About Kolormondo - the colour tool

The story of Kolormondo

The story of Kolormondo begins in 2010, when a weekend workshop on chromatics caught the eye of the entrepreneur Nicoline Kinch. She felt, like many of us do, bewildered when it came to mixing and matching colours, both when coordinating her wardrobe and styling her home. Perhaps a course on chromatics was just what she needed.

In the workshop, when painting Johannes Itten’s colour star she saw that mixing red, blue and yellow, white and black, almost every existing colour comes to life. The teacher explained that the star can be shaped into a ball, or sphere, which makes the composition and correlation of the colours all the more vivid. And such a sphere can, at least in theory, be sliced or cut into wedges and the colours would still remain interrelated on the inside.  “Eureka!” Suddenly Nicoline understood! She saw how apricot turned into orange, then transformed into brown, when she followed the colour along the sphere’s longitude; while the same brown turned into purple in one direction along the latitude, and into dark green going the other way.

She glued her sphere onto an old tangerine. And a business concept was born!

Nicoline tried to learn more, from pioneers like Runge, Göthe, Munsell and Itten. She contacted industrial designer Jonas Ahnme´, who created much of what you can see today. Graphical designer Daniel Bjugård created the logotype and also came up with the idea behind the 3D puzzle construction.

It was important to find the perfect name for this new concept. It should function in all languages, be clear and easy to understand. Nicoline speaks Esperanto, and got the idea of “Kolormondo” which means “world of colours” in Esperanto. One year later the first patent application was made and Kolormondo presented its first product at a trade fair. Shortly thereafter, Nicoline received her first award; the Inventors Prize of the city of Stockholm.

So this is the story of how a coincidental participation in a weekend course can lead to 4 patents and a globally used new concept. It is also the story of a dry old tangerine becaming the first prototype for this new enterpise.

 

Achievements so far

Since Kolormondo was first introduced, the idea has spread all over the world. Universities of design/architecture/fashion in Lisbon, London, Los Angeles, Milan, New York, Santiago de Chile, Shanghai, Stockholm etc use it in teaching. Global companies – Akzo Nobel, Apple Computers, Chanel and Hugo Bozz to name a few – has bought Kolormondo for colour training purposes as well as for design discussions and inspiration.

It is also sold, primarily in Museum- and designshops, to the private market, as an educational toy for all ages.

So, in short, Kolormondo is becoming the obvious tool for basic colour understanding and training, both in education and professionally.

There are now 4 approved Kolormondo patents and the concept has received several awards.

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