Designer’s Dream Kit 2022: Colour Harmonies

Amidst the wealth of products and information clamoring for attention at the Monaco Yacht Show, it’s essential to acknowledge the artists and designers responsible for transforming ideas into the manifestations of the many products -- quayside and afloat -- that rivet our gaze and eventually populate these pages. From Summit through four days of the Show, this romp through creative excellence in the world of superyachting begins with design, long before sales, commissions, charters, or re-fits.

Far beyond blueprints and prior renderings, the use of colour is key to creating interiors and exteriors that shelter and cosset or energize and enthrall. For this 2022 edition of our Designer Dream Kit, we talked with two internationally renowned designers about how essential colour becomes not just in envisioning a concept for a discerning client or partner, but the power colour commands in real life.

From just outside Florence, where he maintains his eponymous Design Studio, Francesco Paszkowski has lent his inspiring and award-winning talents to commissions by and collaborations with such brands as Tankoa, Heesen, Baglietto, and CdM, and those by private clients. “Colours can completely change the result of a design and provide a different vibe experience….and deliver a different perception of space…Cold or warm hues differently affect vibes onboard, as well as well as soft or strong colours. You can completely change sensation by using cold or warm colours for the fabrics of sofas…glossy or matte finishing for the ceiling or light or strong coloured wood flooring. The myriad of colour hues enable (one) to create a lot of different sensations.”

Returning this year for his exceptional insight is David Levy, head of NAVIS Yacht Design Division. Some of our newer readers will surely recognize this concept artist from his work in the cinematic and gaming universes. “Playing with colours through light and materials, is primordial when it comes to the user’s experience. Whether we are trying to achieve a relaxed mood by using warm tones and low saturation tones, or create excitement and dynamism for a more sporty moment, colours affect us consciously and unconsciously. Colour can change completely the way a space feels, it is a tool that has incredible implications on how a design or volume is perceived. It has an impact that can be so profound that it can distort the way someone feels or reacts …. it can make someone feel at home or unwelcome. Particularly for an ocean setting, comfort and a sense of safety and reliable calm is of utmost importance.”

We asked both designers to share with NAVIS readers their favorite analog products. Levy favors Copic brush pen markers, white acrylic, Pilot thin permanent markers as well as Winsor & Newton oil paints on Masonite panels or canvas on wood panels. Paszkowski’s starting medium is the egalitarian Bic pen, as “you can easily and immediately transform your ideas into a drawing everybody can understand no matter his or her mother tongue.”

We include here essential media that both professional designers and amateurs -- in the truest sense of the word -- will feel inspired and in command using. Each is the finest of its kind available.

Too Marker Products Inc., the manufacturing and sales company of Copic markers, is one of the youngest companies on this list. However, the alcohol-based colours of this innovative brand have influenced not only the field of design but also art, manga, and fashion with colourful and vivid palettes that bringing life to renderings for more than 30 years.

Too Marker’s best-selling, re-fillable Copic graphic markers have flexible nibs ideal for broad strokes and finer lines with inks that are blendable.

Their Copic Sketch 72 Colours Set B includes a Colourless Blender (a clear and pure solvent) and shades from every colour family, focusing on earthier tones. With sustainability so essential, each marker type, including the Sketch, can be refilled.

The inks are available in 358 colours with empty bottles to facilitate custom blending. Customization is the key for Copic, and their refill ink and empty markers, unique to the market, make an ideal tool (or gift) for any creator. Their acid-free Premium Bond Paper at 237 gm weight is formulated for use with their dyes to prevent bleeding.

Winsor & Newton have been combining science and art to bring premium quality media to artists – including such notables as Munch, Mondrian, and O’Keefe -- around the globe for almost 200 years. Queen Victoria granted a royal warrant to the brand for the Series 7 Round Watercolour Brush which, as indisputably the world’s finest brush, the brand proudly maintains to this day. Each is still handmade of birchwood and sable hair by expert artisans. As alternatives – or additions – consider the synthetic Series 10 Professional Round Watercolour and the One-Stroke ¼ inch which is superb for edges, shapes, and the quick application of washes. Their synthetic brush range performs equally as well as natural sable and is also crafted by hand in England. Either brush series will achieve exquisite results using the Cotman Watercolour Half Pan Studio Set in a diverse collection of 12 to 45 pigments. Enjoy the freedom and ease that the comprehensive Promarker Brush 48 Essential Collection provides with an array of vibrant, neutral, and midtones plus a blender. Of course, the right foundation is key. The 20 sheets of archival-quality, acid-free, Hot Pressed papers in the Professional Watercolour Block, in sizes from 7x10” up to 12x16”, are worthy of every artistic effort. The gummed block keeps the 300 gsm weight paper stretched as it dries. A 4x6” Post Card Pad of Cold Pressed paper in the same weight is ideal for miniatures this portable size. For Promarker fans, the 9x12” or 11x14” spiral bound Bleedproof Marker Pad with 50 sheets of 75gsm paper allows creations to shine.

Faber-Castell has been an integral part of every studio, office, and classroom since 1761, but don’t mistake the brand as merely utilitarian. This Limited Edition Cassette includes almost 400 products, including their renowned non-smudging and break-resistant Polychromos® Artists’ Colour Pencils, and their double-tipped, water-based Albrecht Dürer Artists’ Watercolour markers, all in a unique, limited-edition box. For those whose media preference is more defined, both the Albrecht Dürer Markers and the Polychromos® Pencils also come in Gift Boxed sets.

Sakura celebrates an impressive 100 years’ lineage of producing fine media this year. Their products are ideal for those on the move to pick up and create when inspiration strikes. Pigma® Micron™ Fine Line 10 Pen Set is ideal to have on hand for such ad hoc moments featuring ten different-sized fine-line nibs with quick-drying, fade-resistant black ink. Pigma® Micron™ 8 Pen Set is an equally ideal purchase as the variety include a brush tip. Both sets are ideal for drafting, illustrating, or even taking notes and make a great base for the Koi Water Color Pocket Field Sketch Box. This set features 24 shades including shimmery metallics and bright fluorescents that make artwork pop.

In essence, color is an illusion, like a dream. It has no physical existence, but color is still powerful. It affects the core existence of the viewer. To see color, we need three components: eyes, an object, and light. We don’t create color, we detect it, and then we simply reveal it. The brands presented in this article are the world experts in capturing color, processing it, and making it available in different formats for artists to freely express their creativity.