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Conversations on Color with Jason Wheeler and Jean Francois Ortiz of Columbia Sportswear

Chief evangelist at Creative Force

Summary

Think back to 2015 and you may remember, The Dress. A viral phenomenon that taught us a lot about how we as humans perceive color. As a photographer during that time, it sort of felt like watching the world learn a lot about what we already knew. Color can be deceiving and you never know what someone else ACTUALLY sees. In e-commerce, color is a constant topic, partially for this exact reason. If we can't control what devices people are using to shop, let alone how their eyes work, how much effort should we put into this? In this episode I'm joined by Jean Francois Ortiz and Jason Wheeler of Columbia Sportswear and we dig into color for e-commerce.

Key Takeaways

  • Color accuracy and fidelity has been a topic since the birth of e-commerce and digital photography
  • Color is so difficult to manage because of the sheet number of variables that are involved, both in terms of technology and how digital systems interpret color
  • Early on in the modern e-commerce age, the available technology made color accuracy very difficult. Cameras were lower resolution and monitors couldn't display the full spectrum of color for web.
  • As technology progresses, color accuracy gets easier to achieve but also becomes more important to pay attention to.
  • There are stills issues even as technology streamlines, such as display brightness or features like night mode or blue light mode.
  • The human eye only sees 3 colors of the spectrum and has to depend on our brains to interpret the colors. Who can say if we all see it exactly the same.
  • A key goal of the studio teams shooting product photography is to help the customer trust that what we are showing them is true and accurate.
  • For the studio, this becomes about simply having a consistent process that handles color the same way every time.
  • Color accurate swatching - A step with special tools and teams that can take the time to create an image that is as color accurate as possible.
  • Color is a headache that will never go away, but we can find a process that works and is repeatable in order to build consistency.

Links & Resources

Full episode transcript

Daniel Jester:
From Creative Force, I'm Daniel Jester. And this is the eCommerce content creation podcast. Think back to 2015. And you may remember the dress, a viral phenomenon that taught us a lot about how we as humans perceive color. As a photographer during that time, it sort of felt like watching the world learn a lot about what we already knew. Color can be deceiving and you never know what someone else actually sees. In eCommerce color is a constant topic partially for this exact reason. If we can't control what devices people are using to shop, let alone how their own eyes work, how much effort should we put into this? In this episode, I'm joined by Jean-Franco Ortiz and Jason Wheeler of Columbia Sportswear. And we dig into color for eCommerce. And I don't want to give too much away, but it really boils down to consistency in your process.
Jason Wheeler:
Well, first and foremost, the thing that I feel we're responsible for in the studio and in the e-com industry is to create a consistent product. And in order to create a consistent product, we have to put a process in place.
Daniel Jester:
Before we jump in. I really encourage you to check out the show notes for this one, where you're going to find plenty of interesting reading and resources about color for photography. Here we go. This is the eCommerce content creation podcast. I am your host, Daniel Jester, and joining me for this episode of the show. I have Jason Wheeler and Jean-Franco Ortiz, both of Columbia to chat with me a little bit about color for this episode. Welcome to the show guys.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Thank you. Glad to be here. It's actually really a pleasure to get out of house during the holidays and be able to chat with you guys.
Jason Wheeler:
Yeah, thanks for having us. We're excited to dive into this topic today.
Daniel Jester:
I am very excited to dive into this topic with you as well. We've had color on our list of topic ideas since the inception of the show. You guys are both studio e-com photography veterans, and you know like I do that color has been in conversation since... Obviously all throughout photography. Color, fidelity and accuracy has been a thing. But with the adoption of e-com and the shift in technology over the years, there have been kind of ebbs and flows of how much effort do we put into color for this processes, especially after the 2008 recession as studios really kind of stepped into this new era of high volume, quick production.
Daniel Jester:
How much effort do we put into color? We can't control what our customers see ultimately, but technology is shifting. So to start off the conversation, I think let's just kind of chat about that for a minute. Technology has changed a lot over the last 15 years, screen resolutions has improved. Where did we come from with regards to how we thought about color from a photography perspective and where are we at today? And I'll structure this a little bit. I'll kick it to Jason first and then we'll hear from you JF.
Jason Wheeler:
Well, I remember 15 years ago when I first started in this business, we were working with very low megapixel cameras. Monitors at the time were only covering maybe 70 to 72% of the sRGB color space at best, at that point in time. So we were up against a lot of factors that were a big struggle for E eco studios and advertising photographers as well. We were trying to really determine how much color could we actually capture accurately. And then once we were able to capture that color, how are we able to display it to our customers or get it even onto paper in a way that was representative of what it was that we had actually captured.
Jason Wheeler:
It's really interesting over the years as monitor technology has gotten better. We're now able to actually view the full sRGB color space. Some of the monitors nowadays are even starting to approach a hundred percent of the RGB color space. So our responsibility to making sure that we're capturing the color in its fullest and really paying attention and ensuring that color is staying accurate through the process has become more and more imperative I think, in the modern day, from a quality control perspective and looking at the areas that we can control.
Daniel Jester:
I've been thinking about... Especially because I think the fallback historically has always been, we ultimately can't control what our images are being viewed on. And I've been thinking a lot about this over the last few days in preparation for this conversation with you guys, because it feels like while we still have a wide range of options of monitors and devices that we can view things on, that the capability has streamlined into, they all pretty much are capable of the same things, where it used to be like... You didn't know if somebody was viewing this on their grandmother's old CRT monitor, if they were trying to look at it on a projection television.
Daniel Jester:
I don't even remember if some of the first era of PDAs could display images or not, images on phones were... Who knows what you were getting in that case. And so now we're getting into the point where most people's consumer monitors are capable of many of the same things. But even then the stuff that we have in the studio might be still technologically way more advanced than what the consumer has, but ultimately what's being displayed is probably pretty close. Would you say that sounds fair JF?
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Yeah. I think back to a few years back and we used to put a ton of effort into trying to get within like 5% in the studio with the monitors that we were using and a ton of effort goes into that. And I remember again a few years back, the conversation was around, "Well, we don't know what kind of monitors they're looking at it." "Are they on uncalibrated monitors?" We have no idea what they're seeing on their own, the consumer side. And now everyone has... For the most part, it feels like everyone has gone to tablets or devices with screens that you're assuming that the color is going to be accurate, but then you don't know how bright they're looking at things. And there's just a vast difference between how I'm looking at my phone to one of my friends looking at it who has their display cranked up all the way, the colors just come out a lot richer.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
So it's really hard to control, but the effort... We used to put in a ton of effort on the product that we were shooting in studio, but at the same time... And this is not at my current location, this is a former employer. When we used to get vendor provided images, we wouldn't even really check those and we'd throw those to the sites. So half of our businesses, we're putting a ton of effort and cost per shot is obviously very important. All of these post-production costs roll into that. So on one side of the business, we're putting a lot of effort spending a lot. And on another side, we are just throwing it up there and it just felt like a double standard at that point, but there was no way of controlling. It's been a topic of conversation since I've been in this business.
Daniel Jester:
And I think right now what we're talking about is the limitations historically on the consumer side. And if we take a step back from that, this isn't me denigrating anybody or pointing fingers at anybody. But I do think that people kind of fell back to that argument because color was so hard to manage in a production studio. It's already hard to do, even if we know we have to do it. If there's not a lot of good reasons to do it, because you're trying to shop from our website from your grandma's old CRT monitor, then why are we putting ourselves through torture trying to do this? So I wanted to ask the question to you two guys, why is color so difficult to manage in e-commerce photography?
Jason Wheeler:
There's just so many variables. You're dealing with variables from the lighting that you're using to capture the product to the camera sensors, capabilities of the camera that you're using to capture it. We're looking at things like color profiles, color profile conversions. Oftentimes we're shooting in a much larger color space, pro photo, RGB, or even Adobe RGB color space. And then we're trying to squeeze that down either with a relative or perceptual color, rendering intent to a color spectrum that's going to be more conducive for a monitor. So every step along the process has the potential of missing the mark with color accuracy.
Daniel Jester:
And you didn't even mention in there, Jason, the actual color of the garment or the object that you're shooting, you both work at Columbia.
Jason Wheeler:
Correct.
Daniel Jester:
So I know that you both have experience with bright neon colors that most cameras have a very difficult time perceiving accurately. And that's another big issue. I made a note, some of the things that we're to talk about on this particular part is subjectivity. One of the variables also is that you've got probably a bunch of photographers working on a bunch of different things. And I don't know if you guys... And I'm almost afraid to admit this on my podcast, because I feel like I might have a medical issue that I need to get checked. But have either of you noticed that one of my eyes sees colors slightly more saturated than the other one. And if I can't even trust both of my eyes, what about 17 photographers in the studio or however many you're employing.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
I don't know if you guys remember this from a few years back, but there was that whole white gold and black blue dress image that kind of just went viral.
Daniel Jester:
Yes.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
I know at the time, at the studio there was dozens of photographers where I was working and we'd all look at this. And I still see white and gold. And we brought it up this morning just because I was trying to remember what the color sequences were and even the two photographers or the two folks in the studio this morning, they're like, "Wow, we see black and blue." And it's just like, how are you seeing black and blue? So amongst photographers. The fact that two photographers are seeing two different colors on an image that's on the screen, doesn't bode well for us when we're trying to talk about subjectivity...
Daniel Jester:
Terrifying for management.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
So terrifying. And I still see white gold. I don't know how anyone else is seeing black and blue on that, but that's-
Daniel Jester:
I'm going to pull it up right now because I don't remember. But what a simpler time on the internet that was man.
Jason Wheeler:
More divisive than our political system right now. That's that's what was happening back then around that image.
Daniel Jester:
It really was. Yeah. Well now everything's a side by side, so it kind of ruins it for me.
Jason Wheeler:
Yes.
Daniel Jester:
I got to find the original.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
I found the original image on its own and that's what I brought up this morning and when we were having this conversation and I was just so surprised, of course I see black and blue.
Daniel Jester:
I'll be honest with you JF. I see white and gold right now. The one that I'm looking at, but again, who knows if this has been manipulated at this point?
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Yeah.
Jason Wheeler:
It's just really interesting because the human eye is only seen three of the primary colors in the color spectrum. So everything that we look at is actually reflecting back a massive spectrum of colors that our brain has to interpret through these three lenses, red, green, and blue. Right?
Daniel Jester:
Right.
Jason Wheeler:
And there's no guarantee that our brains and each of us individually is interpreting that the same way. You can get into a lot of the deep science on this. When you talk about metamerism. You can physically have two items that are red sitting next to each other, within an environment and see those as the same color because our eyes just aren't able to absorb the nuances of that color spectrum in the way that it's actually being illuminated off the object.
Daniel Jester:
That's a great point, Jason, because we can get so deep into this that we can really start to make the argument. If you take it too far, you get to the argument that nothing in the universe matters, but we're not going to go that far. We're going to go only so far to say that how much effort should we put into this at the studio level. Because ultimately what we're trying to do here... And this is something that I've said about e-com and in particular, the role of e-com photography, we just need to get the customers to trust that what we're showing them is true and accurate.
Daniel Jester:
So I guess I'd like to pivot the conversation more towards the customer perspective and start to talk a little bit about what is reasonable to do. What can we do to help make sure our customers trust that what we're showing them is accurate and that they're going to be satisfied with the product that they've purchased?
Jason Wheeler:
Well, first and foremost, the thing that I feel we're responsible for in the studio and in the e-com industry is to create a consistent product. And in order to create a consistent product, we have to put a process in place. We have to put some type of metric in place that we can pin up against so that we can ensure that what we are producing at the studio is going to be the same time and time again, making sure that we're hitting our neutral marks, making sure that we're hitting the color spectrum that we're targeting. Whether that's if your studio's working in 55 Kelvin or if you're targeting a D65, whatever that is that you are targeting, making sure that is your benchmarking. That's what you're producing time and time again. So that when your customers are seeing your product, they're seeing a consistent product, which is going to ultimately translate into confidence. Knowing that every time they're going to look at your imagery and receive your product, that they're going to see the same thing, time and time again.
Daniel Jester:
The first place that starts because getting the shade of the image exactly right on the most calibrated monitor that you have access to and the best lighting conditions is honestly, at the end of the day, probably less important than what I'm about to say, which is that your images match each other.
Jason Wheeler:
Correct.
Daniel Jester:
Because once your images don't match each other, now there's a question mark, as to what color am I going to be getting here, on the customer's perspective.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
This is where we lose trust. We output marketing assets that are more environmental or editorial in nature. And then there's the PDP. And there are lots of times where our editorial imagery does not necessarily match up with the PDP and they're being shot at different times in different locations and certain cases by different teams. What's really important is having a process in place where someone is seeing all of this. Luckily we have the luxury of recreating assets several months out before they are ever hitting the site. So we have the time to place checks so that we can catch this. That's not the case in a lot of other businesses where the time to market is much shorter. You'll get those variances between the editorial shots and the PDP shots. But that's where I think you lose trust. So everything that we can be doing on e-com workflow, it all goes out the window when the consumer sees those two images side by side or on the landing page and then they get into the product and it just is a completely different color.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
And I've seen variances that they've gone from looking like a navy blue and the jacket is turquoise or vice versa. And that's because it's being shot outside under sunlight, under different conditions versus a controlled environment in the studio. It's one of the things that we have to deal with. And again, just having a process to check that is the most important stuff that we can do.
Daniel Jester:
And on that note of consistency, I'm going to share a story and I'm not going to say what studio this was, because I feel like there's going to be some people out there that don't care for this story. But I'm aware of a studio whose workflow when they came up against some challenging color in the studio, because they were shooting... The studio was in an older building. The lighting situation was kind of crazy in there. And they were also shooting strobe, which adds its own layer of color to it. And if there's any situation where the colors on set as they were being shot and it was a very high volume studio, the colors on set were being shot that they didn't appear to match on the monitor to the garment that was on set. They would just take the model out onto the balcony and shoot it with an iPhone.
Daniel Jester:
And they had the same iPhone that they used all the time, because the truth is that the iPhone does a pretty good job in daylight. As long as you have daylight of rendering color pretty accurately, you're not dealing with a lot of the crazy reflection issues that you get when you work with strobe. When I first saw this I was like, "Oh my God, is that okay?" "Can we do that?" But then it occurred to me like you guys are saying, what they're doing is consistent. What they're doing is they're taking it out there. They got the same phone, the same full daylight conditions. And they're saying this image is closer to what my eye sees than what we got on set. So here's a reference for our retouch teams to correct for that. Just out of curiosity. And this is a random kind of off topic question. Have either of you ever administered the X-rite color and hue test to perspective employees or just done it for fun?
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
No.
Jason Wheeler:
I've taken it myself. Yeah.
Daniel Jester:
How'd you do Jason?
Jason Wheeler:
I'm pretty high on the color sensitivity scale.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah. I was too. The first time I did it... I had done it years ago and got a really great score. Did it again and got a pretty bad one and then took it again immediately following and got pretty good, which I was surprised by, because my eyes have been deteriorating for years. But I've just been thinking a lot about this, about having a person in the studio who's responsible for maybe being the final word on color. It's hard sometimes because the tenure of our studio employees tends to be pretty short, but in best practice, does it make sense to have a person or a small team who is closely monitored for their ability to perceive color accurately to be responsible for it? Or is that a trait that we should be looking for? Any HR professionals who are listening to this podcast, if there's issues with this, we're just talking about it on the podcast. This is all hypothetical.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
That scares me in that, then you're relying on individuals versus having a system that's more automated. My goal has always been to build a process where essentially I can just pluck myself out of the equation and it continues running. So-
Daniel Jester:
Totally.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
To just rely on individuals. And I'm sure, obviously there's certain careers and certain functions that really rely on an individual, but that would scare me. We, again, in a former studio, we had a small team that would ultimately take the garments that were being shot on set and try to capture a color accurate swatch. That file would then travel with the images that were caught on set to post production so that they could use that color accurate swatch to match all of the other garments that were caught on body, that seemed to work pretty well. But again, that's an investment in time and teams and it all kind of contributes to a higher cost per shot.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
So a balance... That to me feels better than relying on just someone's eyes. We try to have a standard light that we think captures and showcases our product and the talent in the best possible light, no pun intended. But we get different fabrics and we have some highly reflective fabrics and then we have canvases and the way the light hits those is vastly different. Same color will look different. Then we're forced to make adjustments on set. But those are to me, the ones that kind of slip through the cracks where you have the same color and people just assume that this is accurate. Our post production team doesn't make the necessary tweaks to align all of those colors together. So you could have the same color, two, three different garments, all different fabrics that all look vastly different.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
And they're all sitting next to one another on the landing page. And the consumer is seeing three different colors where in fact really they're the same. And it's hard to tell at that point is, did we not take the necessary steps in the post-production process to align everything? Is that what they really look like? It's a headache that will never go away in my opinion. We're just trying to find the best ways to deal with it.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
We've also had... Not from a capture standpoint on set, but we'll be asked because of the way our product flows into the studio. We'll be asked to color author or color correct garments. We might get it in a blue and they want to do it in a red. And it's like, you have the swatch, you should be all set to go with that. And that-
Daniel Jester:
The CAD.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Yeah. Or a CAD to go with and the same concept of that color while that might be accurate, once it's dyed onto those different fabrics, looks different.
Daniel Jester:
Right.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Whether it's on a denim versus a polyester, a cotton, and all we have to go with is this CAD. And in some cases we may not get the garment, the actual garment itself until we are way downstream and those assets are being flowed to our site. And then we may have to go back and retrofit. That's a challenge in itself around color when we don't have the right product in studio to shoot.
Daniel Jester:
Everything you said is totally right on. I will also acknowledge though that the technology and some of the things that some services out there have developed in being able to color change has kind of blown me away at how rapidly it's gotten very good in the last few years, it can't cover everything. And to your point, JF, I was thinking about this, as you were saying this, another variable that can really hang this up. And I think you guys probably experienced this working in the outdoor industry, which is that a dark canvas doesn't have the same... It's not going to reflect the same specular highlights that a nylon is going to reflect. So you can have those two materials in exactly the same color and the nylons going to look dramatically different than the canvas is going to look.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Absolutely. Incorporating that and then thinking about the consistency of different assets that the consumer is seeing, we will shoot... And we shoot with strobe and then we'll switch over to a video workflow where we're shooting under continuous light. And right there, you're going to see a difference in the color, because it's just so hard to... Without making any tweaks, to go from one to the other. And the color's going to look exactly the same. So, that's another part of the workflow. Once you go to video, where-
Daniel Jester:
Yeah.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Trying to-
Daniel Jester:
I wasn't going to mention video for this episode. I have it on the document, because this is another area that we had a customer at the commercial studio that I worked at. We had a customer who wanted images and video for everything. And we tried to get ahead of this and we said, "Okay, we're going to just light everything with LED constant lights so that it's consistent lighting at least. And then there's still a lot of variables that you need to control for.
Daniel Jester:
And it was a challenging process. And especially from a commercial studio standpoint, the customer needed to be satisfied. We didn't have the luxury of being in house of just saying, we're going to call this good enough, who was fine tooth comb, taking the still images and screen captures of the video and saying, "Okay, this one looks good up", until she walks towards the camera. By the way the customer wanted the model to walk on set and then walk towards the camera. So we had two different planes of lighting we had to deal with.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Yeah.
Daniel Jester:
Video historically has been really difficult. But one of the things I wanted to chat with you guys about, and I think this is part of the video thing, is the tech going to make this easier or is it going to introduce more variables or where do we think we go from here?
Jason Wheeler:
I think from the tech side, it's going to become easier from an eCommerces perspective. Cameras are both on the video and the still photography side are quickly approaching and moving towards a space where they're capturing neutrals a lot better. They're able to capture the contrast that we need. And as long as we're doing our part here at the studio to maintain neutrals and make sure that we're setting our neutrals properly, that is going to continue to flow through and translate to the viewer into the customer who is looking at it on monitors that have higher technology for displaying the color ranges that are necessary and are coming out, frankly, a lot more neutral nowadays than they have in the past.
Jason Wheeler:
And a lot of the monitors that are coming out now that our customers are viewing product on with the consolidation of the industry are becoming more standardized. Companies are using the same screen manufacturers for the most part. They're not using hundreds of different screen manufacturers. We're now down to like three or four. So a lot of this technology is becoming more consolidated, more consistent. So I think from a studio standpoint, it's going to become a bit easier for us to push things through quicker and more consistently with the confidence that our customers are viewing our products on consistent medium.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
I agree with everything that you said. The one thing that I want to throw in there is that I do think it overcomplicates or is going to be more complicated because the more assets that we are putting out there... When we're talking about consumer trust, again, not to get into video, but we are now pumping out videos, we're pumping out PDP shots, content creation is king right now. So it's easier to put out more content. And it's just more opportunity when you are looking at a garment for a consumer to see different colors. When we're talking about color. Going back to this question of what is the consumer going to get? I do think it overcomplicates it. The tech might be better to capture it, but I think the processes need to be put in place to be able to take these enormous amounts of assets to check them.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
And so there's a quality assurance step that needs to be really considered in this process and the more assets that we pump out. I think the more complicated that our process gets. If we are really trying to ensure that quality. I also think that for the most part if things are going well and sales are doing great and conversion is good, no one's really looking at this. So you really this might be a problem that we are trying to get ahead of. And being at the studio, we're always thinking about these things and maybe overthinking these things. But from a consumer standpoint, things might be fine. It's only once there's a red flag. If sales are dipping a bit or if conversion is not great or there's a return rate and there's a comment about color, it feels that the first place that they'll come back to is the creative to take a look at this.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
So I think when you're talking about e-com having great PDP performance metrics is something to look at. But Jason and I were talking about this and I think even hearing feedback from the consumer, it's just a data point too, because I think there's a lot of subjectivity in that information that they're getting back. Especially if we start seeing that the reason that they're returning it is for color. Well, what does that actually mean? Is it because they didn't get the color that they expected or they didn't like the color? So the information that we're getting back from the consumer, I think is really important. What we're getting currently may not be as accurate as we need to be able to make that determination, whether it's the color that is affecting the return rates. And we can kind of spin down a whole other rabbit hole here in terms of what is an acceptable return rate. And when should we be concerned about this. But I think it's a data point. I don't know, Jason we were talking about this earlier. I don't know if you want to chime in with something there.
Jason Wheeler:
Yeah. It's a one small consideration and I think a sea of other data points that we need to consider when we're looking at returns. We know the industry is hovering anywhere, depending on the reports you're looking at anywhere between 18 and 30% return rates, three major categories of return not meeting the description falls closely below damaged goods. And the other factor for returns we're looking at is, overpurchasing. Consumers are actually purchasing a large portion of product just so that they can physically get their hands on it with the intent to return 90% of what they bought.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah.
Jason Wheeler:
Right. Once you're looking at the return rate for not meeting the description, which would cover both color and text description, really drilling into that, it's hard to know how much of it is because they were dissatisfied with the color they received against the color they seen on the monitor or they just dissatisfied with the color they received against themselves after trying it on.
Daniel Jester:
Yeah.
Jason Wheeler:
Right.
Daniel Jester:
True.
Jason Wheeler:
Think about this. How many of our customers are actually purchasing... I know I don't do this. You go online, you find a red shirt, logo brand. You love great. You buy it. That's what I want. You get it at home. You put it on, do you pop open your browser window for that purchase and compare what you're wearing against what you originally seen? See you're... I don't.
Daniel Jester:
No.
Jason Wheeler:
I wouldn't. How many people are actually doing that?
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
I think there's something also there. We shoot leather footwear. We may do our best to capture the sample or the product, the pair that we have on set. But because the nature of the leather, in some cases, what a consumer gets is a little bit different. There's a variety of browns in this leather and it's not drastic, but it's enough that it reads as a different color. And it just kind of got me thinking that one of the things we probably should do is manage expectations for the consumer. So in that case where there is a potential shift in color because of the leather that should be called out on the PDP page so that when they receive the product, at least they're expecting that, well this is going to be brown, but because of the nature of the material that's going into this product, there's potentially a variety in the brown or a shift in the color that I'm getting.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
We do this with sizing where we're starting to a lot of places are starting to put model dimensions so that the consumer can manage their expectations in terms of the garment that's being shown on this industry standard model, how is it going to fit on them? And maybe we should be doing something around color that there may be some variance in the color that you're going to receive based on the monitor or the device that you're looking at this on.
Jason Wheeler:
Yeah.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
And I don't think we do anything right now to manage expectations. We try to obviously make it perfect. And I don't know if this is something that should be looked at, but in terms of just managing consumer expectations, that the colors may be a little bit off when you receive it.
Daniel Jester:
Jason and Jean-Francois, thank you so much for sitting down and having this conversation with me. I know there's a lot that we could dig into on color and all of the variables in technology and even thinking about what the future might hold is really interesting about how we're going to deal with color. And you made a great point JF about all the different pieces and bits of content that we have to put out there. But at any rate, we got this one in the books. Thank you for having the conversation with me and thanks for coming on the show.
Jean-Francois Ortiz:
Thanks for having us.
Jason Wheeler:
Yeah. Thanks. It's been a pleasure.
Daniel Jester:
What a great conversation. And I really do think we're going to need more episodes on color to dig in quite a bit deeper on that. Many thanks to Jean-Francois Ortiz and Jason Wheeler. And thanks to you for listening. The show is produced by Creative Force edited by Calvin Lands. Special. Thanks to Sean O’Meara. I'm your host, Daniel Jester until next time my friends.

About the host

Chief evangelist at Creative Force

Daniel Jester is an experienced creative production professional who has managed production teams, built and launched new studios, and produced large-scale projects. He's currently the Chief Evangelist at Creative Force but has a breadth of experience in a variety of studio environments - working in-house at brands like Amazon, Nordstrom, and Farfetch as well as commercial studios like CONVYR. Creative-minded, while able to effectively plan for and manage a complex project, he bridges the gap between spreadsheets and creative talent.