Two kids very fast checked there was a picture for free. The took it and kept it. I wasn't able to find out what was going on with the sofa.

Abandoned Pictures – Now I Belong to You was written on a sticker on the back page. Do what you want with your picture. Take me with you, hang me up, paint me over or give me away. Decide what to do, as I‘m your property from now on.

Background information: I‘m part of a long-run project of a german artist, who gives away numbered pictures in many cities worldwide. Be part of the project: Take a picture of yourself with your new picture or give me a note about the chance encounter with me. Write it down or send the picture to gvoon@gvoon.de.  More Information and pictures of other members you‘ll find on the website http://www.ausgesetzte-bilder.de

Abandoned Pictures – Now I Belong to You (in german: Ausgesetzte Bilder) is a long-run project. Pictures are placed in several cities worldwide in order to be found. Everybody is invited to be part of it. At the website all pictures which have been exposed can be seen and found by numbers, with all the gathered information about it. The picture itself (in original condition) as well as the story of the placing and all information about the new owners as far as they wanted to give some. Every finder is asked by a text information on the pictures back to take a photo of himself or herself with the picture and to describe what he did with it or what he is planning to do wit it. The given photos and texts will be published in a catalog voraussichtlich estimated to be ready at the end of the year 2009. All information which has been snt by email will be part of the catalog if possible.

The project started in August 2007 in Cologne, Germany, continued in November 2007 in Hamburg, Germany, in March 2008 in Berlin, Germany, and now starts over in New York, USA, other cities will follow. On the website all past and actual actions can be traced.

The fire fighter wasn't amused about the idea of placing paintings in his car. So he took it away, to take it home for his wife.

Find them. Love them. Hold them. Care about them. Whatever. On each picture on the back the information about his activities was placed by a paper sticker.

After 680 pictures, he goes on with this. Today he changes his paintings directly: You pay by letting him do a polaroid picture of yourself together with the painting. I am not sure if I understood the complete action. But it was fun, absolutely.

The major problem of building a color system is translation. The most common situation is that products, brands, architecture, or guiding systems have a clear target: to sell, to impress, to inform, to help. These goals are usually set by the CEO. By the president. By the owner.

For such targets color is a strong tool which works well, for example, in helping survive when crossing a street: Red simply means „Stop!“. At least on a traffic light.

But which color means: „Buy me?“ Or, which color combination stands for  „I’m a stable and reliable product“?

His mother didn't use pink shopping bags. Never.

As usually, the product development team and the engineering department have given their best to build the technically perfect product, and the next crucial question goes to marketing: „How to convince the potential consumer?“

What the marketing professionals should know: What arguments are necessary, strong and effective? Which impression should be received, what mark should be left? After generating a description in words (e.g., our product is modern, is fast, is powerful, and reliable, but not cheap) the whole package is handed over to – graphics.

„Help us. Translate the message into an overall picture. Choose the right font, color, motif, and… and – translate.“

In the end, it is not to easy to find a way to design. And it is not easy to convince the CEO, the owner, the president, that this is well done. His wife likes pink. But his mother has never bought anything in pink bags. And, as his neighbor has a white car, white as a color stands for poor and stupid people.

As we know, white cars represent poor people, aren't they?

To make a long story short: In order to cut this Gordian knot, one can use a semantic differential as a translational tool.

How does this work? Pairs of attributes are defined, which build pairs of contrary meaning, but both parts of the pairs are positive (this is essential!). For example, „innovative and equipped with modern technique“ versus „old and proven and familiar“. Both sounds good, but new inventions cannot be proven and familiar, well-established goods cannot be innovative.

Between this antipodes a scaling is to be done, preferably with an uneven number of choices to leave the chance for indifferent votes.

The challenge then is to decide for each pair of attributes: What do I want to have?

One color system draft, with semantic differential – the wanted and the reached values (this was a good one).

„Easy, light in color and in weight“ or „solid, stable, heavy and darker“. And similar decisions. This can be sorted out for music, for products, for people. And for colors. And by using this translational help, the results are easy to check, free of personal belief, and easy to prove.

We did the crosscheck by asking several people this question. Sometimes this brought up a discussion (which was helpful), for example, if the product is more solid or more detailed and filigree.

Sometimes no concordance was possible. But in many cases all agreed. And had a tool to check: Is it this what we decided to aim at? Is it what we really wanted? In many cases it wasn’t what we liked most, but the results showed us what could really fulfil the defined needs.

Color models: the wall of my office. While selecting.