Name: Iñigo García
Job title: Manager Specialty Brands
Location: Barcelona
Country: Spain
Who is Iñigo García?
I have worked for Deco in Spain for 18 months. I work in the national sales division of Specialty Products. I am 34 years old and I live in Barcelona with my rather large family. I have a wife and five kids, two girls and three boys.
I basically spend my free time with family; my job at AkzoNobel is action-packed so I try to spend as much time as possible with my family over the weekend.
What does color mean to you at work?
In my specific working environment color has less importance as Specialty Products are geared towards the technical rather than the decorative. But I do have some contact with color through brands such as Hammerite and Xyladecolor for wood. Color theory is not really my thing, but I did enjoy and appreciate the latest corporate video that compared colors to grey; promoting the idea that it’s color that breaks the monotony and doing better things at work means doing them with color thus avoiding grey results.
I associate my work with blue and white. White for the new building and its predominance in the décor of the offices, and the white and blue of the AkzoNobel logo. While preparing for this interview I gave some thought to the brand that I most identify with, and it’s Hammerite; perhaps because of the blue, which is the main color of it’s the logo, it’s my favorite color.
Even though I’ve been here for some time I’m still trying to look at things through fresh eyes. Once I start to blend into the landscape, as it were, it will become more difficult to bring in new ideas. Let’s prevent our work from becoming grey and instead look for new ways to do things. Then we will bring more color to our own lives and to those of the people we deal with.
…and outside of work?
Outside of work, my favorite color is also blue. Maybe because it is a basic color, both simple and pure. Besides, it is elegant. All my suits are navy blue, for instance. All of my shirts are blue as well, perhaps because I am quite conservative. And come to think of it, depending on the shade, it’s also a strong color. It’s my wife’s and eldest daughter’s favorite color as well.
I am committed to participating in the next Pintado Solidario. I think I also brought color to the European Youth Games. Such a large group of healthy young people with its own ethos brought color wherever it went. I believe I made a color contribution to a place where we saw flags from many countries.
I have difficulty making associations with color. With smell, yes, we know that smell evokes many memories, but with color I find it more difficult to define. Even if blue is my favorite color I can’t explain why, it’s something within me, it doesn’t remind me of any specific thing in the world around me.
When I think about colors, I associate them with my family and memories… The golden sand of the Bull Plaza in Extremadura, my father’s home town where I spent many summers. It’s also the color of many houses there. Maroon reminds me of my time as a law student; the books, the color of the lawyers’ offices, it reminds me of specific moments. And then there’s ‘colorado’. With her typical sense of humor, my grandmother would say, “We don’t say red in this house, we say colorado!” This I associate with her as she was from Andalusia and she was all passion and art. And white, even if in reality it’s the absence of color, I associate with kids, babies, the idea of cleanliness and purity.
Thinking about all this, I don’t seem to have any real connection with blue, even though the last two companies I have worked for have blue as the main color in their logo, one of them being AkzoNobel.
What is your all-time favorite color and why?
Blue, it just seems part of me. I consider myself to be simple, basic and uncomplicated. As far as elegance is concerned, it may be presumptuous, but yes, I do consider myself to be well-groomed and having a certain classic style.