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by Gary S. Vasilash > Editor-In-Chief Sherry Sabbagh & the Pursuit of Color Although this may be surprising—and it often is to me—sometimes when you walk through design departments in ofces, they resemble, well, the actuarial department. A picture of something— like a Lamborghini Gallardo or some interstellar object from the Hubble—on a cube wall, and maybe a few scale models of concepts of future past. There may be a souvenir from some place an IDSA conference was held, or possibly a trophy from an interdepartmental softball playof ("Yeah, we really took it to those guys over in Actuarial in '12 . . ."). There is a serious dearth of what can be thought of as inspirational, imaginative, artistic, creative, clever, eye-opening, or gob-smacking. (Of course, when you're admitted to the conference room where the planning is performed, you suddenly see all of the things that you'd imagine would be in the ofces and cubes, but even so, they're organized in an orderly manner.) Sherry Sabbagh is the design manager for Color + Materials & Advanced Trend Research at Johnson Controls ( johnsoncontrols.com ), and she manages the seating supplier's Advanced Materials Library. Her ofce space is in Plymouth, Michigan, physically. Imaginatively—yet tangibly—it is seemingly everywhere, with pictures, materials, objects and artifacts in an array in her space. There is almost a ferce famboyance to her working area. Color abounds. Which is the sort of thing you'd be looking for in a person whose job it is to understand color—not only what it means in Michigan or the U.S. or North America, but EVERYWHERE. ("We have to be mindful of the cultural implications of color," Sabbagh says, noting that in India, for example, brides wear red at their weddings and white is the color for funerals.) Prior to joining the automotive commu- nity, she worked for 16 years as a textile designer in New York City, where she had assignments ranging from Liberty of London to West Point Stevens, Oleg Cassini to Walt Disney Productions. She came to Detroit in 1997 because her husband had a job reassignment. And she admits that she had more than a little trepidation when she thought about auto interiors (where else would a color and materials person be better suited than on interiors?): "I didn't want to do automotive—it was just black, grey and beige. It sounded like complete torture for a color-oriented person." But there is something to be said for someone whose fundamental passion and drive can work to transcend the status quo, as black, grey and beige though it may be. "I fell into automotive by default--" she says, then adds, with the sort of enthusiasm that one would expect from a person whose workspace is so lively, "—and I love it." She spent a couple of years at General Motors before moving to Johnson Controls in 1999. Given her background and her present role, it isn't entirely surprising that Sabbagh travels to the Milan Design Fair, the ICCF, NeoCon, and other furniture- centric events. She admits, "I have always been totally a research geek," so her travels not only take her to industry events, but as she shows photograph after photograph of colors and cars, of fashion and furniture, it becomes clear that on her personal travels she is keenly assessing her surroundings (e.g., in explaining a trend of the importance of lighting in interiors, she shows a picture of electroluminescent plankton that she took in the middle of the night on a beach in India; were she less dedicated to her pursuit, you can imagine her saying, "Yes, that's interesting, but it is the middle of the night and I am still jet lagged, so . . ."). Sherry Sabbagh, design manager for Color + Materials & Advanced Trend Research at Johnson Controls, is dedicated to fnding the ways and means to make auto interiors fashionable but not trendy, colorful but not sales-proof. Although she started as a textile designer in New York and never imagined working on car interiors, Sherry Sabbagh has found the auto industry to be a tremendous palette—and pallet—for her work. AD&P; > February 2015 > FEATURE > Sherry Sabbagh & the Pursuit of Color > Gary S. Vasilash > gsv@autofeldguide.com 36