Experiencing Color with Laura Guido-Clark

"Color is human, and its greatest power lies in its ability to affect emotion."

Experience Consultant, Laura Guido-Clark has long understood that color speaks volumes and can be felt on an emotional level. Her ability to translate color’s conscious and unconscious influence has helped companies such as Google, Samsung, and Toyota transform the energy in their space.

We invited Laura Guido-Clark to join our Design Summit and share her story, inspirations, and unique perspective on color with our team.

In 2011, Laura fulfilled her dream and founded Project Color Corps™, a volunteer-based, nonprofit organization. Their goal is to create change through painting inner city neighborhoods with colors and patterns that impart positive messages of optimism and hope.

Laura also joined Herman Miller as their Creative Director of Materiality, playing a key role in launching the remastered Aeron Chair. During her keynote, we had the chance to ask about the thought process behind its new colors.

“Seating in the environment needs to reflect the attributes of living office through tactility and functionality. We have moved away from the need to prove that technology is present, it is implied. All of this drives the need to again dematerialize and to think of color as a seamless palette."

"The two new colors – mineral and carbon, are inspired by nature. Their color and value balance the iconic history of Aeron’s graphite, which will continue to be offered as the essential dark value. What was most important was that each of the colorways is combined with incremental value shifts that allow the chair to be seen holistically. I loved the way it could move through environments effortlessly.”

Laura went on to found Love Good Color in 2017, her revolutionary new color tool and methodology that fuses science with the senses. 

We asked Laura about her thoughts on the universality of perceiving color as something that not only stimulates our eyes but also our mood.

“I believe that color is a language, and while color has some cultural implications, I believe the way people think about their comfort of the dosage of color is a bigger differentiator than the emotional connotation of the color itself.”

To most of us, color is visual. But to Laura, color is a powerful medium that has both emotional depth and sensorial capacity. She challenges us to shift our perception of color from purely a visual spectrum, to one of temperament. “We see and feel color!”