SG: What course did you study at UAL and what is your practice?
KB: The very first course I did at UAL was before it was called UAL – it was called the London College of Printing and Distributive Trades (LCPDT) and I studied Publishing Management because I moved into where I was doing publishing as well as other administrative work so I felt that if I knew more about publishing in terms of how it is managed and progressed, it will give me an advantage to all I’ve done throughout my life, the course I’ve studied have been simply to try and improve my working life from wherever. Which then led me onto realise that the course was offered as a joint discipline – I did a part-time which was over about 4 years and the first 2 years both the printing management and publishing management worked together in one class, looking at the basics and the understandings of each of the disciplines, then on the third year we split out to become more focused. But I chose publishing management.
So, after that, I went to work, got a promotion to senior administrator then I started doing desktop publishing. Whilst doing desktop publishing, the company I was working for started to get more involved in producing artwork. So, I made a decision to study something that will give me a deeper and more understanding on prepress – so how you combine things that you go and publish, whether it’s a magazine, brochure and full range of things. Then I also started web development. Around that time, I experienced some problems but never really understood certain things such as, why am I using a gif when a gif and a jpeg for a particular image which is just maybe two or three colours looked okay in either one and I wanted to try and understand deeper and also my boss suggested that if I did it he’d give me a £5000 increase in salary. So, I went ahead and did my master’s in digital imaging, which then covered the basics of colour science, but also into things like when you look at a JPEG file how to actually program or reprogram a JPEG file to behave as you wanted so we covered quite a lot and there was a point where I wanted to quit because it was too much and I had difficulty from my tutor but I persevered and completed the first year in about 18 months. When I came to carry on, I then got nominated but I wasn’t aware as I just got an email from Terry Finnegan asking me to contribute to Tell Us About It and that was the point at which that came up but I had then progressed on from the masters I think about 4 years later. I thought I know that I am going to do a PhD and I am going to get out of here because I was at the point where I really wanted to leave. I’ve been there for about 12 years and I thought you need to move on. So, I took upon myself to write my own business case to do the PhD as a way of specialising in some areas but then changing direction completely and that’s the length of time I have studied at UAL and the subject of colour.
SG: What inspired the piece you submitted for the Tell us about It project and why did you want to take part?
KB: I wanted to take part because it was an opportunity for me to complain about some aspects of the teaching I encountered when I was a student. Towards the end of my BA and the beginning of my MA, I found that the teachers would cover a subject and that’s it, and tutorials were just the same thing as well. Whereas, I expected to be a section where they would go deeper and explain and break it down for you so you could pick up the basic knowledge about the subject. Then partly, I had the tutor who was the head kind of a course director in those days, but he was about to retire and I used to go up to him to ask questions and he had so much patience and time as he would really unpack the whole subjects, even the maths. For the first time in my life, I had someone unpack the maths for me, not that I might get right or might get wrong, but this was helping me understand what exactly is happening with the maths that we’re using in the science.
So, I thought this was an opportunity to write about two and show the balance between where you have a teacher who cares and another one who’s just teaching maybe because it’s a job or they feel you should know or other.
SG: How has your practice developed since you graduated?
KB: My practice has kind of changed because originally everything was focused on print. So, kind of more focused on being able to design experiments to detect tolerance for colour reproduction and so the main focus of it was around colour difference. When I finished, I didn’t realise that a lot of my work didn’t really focus entirely on colour difference, but the experimental design was a big part of it and how I control the environment. So, I wrote a couple of papers and went to present it in San Francisco and someone offered me a job in Germany. I took that and worked there for a while, setting up a lab environment and then designing experiments. While I was there, I was able to delve more into the basics of colour science and understand how it worked in different areas such as what aspect of colour science do, they use it to produce RFID cards, passports, etc. So, my practice started to expand from that point and not just be about the difference in colour that comparison in the distribution of colour, finding that difference and trying to predict accuracy or match accuracy.
Now I have taken on a new stance since working with Shades of Noir where I am developing experiments that can explain and highlight certain things such as the lack of diversity in cosmetics and why. Things like where people would take a photograph with one camera and then take it with a phone or the same phone in two different places and how it’s not consistent and kind of open up an explanation and dialogue about this how minority skin tones are absolutely not accounted for in lots of colour reproduction or colour capture devices.
SG: How has UAL contributed to your professional journey?
KB: I think it’s challenged me in the early stages, it’s been a huge challenge. I think the university was detached from what I was doing, maybe because they felt that they were more of an arts university, not accepting that within now it’s just a lot of scientific aspects and the kind of a cross between the two. So, it’s been pushing me at times, you know I kind of detached myself and decided I’m not going to do this anymore. However, looking back and thinking whether or not I am going to allow that to defeat me, I think the university empowered me to develop further and have more grit to stay with tasks and go forward, keep fighting until I get a result.
SG: What advice can you give to students currently studying at UAL, especially those from disadvantaged backgrounds?
KB: Connect with Shades of Noir because I have to be honest, when I met Aisha Richards about 10 years ago [maybe 11] that was the point at which I started to understand why it was such a struggle to do any assignments and at times the assignment wouldn’t be marked. I would present it, they would look at and just say, ‘I’m not going to mark that’ without giving you a reason and having to go around and ask other people, email people and pretend to be white and then they send you information, which is what I did a lot. I changed my name, called myself Baxter and I got a lot of scientists to send me information to do my colour science and that’s how I managed to progress to a point where I started to understand the work.
So, I would always say to students of disadvantaged background, the first thing you do is look for Shades of Noir because that is such an anchor with quite a wide depth of coming with the knowledge and subject matter that the people within a cover, which can help you as it’s almost like a cushion that you could use throughout your study. Understand and navigate through the university itself and also be tenacious.
SG: What has been your most memorable project so far?
KB: The most memorable project that I have done is now ISO standards and it’s called relative colour where it kind of shows how to make adjustments in substrates or displays to compensate in the appearance of colour for consistency between two different types of media or two different types of substrates. To explain that in simple terms, it was a set of calculations that I developed so that you could print on paper that was whitish, bluish and print on paper that was yellowish the same image, and when you make a correction between the two images will actually look the same and it’s known as media relative colour metric correction.
SG: How do you keep yourself motivated?
KB: Curiosity. I was born with massive curiosity and I have always had this position of overthinking things. So, I always have things going on in my head, writing stuff in my head, doing some maths in my head, thinking of new projects in my head. I also try to associate changing the environment or scene within the world with something new that I could perhaps expose, explain or present.
I have a new project that I am working on for Shades of Noir which looks at skin tones and then takes real measured skin tones and then distributes it into something called a target. Target is a set of colours that are used to manage the reproducible sets of colours for different things so display typically people would use Adobe RGB. Adobe RGB will be a set of points of colours and those sets of colours would include let’s say maybe about 6 or 8 flesh tones, of the 8 flesh tones one would be for black and one would be for Asians and we know that’s not accurate. So, what I have been doing is looking at how to extend the target from the numbers that they are to include at least two extra rows which would be about 48 extra skin tone colours. My idea is not to work on Caucasian skin, but the skin of Asian people, look at aborigines as well in Australia because I have some friends who are aborigines and then also black skin tone.
SG: Is there a message you are trying to convey in your creative expressions?
KB: I am now someone who runs Safe Space Crits for Shades of Noir, and the message that comes from my work would be the fact that we will be included in all digital displays very soon. But outside of that, outside of my position, I would say the message that I have is we are just as good as everyone else if not better. I don’t know about now, but when I graduated, I was the only black colour scientist for quite a long time – I think up until 2 years ago. I don’t know if there are any new black students who have taken that on board but I definitely know not in the UK and probably not in Europe, but I know that 2 years ago a couple of colour science instalments in South Africa and I think Nigeria. So, fingers crossed we might increase the numbers.
SG: How do you reflect on your work?
KB: I kind of stand back from the work and give it kind of like a detachment time. So, when I produce all of the work or the complete work, I don’t publish it straight away. I would give it about a month and in that month, I’ll read it twice so that I would look at the different disciplines that I have put in because I don’t use one discipline to do my work. I try to draw from different areas and so when I come back to it, I’m looking at it from a non- colour science point of view, to see if it still fits into the framework of what I am trying to do. I’ve worked a lot with brands and developing consistency for the images across different outputs and I find that quite often that what they’re missing is a sense of educational understanding that you’re dealing with different products that are made by different people so they make it in specific ways. It’s about looking at some characteristics that say something specific about it in a way that affects how the final outcome looks like when you produce something with that particular thing. For example, with textiles, etc. So, what I then try to do is look at other disciplines and see how they would deal with it or how they would set this out. At times it’s just a case of looking at the way in which I’ve written it so I would apply a simple English approach because I know my audience is from all around the world. So, it’s quite primary that I made sure that people can read and understand it and not keep using weird words that only make sense to one group of individuals.
