Category Archives: design
colour forecasting in real time
An interesting project, Color Forecast, has been developed by Pedro Cruz and runs feeds from high definition cameras in Milan, Paris and Antwerp to track the colour of fashions worn across the cities.The software analyzes the passing colors and shows in real time which colors are worn most often, then the colors are compiled into an infographic to see how trends evolve. For further information see here.
Kuler
If you are looking for inspiration for a colour scheme then you could do worse than look at the Kuler web site.
homemade colour measurement
Interesting article about a guy who built his own colour-measurement device at home from simple components.
colour kindle
I recently used a Kindle for the first time. I have never had much interest in them; since a smart phone or a tablet seem to do everything that a Kindle does and a whole lot more. However, there is one advantage of the Kindle and that is that the screen is easier to read the brighter the ambient illumination. So on holiday, for example, the Kindle really comes into its own if you want to read novels on your sun lounger. Nevertheless, it is a major limitation that the screen is only black and white. For reading novels I guess its ok; but for lots of other reading material I think colour would enrich the experience. It had been thought that a colour kindle was many years away. But today I read a report on CNET that claims that Amazon is set to launch a colour e-reader later this year. There are doubts about whether the technology is ready yet … we’ll see.
Whitehall colour branding
The UK government is set to rebrand its departments with bold new colour schemes. The new colours include lots of blues and greens; for example, navy blue for the Foreign Office, bright blue for the NHS and green for the Department of Energy and Climate Change. However, the The Department for Culture, Media and Sport, which is purple at the moment, is reassigned bright pink.
Read more here.
Nadal hits out at never-before-seen colour
I was quite excited to come across this news story today. I do sometimes get asked by people about colours that nobody has ever seen before. So the notion that Nadal had seen one was quite interesting. However, it turns out that it is not a colour that has never been seen before but a clay colour that has never been used before in a ranking tennis tournament. Doh!!
The controversial use of blue courts at the ATP-WTA Madrid Masters may be a poor choice. One of the requirements of a clay court colour is to ensure good contrast between the ball and the ground.
colour maps
Last year a student, Kaori, from Japan spent some time with me at Leeds and we spoke a lot about how to use colour effectively in maps and in urban design generally. One of the issues we were looking at was whether the maps’ features would be discriminable to colour-blind observers (of which, of course, there are many). So I was interested to come across an interesting article today relating to this very issue.
Apparently the following image appeared in the Guardian newspaper:
It’s a colour-coded map of London. It shows areas of deprivation with red being the most deprived. It met with much criticism, however, and many people said they had difficulty in discriminating between the colours. Of course, colour-blind observers most commonly have difficulty discriminating in the red-green region of colour space. The company who made the map engaged in a debate with users on twitter and created variously different coloured versions of the map, subjecting each to the public vote via twitter. The map below is one of the later versions.
For further details please refer to the story at The Guardian here.
women like pink
I don’t know if it is related to my recent post that people, especially females buy bright colours in times of austerity, but I just came across a report that claims that women like pink gadgets and laptops.
Dr Gloria Moss, Reader in Human Resources at Bucks New University said:
“There’s a very strong tendency for men to prefer hard, rectangular and dark shapes. While women showed a preference towards more curved, and pink design. I don’t think it’s anything for women to be afraid of that women like different colours, because the roots of the colour preference take womens’ responsibility beyond hearth and home. The differences have their origins in the different activities carried out by men and women over the ages.”
Moss used a range of website designs created by men and women to test her hypothesis amongst a sample group of students at Oxford. Men preferred linear, rectangular designs, while women preferred colourful designs with large images.
I’m a man but I also like pink. So clearly the above does not apply to all women and all men.
For balance see my post on pink stinks.
people buy red when times are tough
According to a recent consumer report people in the UK are buying bright colours, particularly red, to cheer themselves up in these times of austerity. Apparently a third of all sales of women’s jeans are in colours other than blue.
According to Fiona Lambert, George Brand Director:
“In challenging times people purchase bright colours across both fashion and beauty to lift their spirits. Customers have told us they want to be bold and steer away from the “safe” option of black, and have been looking at affordable ways to lift their moods by buying coloured items.”