What's In a (Color) Name?

A recent Substack post by Lisa in Colour got me remembering my job at the "panty factory" (surface designer for an underwear and loungewear company). 

six packs of prints and solids were typical
this combo sold at Costco US and Canada in 2008

Presentations for buyers looked like this:

sometime in the approval process, the Colorado Clay turned into Green
and the packing order got flipped

As you can see, the prints and solids were given names, to aid communication

I worked in Illustrator, and had a massive swatch panel:

And almost every color had a name!

They needed to be "enticing" names, to not repel the buyers!

If it was a Pantone standard, I would use Pantone's name.

The others? I would scour color charts on Google Images. Or think of flowers. Or maritime things. Or...

If you need a color name for a project, feel free to use one of mine! 

Spoonflower x East Fork Challenge

Time for another Spoonflower popularity contest.

For this challenge, we were told to be inspired by the glaze colors of these dishes from East Fork:

I took the actual pottery (and other East Fork items) as my inspiration!

Traced them in Procreate...

Worked some Adobe Illustrator/Photoshop magic, and, voila!

I call it "The Dish Ran Away With the Spoon"

There are 2158 entries in this contest (yikes... it gets worse every time)

• 03/28/2023: Submissions close at 3pm EDT
• 03/30/2023: Public voting opens
• 04/04/2023: Public voting ends at 3pm EDT
• 04/06/2023: Spoonflower will announce the winner

I wasn't even close. I gave up looking to see how many votes I got. WAY too many entries.

The rules: Artists must use both East Fork glaze colors, Butter (#F4EDBA) and Piglet (#F2DDDD) as the main colors. Additional colors can be incorporated, but we recommend only adding neutrals and keeping it simple with no more than 4 colors total (not including black and white) to ensure your design coordinates well with East Fork products. Honoring the glaze colors is key!