What happens when you ask 15 young creatives to tell the story of a city’s rich history in the language of color? To answer this question, we embarked on an inspiring project with a group of brilliant art and design students from the Savannah College of Art and Design (SCAD).

In the course of just 10 weeks, these design students would explore the depths of Savannah’s architectural, ecological, and cultural underpinnings to create palettes that represent everything that makes the city uniquely beautiful.

SCADpro is the collaborative design studio at the Savannah College of Art and Design, which offers current students real-world experience through project opportunities with external partners, helping them to build the essential skills of collaboration, communication, and creative problem-solving. Business leaders typically present a brief detailing a unique challenge they face, and this year, Sherwin-Williams Savannah District was the designated partner.

Dr. Daves Rossell, Professor of Architectural History at SCAD, facilitated the class with the support of Casey Nelson, Chair of Illustration, and Eric Shumate, Associate Chair of Graphic Design.

The class was made up of mostly juniors and seniors with majors ranging from paint to illustration to graphic design. The students’ backgrounds were equally diverse, with only a few students hailing from the greater Savannah area and the others from as far away as California, New York, Greece, and India. 

Sherwin-Williams asked the SCADpro design students to research and curate a special color collection exclusively inspired by the city of Savannah for architectural use. “The Colors of Savannah” project was complex, including the selection of 45 Sherwin-Williams paint colors, as well as the development of a presentation, brochures, and a fan deck for Sherwin-Williams stores.

At the outset, Account Executive Amy Milani explained the brief, emphasizing how Sherwin-Williams’s advanced color resources inspire designers to bring more meaningful solutions to their clients. She demonstrated how designers use the Sherwin-Williams color system, how it is organized, and provided the resources for the project. Savannah District Manager Sarah Howard clarified how color selection can be one of the most time-consuming aspects of a contractor’s job and how curated palettes are a valuable resource to professionals in the field.

From left: interior design graduate Jagrati Bahety, senior Elizabeth Rizzo, and illustration student Halley Hemphill share their research findings and final color selections for the project.

The students were given full creative freedom to select colors inspired by the city’s history and architecture—as well as pivotal events and people of the community—to paint a complete picture of Savannah through their final palettes. They identified Savannah’s most meaningful moments, symbolized in Sherwin-Williams colors, sometimes with clues to these connections in the color names themselves, and always in the ways that each color captures and communicates a key aspect of Savannah’s story.

As the students began their research, they quickly learned just how rich the city’s history was. “The stories behind everyday occurrences in Savannah, such as the color of freight ships, weren’t known to me before working on the project,” says Jagrati Bahety, a recent SCAD graduate in Interior Design. 

For Alanna Hurt, another 2024 graduate and an advertising/branding major, chief among the challenges was finding connections between the color names, and not just their chromatic character, that would help them tell the story of Savannah. Every little detail came into play, and the project required a seemingly endless list of small tasks to tackle. Elizabeth Rizzo, a SCAD senior with ambitions to move onto a master’s program following graduation, says this was the biggest hurdle for her, and one that required the whole team’s cooperation to overcome. “There wasn’t a road map, so it took an effort on everyone’s part to get there,” she says. “I’m proud of the final product, which demanded a great deal of work to get done on time.”

To help them form a complete picture of the city’s key colors, the students captured photos of architectural facades, landmarks, and more. Photos courtesy of student Shannon Chapman.

With a city as vibrant and dynamic as Savannah, it was also a particular struggle to narrow down the color collection to just 45 choices. “Our team conducted research by taking pictures of Savannah,” says Halley Hemphill, who graduated with a BFA in Illustration. “We had to decide which colors described and showcased all that Savannah is. I worked on the design aspect of the brochure, and many thumbnails/motifs were drawn, redrawn, scrapped, and were changed from color to black-and-white. It’s part of the process and a lot of fun brainstorming with my peers to create perfect graphics for the brochure.” 

At the finale on May 28th, the students delivered their final product: three exceptional Colors of Savannah palettes—Roots, Soul, and Flair—carefully curated to represent the city’s earliest days, its panoply of cultural influences, and its ongoing creative evolution.

The Roots palette includes colors inspired by the city’s beginnings, rooted in the land once occupied by the Yamacraw Tribe, with its clear blue skies, nearby coastal waters, diverse wildlife, and vast supply of natural materials that make up the city’s oldest architectural landmarks and trade goods.

Within this palette, SCAD senior Elizabeth Rizzo says she associates the unique blue of Sea Serpent SW 7615 (234-C7) with Savannah’s deep connection to the sea, and Halley Hemphill resonates with Oakmoss SW 6180 (213-C6) most: “I’m originally from California,” she tells us, “and when I arrived in Savannah, it was such an ethereal experience to drive through the neighborhoods and see these beautiful oak trees filled with the Spanish moss that makes Savannah so beautiful.”

The Soul palette includes colors honoring the mosaic of cultures in the Lowcountry. The soul of Savannah is found in its diversity of spirit from the romantic expression of the Victorian period to the tenacity of the Gullah-Geechee community.

Shannon Chapman, a junior studying Architectural History, found the rich jewel tones of this palette to be most meaningful to her experience of the city. “Heartthrob SW 6866 (101-C5) was chosen to represent the iconic Savannah red door, symbolizing warmth, hospitality and a sense of community. Each color has a story, and this project was a dive into what inspired their use.” And Blue Horizon SW 6497 (272-C4) was the quintessential Savannah color for Alanna Hurt for its association with iconic “haint blue,” a color unbound by hex code and with a purpose and meaning as ever-changing as the city itself.

The Flair palette was curated to symbolize the continued creativity and innovation in Savannah, through its growth as a world-class port city, premier location for filmmaking, and, of course, the significant influence of creative education provided at the Savannah College of Art and Design.

This was the palette with which Jagrati Bahety connected. As an interior design major, she found it both fun and challenging to make bold colors work in proportion with neutrals. During her time in Savannah, she says the beautiful colors of the city left a lasting impression on her, and through the Savannah palette, they will also on others.

Through many weeks of dedicated research, discussion, and collaboration with Sherwin-Williams, the students of the SCADpro Collaboration course not only identified significant stories in local design, but they also learned how to communicate them in a beautiful, curated color collection that captures the history, dynamism, and emotion of the city of Savannah. As Shannon Chapman put it, “The class learned from educators, locals, and the built environment to piece together the history of Savannah through its colors.”

To find the perfect colors to tell the story of your own clients’ cities and spaces, you can order complimentary large-sized samples using your PRO+ account.

Photos courtesy of SCADpro team.