A life in colour
Colour is a specialism, a particular visual language with precise rules and laws. Since its birth in the 1960s, colour design has become a professional discipline. Jean-Philippe Lenclos built a career in colour design and has practiced in this profession for over fifty years. This site provides an overview of the diverse colour design projects that Lenclos has developed throughout his career. His contribution to the vast subject of colour extends from creation, design and planning through to management and communication.
What inspired Lenclos to start his practice, how did he develop it and what techniques did he use to drive the research and commercial sides of his work? Above all he is a designer, but this practice is broadened through his research and teaching, and all of these are fed through his work as a painter. For more than fifty years colour has found its broadest expression in his daily life, creative and social. And this has never stopped growing.
Architectural space as a whole is subject to the advanced standards set by the director of colour working on a project. As a result, colour can create a valuable heritage for a place, connected to the past and future. But, perhaps more obviously, colour runs through every part of our daily lives. Everyone lives in a world of colour; in their clothes, their workspaces and in their domestic environments. Unconsciously, we are all influenced by the media as well, which maximise the impact of their messages through the use of colour.
Ultimately, all consumers, guided by fashion trends, want to choose household products in a rich variety of colours that reflect their personality and lifestyle. So, in the global market of consumer products and appliances where success comes through communicating clear values, colour plays an essential role. Colour has become an inescapable factor in the economics of tailoring products for different market segments. What will be the next colour trends?
The answers to these questions and many more are demonstrated through Lenclos’s work across seven different chapters; design, research, teaching and art.
Four complementary activities
These four circles represent the four complementary activities that Jean-Philippe Lenclos has developed during his career; colour design, research, teaching and painting. Each circle is bordered by three equal segments of colour, each representing the influence upon this activity of the three other activities. For example, the red circle representing colour design is influenced by Lenclos’s research, teaching and painting. And the four central arrows illustrate the constant interaction of these four activities upon each other.
