Often when we think of commercial design work, we imagine 3 color logos and simple illustrations… but not all commercial work is so plain. Here are 20 commercial designers who create stunningly colorful work.

Mattherw Curry | Imagefed

imagefed.com

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Jasper Goodall is the kind of artist whose work sticks with you: once you see it, you’ll always recognize its iconic look afterwards. A friend did me a great service by introducing me to his work, and I found myself consistently fascinated with his bold use of color and pattern. Part homage to the classic rock posters of the sixties and part visions of modern life at its most chic, Goodall creates contemporary fantasy art — of the sort you wouldn’t be embarrassed to hang in your living room.

Jasper was born in England in 1973 and grew up under the tutelage of parents who encouraged his love of art and supported his pursuit of it. By age 14, he was sure that he wanted a career in the arts. After completing a Foundation year at Birmingham’s Bournville college of art, he went on to get his BA in Illustration at the University of Brighton, graduating during the nineties and heading full steam towards what he dreamed of doing for a living - creating full time.

While Jasper’s rise to popular status may seem a blur to the casual onlooker, he certainly put in his time as a freelance illustrator in both commercial and editorial capacities. His work with once-popular print magazine The Face pushed his work into the public eye and created a buzz around his name. Since that time, he has gone on to work for many major companies, including MTV, Gucci, Nike, Adidas, Coca-Cola, BMW and more.


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While nature tends to trump humans when it comes to color inspiration, at least in my opinion, when humans put their hands into engineering nature, like in the case of salt evaporation ponds, together, unimaginable colors can be created.

The beautiful colors in these images from Google Earth are created during the process of harvesting salt. The vivid colors, which can range from green to bright red, come from different concentrations of algae.

Salt Evaporation Ponds

Salt evaporation ponds are shallow man-made ponds designed to produce salt from sea water. The seawater is fed into large ponds and water is drawn out through natural evaporation which allows the salt to be subsequently harvested. The ponds also provide a productive resting and feeding ground for more than 70 species of waterbirds, including several endangered species. The ponds are commonly separated by levees.

Due to variable algal concentrations, vivid colors, from pale green to bright red, are created in the evaporation ponds. The color indicates the salinity of the ponds. Micro-organisms change their hues as the salinity of the pond increases. In low to mid-salinity ponds, green algae are predominant.

In middle to high salinity ponds, an algae called Dunaliella salina shifts the color to red. Millions of tiny brine shrimp create an orange cast in mid-salinity ponds. Other bacteria such as Stichococcus also contribute tints. These colors are especially interesting to airplane passengers or astronauts passing above due to their somewhat artistic formations of shape and color.

Notable salt ponds include the San Francisco Bay salt ponds in the United States, and the Dead Sea salt ponds in Israel and Jordan and Useless Loop, and Onslow, Western Australia. Abandoned salt pans are a major feature of the southwest coast of Taiwan.

Salt pans are shallow open pans used to evaporate brine for the production of salt. The pans are usually found close to the source of the salt. For example pans used in the solar evaporation of salt from sea water are usually found on the coast, whilst those used to extract salt from solution mined brine will be found near to the brine shaft. In this case extra heat is often provided by lighting fires underneath.

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The tradition of quilting has been a part of many cultures. Thought to have originated in China and Egypt simultaneously, the first record of a quilted garment dates back to 3400BC. Quilts have been highly sought after not only for their warmth and functionality, but their artistic quality and color compositions as well.

Photo by ramson

The History of Quilts

Quilting (stitching together layers of padding and fabric) is as old as ancient Egypt if not older and wholecloth quilts were very common trade goods in wealthy circles in Europe and Asia going back as far as the 15th century.

Piecing fabric together is also very old. It was more often used for clothing but also occasionally for decorative objects like this exquisite pieced pillow from the 15th century.

Photo by hey skinny

The making of pieced quilts made up of cut pieces of fabric sewn in block form with the blocks then sewn together to make the quilt is a more recent development. Pieced block quilts, often called patchwork quilt, did not become the dominant form of quilt making until the mid-19th century, and still is not the traditional form in Provence, Wales, and parts of India.

Photo by shelley_ginger

Quilt making was uncommon in America in the late eighteenth century and early years of the nineteenth. Most women were busy spinning, weaving and sewing in order to clothe their family. Commercial blankets or woven coverlets were a more economical bedcovering for most people. Only the wealthy had the leisure time for quilt making so Colonial Quilting was done by only a few.

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Imagine if an artist could take millions of years to complete a single painting.

Over millions of years the natural process of water penetrating and seeping into stones, bringing with it solutions of iron and magnesium, along with other elements, leaves traces of color and forms within the stone. This, along with cracks created from pressure and channels of water, combine their lines to push up imagery of mountains and trees, creating landscapes of unmeasurable beauty.

Known under a few names, such as: scenic stone, pictorial stones, pietra paesina, marble ruiniforme, lithographic limestone, and stone Florence (there may be others too), these stones were highly prized in early modern Europe and, before that, Asia, because of the beautiful naturally created organic landscapes.

© Bill Atkins

There are three areas in particular that are known (or were known at some point in time) for these types of stones: Florence, Italy; Jasper, Oregon; and Cotham, England.

Hercules Segers

spamula.net

Artists also used these stones as a canvas adding their own hand and transforming the natural lines and shapes of the stone’s face with their own paints, like the one on top painted by Dutch painter Hercules Segers, and the other one by Johann König.


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Fauvism (french for “the wild beasts”) was a short lived art movement popular in the early twentieth century. Lead by Henry Matisse, the movement was known for its use of color; brash, uncontrolled colors often straight from the tube, and applied using bold brush strokes.

André Derain:The Turning Road, L´Estaque

The artists of Fauvism which included: André Derain, Albert Marquet, Charles Camoin, the Belgian painter Henri Evenepoel, Jean Puy, Maurice de Vlaminck, Henri Manguin, Raoul Dufy, Othon Friesz, Georges Rouault, the Dutch painter Kees van Dongen, the Swiss painter Alice Bailly and Georges Braque; believed in color as the main force behind expressing emotion, and were followers of van Gogh’s color ideals, who once said, “Instead of trying to render what I see before me, I use color in a completely arbitrary way to express myself powerfully.”

Henri Matisse: Luxe, Calme et Volupté

The movements name was coined during their first group show in 1905 at the salon d’Automne by the critic Louis Vauxcelles. Vauxcelles described the groups work with the phrase “Donatello au milieu des fauves!” meaning, “Donatello among the wild beasts,” contrasting the work with the Renaissance-type sculptures that shared their room. That phrase, which was printed in a popular paper of the time the next day, along with other outlandish critic quotes, such as: “A pot of paint has been flung in the face of the public,” helped gain attention and bring the groups works into popularity.


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Currently, there are 4000 known minerals, with new discoveries being made year after year. Here are a few yellow minerals to inspire your next palette.

Color in Minerals

The absorption of light, and the apparent color, is determined by a mineral’s atomic bonds which are made up of electrons that absorb certain wave lengths. The colors produced through absorption and emittance are usually produced by transition metals. Even trace amounts of these elements can have a drastic effect on color.

• Cobalt produces the violet-red color in erythrite, (cobalt arsenic sulfide).
• Chromium produces the color orange-red color of crocoite, (lead chromate).
• Copper produces the azure blue color of azurite, (copper carbonate hydroxide).
• Iron produces the red color of limonite, (hydrated iron oxide hydroxide).
• Manganese produces the pink color of rhodochrosite, (manganese carbonate).
• Nickel produces the green color of annabergite, (hydrated nickel arsenate).
• Uranium produces the yellow color of zippeite, (hydrated potassium uranyl sulfate hydroxide).
• Vanadium produces the red-orange color of vanadinite, (lead vanadate chloride).

© Paul M. Schumacher

Meta-autunite  Color    Yellow, Greenish yellow, Yellowish green     Location    Daybreak Mine, Spokane County, Washington, U.S.A     Luster    Pearly

© Thomas Witzke / Abraxas-Verlag

Tungstite  Color    Yellow, Yellow green, Yellow green, Light yellow     Location    San Antonio de Calacalani mine, Cercado, Oruro, Bolivia     Luster    Earthy (Dull)     Streak    Yellow

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To keep you cool on a hot summer’s day, we give you 106 inspiring blue palettes from the COLOURlover’s library.

Also, check out a couple of our previous color inspiration posts: yellow and green.

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Incredible satellite photos from some of earths most visually stunning areas, thanks to Environmental Graffiti who brought these NASA images to light again recently. The images were selected from a exhibition the Library of Congress held in 2000, in which the 400,000 images taken by NASA’s Landsat 7 satellite were sorted through to find the most beautiful.

A small corner of the vast Great Sandy Desert that does have large sand dunes – the only sand in this desert of scrub and rock – the dunes are here visible as lines stretching across the image. The light-coloured fan shapes are scars from wildfires.

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Today we’re featuring new work from the candy coated color photographer Liz Wolf, and artist Todd Falkowsky who used photographs and computer software to create color palettes of the predominant colors of Ottawa and the provincial and territorial capitals of Canada

Liz Wolf

In her latest work she continues to explore the visual and emotional interplay of creatures and confections. One facet of what fascinates me about her photographs are the juxtaposition of the cute and the vile. Her photos are always a surprise. Innocent at first, each piece creates a shift upon a closer look as you realize that all really isn’t what it seems.

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