The Shape of Color

In the early years of industrial development, color was considered a secondary, possibly even deceptive, aspect of the project. Particularly in certain emerging sectors like the electro-mechanical field, the choices were limited to a few options, with a strong prevalence of black. Products for mechanization, first, and later for office automation, initially tended to pursue color choices conceived to give the objects an impersonal connotation and unobtrusive appearance. The choice of black, with its variations in shades of gray, responded to the desire to achieve sobriety in the fixtures, in accordance with the "serious" technical and performance features of the machines which, as they had to represent the new values of reliability and rationality i n industry, provided a fundamental differentiation with respect to artistic expression, which, on the contrary, pursued accentuated diversity precisely through the sophistication of its use of color. The prevailing perception saw the shape of the objects as an objective data point and the color as something subjective and thus opposed to the principles of standardization which the first mass production explicitly t a v o r e d .