The Rainbow Connection

Hoover Elementary School in Oakland, CA. Photo by Marissa Leshnov

The minds of children are particularly receptive to color; the rainbow is one of the first vocabularies that they learn, and the hues allow them to absorb concepts easily—without losing emotional power. Laura Guido-Clark’s understanding of that power solidified when she saw The Wizard of Oz at the age of 10. “I realized that Oz was supercharged; it was full of hope and joy and wonder…” she trails off. “Films have such a short time to tell a story, and the fact that color was connected to story was a big part of their appeal for me.”

Connecting color to story became her mission, first as a textile designer, and subsequently as a color consultant and developer of the Love Good Color system, a methodology developed to help companies identify what they want out of their products’ palette. One of Guido-Clark’s major successes is Herman Miller’s Cosm Chair, for which she designed and curated three unusual, yet universally appealing hues. Typically, people browse the eclectic colors for big furniture purchases, and then pick standard navy blue, beige, and burgundy for their final selections, but with the Cosm, “People were ordering colors like they were ordering neutrals,” she says.