Explore hope for 2025 through colors and words in this episode of the Creative WorkHour Podcast. Hosts share their aspirations, pairing words with colors to inspire creativity and personal growth. 
 

Hello and welcome back to another episode of the Creative WorkHour podcast. Today will be episode 36. Can you believe it? In the room today you have myself Greg, we have Alessandra, we have Dr Melanie, Bobby B, Wai Ling, Shadows, Ken and Hillary, and Rochelle. 

We are continuing our word of the year. And today I thought perhaps, and you can tell me what you think, Alessandra, but now that we're a week or 2 into the new year, maybe what word represents a hope for Creative Work Hour in 25? And if we had to assign a color to that word, what the color might be, just to get a, you being all about color and all, I thought that might be interesting, but tell me, what do you think?

Well, I love the Greg producers curve ball, but I'm on it. I'm on it. But the color to go with our Word of the Year work is indigo. And indigo for those that are limited in their color vision, whatever version of blue that you see, and whatever version of purple that you're able to see, that in-between land is indigo. And indigo is quite a color of ancient meaning and communication. It has to do with the inception of the idea. Before there is an intention, there's that funny feeling that you get, that resonating, that steaming up from the earth to become the primordial soup that becomes this, that, and the other, and voila, you got life.

And in our realm, it's the giving life to an idea, or to a notion, or to a motif, perhaps it's music, or to the reimagining of something. But it's just that where that spark happens is associated with the color indigo. I know we sound frivolous when we're together in creative work hour and we're checking in or checking out, but our souls run deep and it's just an ancient, ancient thing about not just humanity but all of life that it seeks creativity and it seeks it at that point of inception. And the language visually is communicated in indigo.

Gretchen, how about you?

Whoa, okay. A color in a word. How about, let's see, I'm going to say green, kind of a teal green and it is the variety, the variety of it all. In green there's so many different shades and it changes so easily and I think that the variety and in variety we can embrace imperfection and understand that imperfection is absolutely perfect and that that is just wonderful.

Thank goodness that the word is variety to go with.

Wai Ling

Yes, variety, yeah.

Bobby, your word representing a hope for 25 for Creative Work Hour Under Color.
Wow. Best thing that comes to mind is Sunrise Orange and journey. There's a journey out there to be welcomed in and let it just kind of hit me and soak into me and I'm gonna get a feel for what it might be, what it might be, what it might not be.

Thanks Bobby When you said journey I was thinking of the rock band but then I realized we were talking about a different kind of journey so not to be yes. Wai Ling how about yourself?

I think it will be a bright shade of orange and the word will be courage, the courage to try.

I like that. I like that a lot. Shadows, how about yourself?

Creative work hours hase to be imperfection because we don't screw around with trying to be perfect. The color's got to be blue since that happens to be my favorite color.

What's your favorite color?

That would be blue.

Ken, how about you?

I guess I'll go with the color white. Since, you know, before it goes through the, the prism, you know, it's all the colors. So you get the rainbow on the other side. And for the word, I'm going to go with an astronaut. You can just go on an adventure and explore. And if you happen to be trapped in a bewitched episode and you're a cat and become an astronaut, well, then you're a cat-astronaut, but that's for a different episode of the podcast.

I wonder if you got that from the name on your sweater today, the astronaut. The astronaut. See, I'm getting mixed up now. See what you did? Hilary, how about you?

Thank you, Greg. So I'm glad I had a minute to think about this because I definitely switched around a little bit. I think for a word of the year that, and we brushed on this earlier, I want to re-inflate. I have those past passion projects that have just kind of fell flat and it disappoints me because there's still good ideas. I don't need new ones. I'd be very happy to take these past ideas into fruition. Anything like this, the toastmasters contest coming up. I've never participated in 1 in years and I can never get the speech out.

So I want to re-inflate all my ideas and see what can happen. And then thinking about the color to give it kind of like movement, some vibrancy. I'm thinking of an ice blue, some air, some movement. It's got to get things going. So yeah, re-inflate ice blue.

Thank you, Hilary. We'll come back to Dr. Melanie. Dr. Melanie, we're talking about, just in case you missed it, your word to represent hope in 2025, the Creative Work Hour, and what color would that be?

Well, the colors have all sounded great, but I'm gonna take orange, which is 1 of my most favorite colors. And I'm trying to think of a word for, I mean, I kind of I'm going with what a lot of people said before me, like Hillary, and also, but anyway, anti procrastination and precision without going nuts about perfection, Who the hell can give me some kind of word for that? Evolution? I don't know. But anyway, I couldn't come up with 1 word. I'm sorry. But oranges I can come up with.

Orange, you're glad it wasn't hard?

Ha, ha, ha.

I was going to say, what's with orange today? There's a lot of orange going around.

Is orange on you?

Right.

I want to go over to Rochelle, and then can we come back to orange? And I can talk to you a little bit about oranges.

Yes.

OK. Thank you, Alessandra. So the word representing hope for Creative Work Hour in 2025, for me, would be felt. It's a beingness in the moment. It's very visceral. And it's not really maybe is that really hope? Because to me, hope is something like feeling wistful or in the future. But it's not in the past. It's not in the future. It's just in the moment flowing, which is very much the creative zone for me. And the work is how to get into that zone of flowing. And the color would be cardinal red. Because I was watching the cardinals in the snow as I was baking this morning and baking is 1 of the ways I get into that creative flow and other things come to me.

So thank you all.

If I had to pick 1 I would go with you know for the word I would say to represent hope but I would I would stay with hope as the word. And for my color, I would say green, because green is about nature. It's about peace, unity, things of that nature. So that would be great.

And back to you, Alessandra.

Oh, thank you, Greg. And I couldn't hear Devin all that well, but I remember that when we have been working with this in the last few episodes, he talked about the word peace. So Devon, throw me a, is it still peaceful? And the color is yellow. Got it. For our notes, I have got that. I was gonna talk to you a minute about, my background is, 1 of my backgrounds, because many of us here are phyllo-maths. We have a love of learning different disciplines of interest and if somebody tries to hold us down like, oh what are you supposed to be?

We get this look like we're dressed in costume and it doesn't feel right. It doesn't, it just doesn't, it doesn't fit that well. So let me go with creativity and orange, go hand in hand. Here's the thing about oranges. Orange is that balanced point between the rootedness of red and the beginning of a day or a journey or an idea. Think of turning on a light, that light, until we've got that very very very fast LED lighting that makes things icy blue, which sometimes is exactly what we need, for the energy to get unstuck or to re-inflate a project, so to speak, like what Hillary was saying.

But orange is rooted, it's grounded, and so that red base becomes more cardinal red, and then it becomes more sunrise red, and then it's balanced off with a brighter, more vibrant orange and then ends with yellow. So if you balance that whole, we were talking about teeter totters today, teeter totters of energy, and if you take that small bit of the color spectrum from red to yellow that takes you from being grounded you could even go into chakra theory here, we won't, but we could, from being grounded all the way up, all the way up to the heart chakra.

And so that gives you a groundedness, it gives you the ability to move, it gives you the ability to resonate, like what is this thing may be a really bright idea, but if it's all coming from your head, you may not be able to stomach it. And creativity has to do with all of this. You've got to be able to digest the project, and it has to come from the heart. So orange is, and you will see now that you, ah yep, Ken is showing us some things that are orange. There is a creative design studio out of San Francisco called ArcTouch and there is an ArcTouch Orange and that is their driving focus is about creating lovable apps and orange is their signature color.

So now that you see that, as you notice logos as you go throughout your day or your weekend. Just notice what things are orange. They're communicating creativity to you. So that may be more than you want to know. Oh my god. So as we record this podcast, We do it the same way that we work together in Creative Work Hour. We sit in a Zoom room and we record from here. So that allows us to make goofy faces at each other and send emojis around. And I think Gretchen just put on her sunrise orange microphone foam cover.

What is that thing called? Gprechen? I forget.

It's a Doc Pops and it's an acoustic foam cover for the microphone for sound.

And I've seen that you have them in all different colors. And so you pick them out based on what you're doing.

Doc Pop has them in like 6 or 7 different colors. It's great fun.

Oh, so what's so fun, You get to hear us on the podcast. But as we are using our visual screens to communicate with each other, I'm wearing orange, Greg is wearing orange, Ken is pulling out all of these bags that he uses going to and from work that are orange, Gretchen has her Doc Pops, Y-Ling has her file folders that are orange. Shadows has her artwork of the day from Daily Echoes that is orange. And Rochelle, what is your thing? What is your thing that's orange that you're showing us?

Oh, we got the orange cat. What is that, Rochelle? It's a wood dragon, and it's like a cinnabar red, which is red-orange. It's red-orange, and Dr. Melanie has some big blankie that's orange.

We have Jimmy.

And Jimmy, Jimmy, Jimmy. How would you describe his color? Jimmy is our token orange tabby cat, but he has a very interesting color. How would you describe Hillary? And would you describe him as a creative cat?

Yes, he's definitely creative on how he wants to annoy me. And I call him a strawberry blonde.

Oh, Yeah. And he is 1 lovely boy. So I'm going to hand everything back over. Aren't you glad I'm bringing this to an end to hand it over to my brother, Brad, Greg. How did we do? How do you want to sum that up for us?

Orange. Word of the day. What's up?

Okay, well, it's that time. It's happened again.

You've wasted another perfectly great few minutes listening to the Creative Workout podcast. You could have been doing something else, but you were not. Come back next week and we'll be here. But what about you? Have you changed your word of the year and what color would represent your word? Let us know. We'd be interested to hear that. Thanks for tuning in and I'll come back now.