists I saw that, those types of things. So again, I think those kinds of organizations are good. AIC is a little bit more research focused, which again is really nice to see. And I think on the soft side, it's nice to bring in more research and for people to get out there and do research. So I'd highly recommend that if you're the type of person that likes to delve into something and sort of dig at numbers or do research qualitative or quantitative, it's a really good place to go.

Judith van Vliet: I think generally being part of these organizations, member or visiting or going to the conferences, I think I got personally a lot of out of it. How important do you think it is for people that are now today starting in color and design? Because I know many of them are listening to this podcast. How important it is to be part of these communities? Because I think it hasn't changed. Like when you were part of club marketing group. Now that I've been member since 2007, I think it's still every day, again, in every meeting I get something out of it. How important is it for young people starting now?

Leslie Harrington: I personally think it's essential. Again, some of these conferences, you don't have to be a member to attend them. And a lot of them I know AIC, we have a really good student program. Many of the conference where you can go, you have a discounted rate, they award prizes for student competitions, for papers and posters and stuff like that. So I think it's pretty critical because again, we know that the color education within lower and higher education forms is not consistent and it's not necessarily that strong. And so some universities have a really great program that augment usually something else like architecture, interior design, and some really don't. And so I think that going to these conferences and being involved with these communities where you get a lot of education. Now there is at the ISC, which is the international I'm going to get it wrong, but it's the Issa Color Association for the United States. They're doing a joint veteran venture called the Color Literacy Program and you can actually go online and look it up.

Judith van Vliet: Yeah, tell us more about that.

Leslie Harrington: Yeah, I'm probably not the right person, but it's a joint venture with AIC and what they're looking to do is to do a ground up and a grant bottom down approach to standardizing color age education. And our kids go to preschool and they think that red, yellow, blue are the primary colors and when you mix them together, blah, blah, blah, blah, blah blah. Well, that's not the way it is today and that's kind of a misnomer. So what they want to do is help teachers teach color correctly, help people understand from the bottom up rate from grade school and at that higher level coming down. And so if people are working in education, it's a great place to go for resources. If you want to participate as an educator in the program, they've got some really good places. So I highly would recommend getting involved or getting to know more about what they're doing. Maggie would be a great speaker. She's one of the people heading it up and she's an amazing speaker as well as Robert.

Judith van Vliet: I think Maggie did color speak for Color Marketing Group on the topic and it was mind blowing. I listened and I think it's still somewhere recorded. But people were really like, yes, finally they're going to start teaching color the right way already to, let's say, even young children. That just starting out.

Leslie Harrington: I agree. And color is actually a really complicated topic. Really it is. People think it's three primary colors. You've got the color wheel, yellow and blue make green. And that's what most of us started at learning. But that's actually not really the foundation for color. It's much more complicated on that than that. But they're looking to see how they can make it simple, easy, relatable. What are exercises that kids can do or even adults can do that allow us to really understand why this red look different when it's put with blue and when it's put with yellow. What's happening there with the color appearance and stuff like that. And again, that's a really important aspect of our profession because people just think you pick this red, right? But if that red is going to go with black versus that red is going to go with purple, that red is going to look totally different. So how do you modify that red so it actually is the correct red for that application or combination, especially with color combinations.

Judith van Vliet: That's where people get confused and a lot of unfortunately, errors are taking place when young creatives hear what you do. And I'm sure that I've come across a lot of people like that as well. My LinkedIn inbox is full of indeed question like how can I learn what you do? What advice do you give them? Because you can't mentor all of them. I know I can't. It is the reason why I got the podcast though. But what is your advice to everyone?

Leslie Harrington: I think that's probably, again, for me, one of the most difficult questions that we run up against. And of course, many companies have internships, which are wonderful, but again, a lot of those internships are a result of being part of coming in a university group where they have somebody that goes out, leverages their contacts to get you in to a company. I think what you do is great because the way that we meet, we reach more people interested is with forms such as this. However, the biggest problem that all everybody has is how do you get that first job and how then do you build the experience so you can put it on your resume that allows you then to move up. And it really is something I still think you end up starting at the bottom, no matter almost where you are. You may start in a segment of the industry that you don't think is classy or interesting. I mean, you might work for a roofing company, but they need color expertise too. So I think you also have to look really far and wide to see where you can fit in to those kinds of organizations. I'm sorry, I don't have a great answer for that.

Judith van Vliet: No, I'm just thinking about no, but I think a lot of people that are going to be listening, there's already a lot of hints of what drove us to where we are and how you can become a color professional. What is next for you, Leslie?

Leslie Harrington: Oh my goodness. Sometimes I think I'd like to retire, but I don't know if you can ever retire from color. You probably kind of feel the same way again. Like I said, it's a lifestyle. It's in your blood, so to speak. Sounds kind of weird, but I am really interested in the future of color data, AI, machine learning, all of that kind of stuff where it's color is going. I'm really interested in color technology. I'm really interested in all the new research that comes out that starts to show color expanding in different directions and being legitimized. I love the fact when the industry I grew up, my undergraduate degree was interior design. When interior design wasn't well respected and they were thought of women with big floppy hats, there was kind of a mix up between interior designers, interior decorators kind of thing, right? But now the interior design is a real profession, it's well respected and people really understand the value they bring. I do think that it would be wonderful that color professionals someday gain that respect, and I think it'll happen for sure.

Judith van Vliet: I think we're getting there. I think we're getting closer by the day.

Leslie Harrington: Yes, absolutely.

Judith van Vliet: Thank you so much, Leslie. This has been, again, one of those golden opportunities to talk to you when we talk about gold. I'm still thinking about that harvest gold, but it's been great talking to you. So much information and a lot of value here. So I want to thank you again for being part of the podcast.

Leslie Harrington: Thank you so much for helping me.

Judith van Vliet: Thank you, everyone, for listening to this episode with Leslie Harrington. I hope you're going to all go to Apple podcasts and to Spotify and rate and review the show. I will be so thankful for that. My next episode, launching in two weeks, is going to be with Global color ambassador Patti Carpenter. So stay tuned for that one and have a great, colorful day.