COLOUR STORIES - How a shade comes to life: Slate Blue
Like in each creative workshop, developing a product can be a long, sometimes tedious process. At Eliv Rosenkranz one of our biggest challenges was our colours. In the beginning we specialised in neutrals only, then we wanted a few deeper and more colourful shades in our repertoire too. Finding the right pigments, the right moods, spotting trends while creating a timeless product - our founder and creative director Claudia talks about all of these aspects in our new series: COLOUR STORIES - How a shade comes to life
When you’ve built your brand on the appeal of muted, neutral mostly earthy colours, there’s one colour that’s very difficult to introduce: Blue. It’s the furthest away from an earthy colour scheme you can think of and you need to be very careful how you mix it so it doesn’t discturb the curation. However, when you succeed, a Blue can be an integral part of a rounded colour palette, even when it’s mostly neutrals. This is the story of our Slate Blue.
Slate Blue – an Eliv Rosenkranz classic
Slate Blue actually is a classic in our colour palette. Although I founded the company wanting to offer mostly neutral tones, I quickly realised that a Blue is an essential. It helped that the very first pigments we worked with offered a lovely muted, dusty Blue that perfectly fit into our repertoire. This is where the name Slate Blue stems from to.
After these pigments, powder pigments, were discontinued, we switched to pigment pastes and had slight adjustment issues. The dustiness had disappeared and we briefly landed at a very bright Smurf Blue. At the same time, I tried to recreate our classic Pale Blush and learned a lot in the process which helped me to recreate Slate Blue as well.
From Smurf to Grey and back (almost)
So in comparison with other colours it was relatively easy to redesign. Although in the beginning, in my effort to lose the smurfness, I toned it down too much and it became very grey. When packing we had to be careful not to confuse it with our now discontinued Grey. With the pigment change in early 2021, Slate Blue became more bluish, but I still see it as a nice muted light blue. It conveys a pleasant freshness to me but it also has that Baroque romance, depending on the design. It’s always been popular. Last year, for the first time Slate Blue became available as a "glitter version" in silver. Since then, this colour has been a must for me at Christmas.
Claudia’s personal design recommendations:
Projects with Slate Blue that have stayed in my head:
Font recommendations:
A minimalist sans serif with a little bit of flair: Coco Gothic Pro https://www.myfonts.com/fonts/zetafonts/coco-gothic-pro/
A modern and bold serif: Juana https://www.myfonts.com/collections/juana-font-latinotype
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