“Color is present in all aspects of our lives: we live immersed in a world of color and it crosses many artistic and scientific disciplines,” reads the introduction of one of the presentations made by the research team in charge of this innovative research that is in the final stage of its methodology.

This is the project funded by FONDART Nacional in the line of Artistic Creation, Design modality, of the Ministry of Cultures, Arts and Heritage, called “Los Ríos en Colores”, directed by the academic of the School of Design of the Faculty of Architecture and Arts UACh, Elisa Cordero Jahr.

Other participants are forestry engineer Víctor Gerding (UACh), geographer Carlos Rojas (UACh), graphic designer Eréndira Martínez (PUCV), graphic designer Ingrid Calvo (U. de Chile), UACh designers Catalina García and Camila Gómez-Marañon, business administration engineer Andrea Aburto and Natalia Figueroa, UACh design student.

The project seeks to create a chromatic chart with its own identity of the Los Ríos Region, a territory with more than 60 rivers, 11 lakes, different types of vegetation and soils, seeking to create a chromatic atmosphere of this southern southern territory, for which the team has made field visits in the twelve municipalities of the region, collecting atmospheric colors (skies, water and forests) and colors of objects such as rocks, sand, flowers, leaves and other plants.

The main objective of this survey is to become the first color chart with regional identity, and the first of its kind to be carried out in Chile, in an unprecedented initiative that seeks to be replicated in a second stage in another region of the country.

Thus, based on this chart collected in different places in Los Ríos (300 colors so far), the team is comparing it with two existing international color charts (NCS and Munsell), matching the colors already coded in them with the objects.

“Our idea is to put together a regional menu with identity, but also to create color palettes that match and then offer them on our future web page, in a list with a sense of belonging and identity to the territory. So far we have created 40 color palettes, work that is being done for the first time in Chile, so we are excited and encouraged to improve its methodology,” says project director Elisa Cordero.

Ingrid Calvo, a graphic designer from the Department of Design at the University of Chile, who is currently a guest lecturer at the Politecnico di Milano, Italy, who is also participating in the project, says: “Considering how difficult it is to manage such a large color chart, the first thing we did was a reduced chart of 48 colors, representative of the total universe, maintaining the proportions in which the colors appeared so that it remains characteristic”.

The researcher adds: “The first thing we did to obtain the reduced chart was to eliminate colors that are very similar and try to leave colors of different types. In short, the diversity of colors seen in both the original chart of 300 colors and in the reduced chart of 48, facilitates the versatility to combine them and subsequently make use of them in different design applications.

For both researchers, the challenge lies in using strategies of harmony or chromatic contrast to create combinations that allow differentiation among the 40 palettes created.

“The reduced chart, as well as the final chart, has the diversity of colors that exist in the region. The grace is the aspect of locality, of surality, which gives an identity character to the chart,” agree the academics.

The project will close with an exhibition of all the colors and materials collected, photographs and watercolors, which will be held during the month of May this year, at Galería Réplica.