Chromatic Variations from the GF Color Collection

Transcript (Download)

The association of color and music is a quite natural alignment, one that has been expressed in many forms in many times.

Basic to the analogy is the fact that as the sensations of sound are to the ear, the sensations of the body.

Okay gang, let's set our levels.

Give me a blue.

Further, as orderly arrangement of sounds by the composer produces music, while random haphazard sounds produce noise, colors organized by the artist or other color expert produce visual harmony, rather than the visual discord of random haphazard arrangements of color elements.

Okay, blue, you're set.

Now let's get a green level.

It has long been demonstrable that both noise and visual discord have negative effects on morale and productivity.

And that conversely, visual and oral harmony are highly positive influences.

That's good green.

Now let's hear some yellow and red together.

For these and other reasons, we consider a strong color music association appropriate to the introduction of our new color system.

That's fine for yellow and red.

Now let's hear from orange.

The variations we are presenting here, musically and visually, have been selected to dramatize the options, good, bad and in between, that confront everyone who deals seriously with color.

And, it is in the spirit of improving and expanding the very wide world of visual harmony that we are calling this production, Chromatic Variations from the GF Color Collection.

That's fine orange.

We're all set in here.

This is Variations from GF Color Collection, Track 1.

The scene here is, believe it or not, suffused with vibrant color.

Only the illumination is missing.

Add an expanding quantity of sunlight to this particular scene and see for yourself how color can bring life to a given environment.

Natural color is the dominant influence here.

And natural color has become a kind of euphemism for correct color.

But correct is itself one of those subjective terms which, like taste, is at least as widely interpretable as the difference between Currier and Ives and 3200 Kelvin.

Don't misunderstand.

We would be the last to put down natural color.

It's not nice to fault Mother Nature's color.

But just consider the uncertainties involved in following such specifications as sky blue, leaf green, peach, orchid, plum, and so on.

Such designations are evocative of all kinds of subjective associations to be sure.

But subjective associations tend to resist precise translation into objective specifications.

As my leaf is greener than your leaf, your orange is oranger than mine.

While her plum is, in many ways, plummier than ours.

And that's the way it goes, quite naturally, all across nature's wonderfully variegated spectrum.

We feel at ease with these observations because, at least since the early cave painters, artists have been filtering natural color interpretations through their own aesthetic judgments and technical limitations and modifying them accordingly with no apparent diminishing of nature's glories, real or implied.

And in point of fact, natural colors, in all their colossal aggregate, are not all that harmonious or wouldn't be displayed side by side.

Nature gets away with her catch -all palette because her canvas is so wide and so beautiful.

Sheer space is a great harmonizer.

So much for nature's color extravagancies.

Just to keep it all in perspective, let's consider a sampling of man's involvement with color.

In the beginning, as the saying goes, the child's responses to color are as pure and unprejudiced as the reactions of various other innocent fauna.

The child's response to color is as pure and unprejudiced as the reactions of various other innocent fauna.

Responses and expressions alike incorporate exuberances of spirit and creativity that color can and should evoke.

But somewhere along the line, inhibitions and constraints begin to raise their uncreative heads and intuitively expressed color dynamics become something else, or more precisely, nothing else.

Not the least of the negative influences are the traditional color cliches with their built -in contradictions and imprecisions.

What a list one could make, for example, of just the connotations of red.

How about danger, mercy, provocation, or dare we recall it, the fabled red light district? And the very same red that ennobles the red badge of courage could well be the same red that we are supposed to see when anger wipes out reason.

But good old reliable blue gets its share of contradictions too.

Since the hue of flags' honor and freedom's skies is not readily differentiated from the blues we sing out in lamentation of loves lost and dreams derailed.

Add blue Monday and blue funk, and you can estimate the true dimensions of blues detractions.

And while you're at it, consider the sorry plight of warm, sunny yellow.

So long condemned to coloring the special stripe alleged to lurk in the backs of those timid souls who resist the trumpet's command to charge.

On that score, does the yellow stripe down the middle of a highway mean that you're a chicken if you don't cross it against traffic? Let's hope not.

But in any case, as if yellow wasn't enough, cowardice was also classically awarded a feather of purest white to further identify its ignoble perpetrators.

This kind of put down of color is part of the legacy of less well -informed times past.

And of course, there were many positive attitudes and applications to offset them.

But considering our well -documented historical veneration of color and its powers to inspire, it is surprising how drab and uninspiring we permitted our working environments to remain through more than half of this presumably enlightened century.

The artist has always sensed intuitively the emotional powers of color.

Sometimes even an inherently sunny disposition needs a color cue.

Yet it required not only the unrelenting efforts of the pioneer interior designers, but the support of industrial psychologists backed by a considerable body of scientific confirmation to sell the business in industrial communities on the positive, highly productive benefits of humanizing the working environment.

The tide started turning in the early 50s, and once this humanizing movement was underway, the nothing neutrals were replaced by the tentative pastels, and carpets started covering the tile floors of those traditionally depressing working areas.

And, as small a start as these early developments represented in terms of total needs, they did manage to light the fuse for the explosion of real color that was certain to follow.

And follow it did, in the 60s, interestingly and often strikingly, though seldom on a consistent, integrated basis.

Which brings us up to the here and now, the final quarter of the 20th century, with its authentically dazzling array of color options.

It is an array made both more impressive and more productive through the coherence of the GF color collection.

Because the ramifications and complexities of today's working environment involve so many related elements, the GF color collection extends far beyond the confines of its primary palette of 24 enamel colors, the codifying basis for all components of the system.

It extends not only from A to Z, but from VINEX to metal finishes.

The GF color collection is a comprehensive, consistent, color -coded system expressed in 18 fabric and finish groups, selected, specified, and supplied from a master reference by a letter, number, letter, tricode.

The tricode indicates the fabric or finish group, its relationship to the primary palette, the 24 basic enamel finishes, and its color family, respectively.

Within a color family, all colors are in harmony.

A working match is indicated when the tricodes of two or more swatches are identified by number and final letter pairings.

Naturally enough, the professional designer doesn't require a matched color system to get the job done, even a complex job.

But the professional designer can make good use of a compatible collection of colors, which will expand his creative range, and make communication of color and related choices easier and more certain.

We could demonstrate the ease, security, and variety of interpreting the GF color collection with a hundred examples.

But one will suffice for now.

Suppose you select dark beige, Q4A, as an enamel finish.

To complete a matching design selection, note its compatibility code, and choose either Columbia Fabric, C4A, or any other 4A -coated material.

We hope that you will find the GF color collection to be as useful and flexible as we have tried to design it to be.

It should work equally well for solos and ensembles, for classical and contemporary.

And if it lives up to its solid early promise, it will serve the color composer and the color conductor, as well as the color performer.

That's the GF color collection.

Play us a selection of environments, maestro, if you please.

The GF color collection is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro, and the color performer is a collection of environments, maestro,

Identifier

F.2010-02-0235

Date Of Production

1976

Abstract

Industrial film promoting the GF Color Collection, "a consistent, color-coded system based on color harmonies" developed by GF Business Equipment, Inc. of Youngstown, Ohio. Founded in 1902 as General Fireproofing Company, GF was a producer of building materials and office furniture.

Description

Beginning with five Chicago musicians in a recording studio, the film's narrator describes the associations between music and colors. She explains the emotional powers and connotations that different colors have, and emphasizes the importance of "visual harmony." With "the positive, highly productive benefits of humanizing the working environment" in mind, the film introduces the GF Color Collection, a system of matching compatible colors when designing a business space: "Every swatch is identified by a Letter-Number-Letter TRI-CODE indicating its fabric or finish group; its similarity to the Primary Palette (the 24 basic enamel finishes); and its color family--respectively."

Format

16mm

Extent

500 feet

Color

Color

Sound

Optical

Reel/Tape Number

1/1

Has Been Digitized?

Yes

Language Of Materials

English

Element

Answer Print

Genre

Sponsored
Industrial

Form

Short

Subject

Design
Music
Advertising
Office workers
Orchestras

Related Collections

Rhodes Patterson Collection

Related Places

North America ➜ United States ➜ Illinois ➜ Chicago

North America ➜ United States ➜ Colorado ➜ Aspen

Sponsor/client

GF Business Equipment, Inc.

Main Credits

Patterson, Rhodes (is director)

Additional Credits

Bloodworth, Lamar (is cinematographer)

Costello, Joe (is cinematographer)

Bannister, Will (is cinematographer)

Patterson, Rhodes (is cinematographer)

Labellarte, Rocco (is editor)

Marvine, Jane (music)

Patterson, Rhodes (is writer)

Participants And Performers

Dixon, Louise (is performer)

Marvine, Jane (is performer)

Williams, Gail (is performer)

Olin, Jim (is performer)

Poremba, Ed (is performer)

Cary, P.M. (is narrator)

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