Bonsoir #9: Avis de recherche, où sont passées les couleurs?

The world around us seems to be desaturating. Architecture, automobiles, graphics, fashion, digital interfaces: chromatic neutrality dominates our visual landscapes. Is this simply an aesthetic trend, or a symptom of deeper social, economic and cultural changes? When color becomes rarer, what does it say about us, our relationship to risk, emotion and our place within the collective?

This new edition explores the apparent disappearance of color from the perspective of design research. In the style of a collective investigation, it questions the reasons for this chromatic neutralization: industrialization, standardization, minimalism, visual fatigue, but also the desire for control, conformity and standardization.

Here, color-design researcher Estelle Guerry questions the place of color in our contemporary environments and invites us to reflect on its role as a sensitive language of identity. An open reflection on what it means, today, to choose – or not to choose – color.

An event hosted by Estelle Guerry and the Studio Asensò team
Estelle Guerry, a designer by training with a doctorate in design-color and engineering science, is a research engineer at the LARA-SEPPIA laboratory at Toulouse-Jean Jaurès University.

She is involved in the design of innovative products and services that meet new societal needs through color design. Funerals, care design, CMF and the environment are just some of the fields in which its expertise is mobilized.

Alongside her scientific activities, she teaches at the Institut Supérieur Couleur Image Design and lends her expertise to the Plateforme d’innovation Couleur Design Matière, both on the Montauban campus of the Université Toulouse-Jean Jaurès.