Pick a Color

Jin Su Park, a creative design artist from Korea who focuses on communicative problem solving. While still in the pre-production phases, Park has designed a pen that you can scan any color with and then draw with that color ink! As any artist may know, inspiration may come from anywhere at any time and using this pen could come in handy when you see a color you can't get in normal artists' tools.

Jin Su works a lot on solving creative problems especially in the areas of educational resources. Using the pen is easy, as you just press the button and the scanner uses the information to use the right amount of red, green and blue to come up with the ink. In class we talk a lot about where inspiration for creative ideas comes from and while this idea is creative in itself, it also solves the problem many artists may have of just not being able to get the right color when inspiration hits. Sort of like a printer in a pen or the photoshop eyedropper tool, this innovative design starts to bridge the gap between physical and digital artists and designers tools.

I think Jin Su is creating a problem (or making a tiny problem bigger) and solving it. Even for artists now, drawing with an exact color you see in the real world may not be very important but if this product becomes more mainstream I think a lot of artists and designers will begin using tools like these especially if the pen becomes a sort of "color storage bin" where they could store colors they see and use them for later design projects. Collecting inspiration and saving it for later...