Vol 10 - Issue 1

Technology and Innovation

List of Articles

Today, color is a cross-disciplinary field of research and activity, where scientific advances, design concepts and coloring techniques are opening up opportunities to rethink the coloring of our products and services, with a view to establishing a strong, high-quality local presence. Mainly chemical and mass-reproducible for the last two centuries, color has undergone a revival in recent decades, in the context of more responsible, more sustainable research and practices that seek to make the world habitable. This special issue of Technologie et Innovation analyzes the status of color and its innovations in design, in the light of new logics driven by the bioeconomy. After presenting the main seminal works defining color, this introductory article analyzes the new ways of thinking about creations in art and design, before discussing the challenges of a productivist chromatic approach for bio-based production chains. The final section summarizes the articles in this special issue, which use field studies and unifying concepts to detail the challenges of tomorrow’s design-color.

We rarely pay attention to the functions and uses of color. Yet color is part of our daily lives, and is as much a part of the history, culture, technology and health of individuals as it is of their environments. Design at the service of color, color at the service of design generates, that is to say, invents and designs projects and products geared to the right needs of men and women. As an introduction to responsible design and color; through a panorama of collaborative approaches, research carried out in workshop-laboratories and consultancies; and through an analysis of future societal trends, this text attempts to formulate the issues, conceptions, representations and postures of a biosourced design-color between the arts and sciences, territories and economic heritage, fashion and beauty, food and care, as design as methodological alternatives and future production methods to counter the imaginary commercialism promoted by current design models.

This paper deals with the biotechnological process developed by the company PILI©, the enzymatic synthesis from renewable carbon for the production of dye molecules. This innovative process allows the production of biologically based dyes and aims to reduce the environmental footprint of the dye industry. Based on biotechnology and hybrid processes combining industrial fermentation and green chemistry, the company now produces a range of high-performance dyes for the most polluting applications: textiles, inks, polymers, paints and coatings. The study is based on a literature review that made it possible to diagnose recent innovations in the French textile industry and the production of bio-based dyes, thus identifying the process developed by the company PILI© and determining the obstacles, levers and application prospects of the developed process.

The topic of bio-based colors is now at the heart of a number of theories particularly in relation to so-called "alternative" practices. Among these, natural dyeing offers many possibilities. This article focuses on the case of lichens, small symbiotic beings with astonishing coloring power. Their role is ambivalent – they are used for traditional purposes, but are also ideal for experimentation, opening up new creative possibilities. As well as being a coloring material, lichen is also a source of inspiration, particularly in the field of textile design. This study of an example of the dyeing process details the various stages from the garden to the kitchen, highlighting the importance of the procedure. Finally, a practical demonstration of combining two coloring materials (Evernia Prunastri lichen and yellow onions) illustrates some of the possibilities for exploration, underlining the diversity of parameters that can be used to develop the resultant color palettes.

The analysis begins with an exploration of the terrain on a site in Gironde affected by fires in the summer of 2022. The transformed materials emerged from the rugged terrain, a source for exploring and materials in the context of ceramic practice. How can ceramic practices reveal the chromatic singularities of these components by thinking of them as "bio-sourced" colors? From collection to technique to the valorization of local materials, the challenge is to attach a colorto a locality and a heritage, by manufacturing color from natural and/or recyclable resources.

There is a gap between diversity of single and multi-flower honeys actually produced in Occitanie -region in which the study was carried out- and that found on French tables. Only a few iconic acacia, chesnut, lavender or “all flower” honeys are promoted by retails outlets, which help to stereotype tastes and colours of honeys. Unlike the wine, olive and more recently brewery industries which are expandind rapidly, consumers identify honeys based on restricted criteria of colour, texture and flavour. This phenomenon of impoverished production is mainly due to a lack of knowledge about qualities of honeys and their geographical environment. The image of the bees as the jewel in the crown of biodiversity and environmental health, along with the symbolism attached to the colour of honey and to the products of the hive, help to build and highlight a territorial image, a collective representation of an identity of the beekeeping terroir shaped by soil, climate, people and imagination. The challenge is therefore to create a beekeeping terroir to promote a unifying sector with an innovative heritage. In this context, colour-design envisions the places of honey, between chromatic collections and imagined colours to draw a new colourama of honey.

Beyond its status as a painter’s accessory, the palette is also a design tool, a paradigmatic space of representation and modelling of color and sensorial design thinking, which is highly versatile in application and has the capacity for inter-field transferability. By characterizing and ordering the sensory and chromatic markers of local bioresources and their ’growing environments’, the sensory-chromatic palette aims to structure a sensory-chromatic identity for a food territory that can be transferred and exploited in different contexts and sectors of food development and production. Starting with a short collaborative experiment based around the Nord-Pas-de-Calais region, combining the design of palettes and culinary creations, this article sets out to put the theoretical and practical models of such an approach into perspective, to formulate the issues involved and to consider its potential for application and innovation, particularly in the agri-food sector.

Certified organic cosmetics differ from vegan cosmetics in the nature of the raw materials used. Although veganism allows for non-natural ingredients, the organic-vegan pair forms a lexicon associated with the representation of naturalness within society. The result is a palette of specific vocabularies and colors, to which matter is added. This research is part of a CIFRE agreement. Make-up is approached as a color material to be applied, named and formulated, with a view to industrial production.