Founder's Thoughts on Unichrome

Unichrome's mission is to channel the vibrancy of the universe. We see perspectives that otherwise we take for granted.

Every day, color surrounds us — billions upon billions of colors, and we take for granted how it all falls together. It's estimated that about one percent of global GDP accounts for color: pigments, resins, inks, dyes, paints. One percent of the world's GDP makes color make the world go round.

That's the economics. Color also creates meaning. Look out in nature — squiggly lines, rough edges, billions upon billions of colors collapsed into what we see as a tree, a blade of grass, a flower. Something stands in front of us, and we try to take that inspiration and recreate it. That's difficult.

Unichrome, from a technical perspective, aims to reduce that friction — to take the artist's intent and express it in the medium they choose, and help manage that experience.

From a human-centered perspective, color works much like smell. It ties to memory. Every color in our collection is pulled from a real-world object through our own process. The object is documented, captured, storied, preserved. We compress human experience into a single pixel and decompress it into infinite tomorrows.

The Unichrome team is on a road trip across Canada, reconnecting with the deep roots of the founder, Patrick. Color has opened many doors. Color has created new avenues to explore. Color has brought Patrick into places he'd never imagined and taught him things he'd never have learned otherwise. Turning over every stone, so to speak.

The larger the collection grows, the more valuable it becomes — the more meaningful, the more memory-generating. Unichrome is building the most meaningful real-life-grounded color palette in existence.

We're currently serving and building the Canada Collection, and as a subset, spending time on Georgian Bay — building the GBAY Collection more specifically, spending time in the rich histories of Collingwood.

Each color we pick gives a glimpse into a past and into a future. Some colors are ephemeral — flowers that will never bloom the same again. Some come from historic sites that weathering and human development eventually cover up. We've captured bridges, buildings, sites, stories — so that they'll be preserved into the future.

Our intent is to channel the vibrancy of the universe. We drive a mobile printing station so we can print limited-edition prints on the road. We work with local print shops to distribute, giving business back to the community — as they say, about sixty cents of every dollar spent locally stays in the community. We deliver prints wherever we are. And this is just the beginning.