|
There has to be a goon out there somewhere who names paint and come on, everyone is curious why there are paints named Garden Trug (Martha Stewart), Intuitive (Behr), and Creole Cottage (Sherwin Williams). What company owns the copyright on "Blue"? What's the story behind paint colors? Do companies treat the names as copyrighted/trademarked in some manner? If Glidden discontinues "Spring Pear White", can Ralph Lauren then use that color name or is it forever Glidden's? I'm bored. Tell me your favorite colors and how they got their names. Or if you work in another industry, how do you name your products?
|
#
?
Mar 11, 2015 21:45
|
|
|
|
| # ? Apr 29, 2024 15:48 |
|
|
Current pantone color of the year, marsala, is because it sorta looks like the color of marsala. But most pantone colors are noted by their number (marsala = Pantone 18-1438). Colors are trademarked in conjunction with names/logos of specific brands, and rarely the specific color. Pantone colors are owned via specific color mixing if I understand it right, so it's less about the color being protected, and more about the formula. As for colors being trademarked (think tiffany blue boxes), it's trademarked for that specific product category and only if the color itself can be used to identiy the brand. So, another jeweler using that particular blue on their packaging would be infringement. About naming stuff: I am an industrial design student, and my non-sponsored projects are generally named by taking words from descriptions of the design (color, main material, type of form, etc), and listing synonyms. Sometimes I mash these together or run them through google translate and see what they are in finnish or french or italian, etc. I'm fully aware that this is dumb and pretentious. I do search the names to make sure I'm not naming something a euphemistic word or whatever or that it doesn't already exist as a similar product name in the same product area. For instance, I have a table with a geometric white/light blue-lavender/indigo pattern across it sorta kinda like fractured ice, so it's name is Glace which is just ice in french.  Concept sketches of the thing. It's named because it makes it easier for me to list it in my portfolio, as something other than "that furniture project I did in that studio." Other people I know do similar things -- descriptor words mixed with product words (Switchvac, for a vacuum that transitions from upright to cannister), other language names (Bambino, a tabletop injection-molded pencil sharpener with a pet-like stance), or corporate sounding naming schemes (CV12, literally Circle Vacuum 12). Sponsored projects have names that fit the branding of the company sponsoring it (e.g. if I were designing wet/dry vacs to go under the main brand of a certain company it might be called WD1450 or something, which is the scheme they use). In actual companies, the naming scheme might be part of the corporate identity, which sometimes gets contained in like a weird catelog specifying palette, typefaces, logo & usage rules, tone of voice in writing, allowable imagery, and values the company wants to project. Having that poo poo be consistent is important. Names for furniture that's too goddamn expensive generally have dumb names (my avatar is Mendini's Proust chair, also the Zio collection at Moooi). Mid-range stuff can be named alright -- Copeland uses names like Berkeley, Contour, Mansfield; but sometimes it still gets weird with stuff like Astrid and Sarah and Momi.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2015 02:55
|
|
|
I think my favourite is 'Elephant's Breath', which is both terribly fancy and describes something colourless. Companies fight over corporate shades all the time, especially eye-grabbing ones like orange, lime, or purple, but legal scraps over individual paint shades are a lot rarer, presumably because there are only so many distinguishable ones, and only so many words to describe them, that companies are bound to use the same words a lot of the time. But you will like Farrow and Ball -- a heritage paint co. from the UK, whose current range includes not only Elephant's Breath, but Dead Salmon, Clunch, Mole's Breath (much darker than an elephant's, apparently), Mouse's Back and Churlish Green. They make a real thing about their odd and antiquated names. Their paint is very expensive and generally hated by decorators both professional and amateur, who reckon it has not only the colours of Jane Austen's era, but also the covering power -- it really is only worth it if your property is Grade 1 listed, or you are the National Trust, and thus aren't allowed to use modern paint formulas, but for this very reason it also has snob value. Noting that people often came to paint-matching services with Farrow and Ball shades (this is legal as long as you're not blatantly scanning in the FB matching cards), ICI brought out a range rather unimaginatively called 'FB', with shades designated only by numbers but obviously 'inspired by' Farrow and Ball bestsellers. Farrow and Ball were understandably livid. As far as I know the 'FB' line was dropped, probably because ICI reckoned it would get too much bad publicity to be suspected of ripping off a small and well-loved rival, and also because they knew drat well that people would still use their paint-matching service to achieve the same thing. I suspect they would have got away with it, though, if they'd just given the copycat paints weird pseudohistorical names of their own. So maybe the names do have a point after all.
|
|
#
?
Mar 12, 2015 14:57
|
|
