Seven colors, one paper sample.

Early in the project we printed a single sheet of paper. Seven small color swatches in a clean grid. We taped it to the wall above the worktable and looked at it for a week.

The colors had to be small enough to hide in a coat pocket and quiet enough to belong on a desk. They had to look right at 6am at an airport gate and at 6pm in a hotel bar. They had to look like things you would buy, not things you would be sold.

What we ended up with: a warm muted red. A dark coffee brown. A near-black. A taupe gray. A sage green. A warm tan. A slate teal. A blush pink. Eight, in the end, not seven — the pink earned its place after a week of looking at it next to everyone else.

The same sheet of swatches still hangs in the studio. When we add the next object — and there will be a next object — we will start there. One paper sample. A wall. A week of looking.

— Daily Homa Studio