Designers: Be bold, brave and true. Be bold with
color. Be brave and soar up, up and away. Paint the
sky and designs with a complete rainbow of colors.
Be true: Anchor your palette with steadfast black.
And dare to have fun. A heroic color palette lets
us aspire to be more than we are in reality. It plays
to our sense of right and wrong and brings us back
to our youth, with hope and a tendency to favor primary
colors that initially grabbed us.
Illustrator Stephen Whetstine, aka onebluebird,
applied a daring palette for the heroine image
series (one of five in the series shown at right) for
an anniverary issue of the Salt Lake City Weekly.
Says Whetstine, “The issue was about the best of
Utah, and the theme was a ‘superhero’ woman that
went all over the city discovering the best places and
people. She even took on Jeopardy champion Ken
Jennings—who is from Salt Lake—and beat him.”
To celebrate the issue launch, a party was thrown
in which Whetstine’s heroine was brought to life.
Whetstine says, “Women dressed up like her and
walked around meeting people. It was a cool thing to
be a part of.”
Working primarily in Illustrator, Whetstine
describes his style as very contemporary, mod and
stylized. “Color is the heart and soul of my work,”
says Whetstine, though, “for awhile, I was having a
‘blue period’—where every piece I created had the
underlining color be blue.”
“Recently, I have been using a rich, dark red.
I just love the contrast of the red on my blues and
neutrals,” adds Whetstine. Fun fact: Every piece
he creates has a bluebird hidden somewhere in the
image. “Look! Up in the sky. …”
Pow! Smack! Bam
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