Category Archives: news

lawsuit over colour in logo

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Dollar General (http://www.dollargeneral.com) is a discount store based in the USA. They used distinctive yellow and black colour combinations in their advertising material. In March this year they filed a lawsuit against their competitor (Fred’s Inc) who they claim have damaged their business by copying the trademark yellow and black colours in certain marketing information.

The lawsuit accuses Fred’s of “unlawfully and deceptively” using Dollar General’s colour scheme and typeface in a new advertising campaign. The lawsuit says the only explanation for Fred’s moving away from a traditional blue-green color combination in its advertising is an intent to capture Dollar General’s brand awareness.

For further information see http://nashville.bizjournals.com/nashville/stories/2010/03/08/daily27.html

unhealthy orange

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Lucozade is a high-energy drink that is very effective way to get a lot of sugar very quickly. Most people will know that the drink itself is a very distinctive orange colour. The orange is caused by the colorant Sunset Yellow which is among a number of suspect food additives. Research at Southampton University, funded by the Food Standards Agency, has found that this is one of several additives that may cause children to become hyperactive. According to a UK national newspaper – http://www.dailymail.co.uk/health/article-1256242/Lucozade-lose-orange-colour-linked-hyperactivity.html – Lucozade bottles will carry a warning label (‘Sunset Yellow may have an adverse effect on activity and attention in children’) until a suitable alternative colorant can be found.

chicken colour vision

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Human colour vision under normal lighting levels is mediated by three cones (light-sensitive cells) in the retina. Each class of cone has peak sensitivity at a different wavelength and thus the cones are known as L (long-wavelength sensitive), M (medium-wavelength sensitive) and S (short-wavelength sensitive) cones or (sometimes) as red, green and blue cones. Both colour and luminance are captured by the same cone mechanism. The L and M cone responses are combined to give luminance and various cone responses are compared to give rise to hue and chroma. Interestingly, the distribution of L, M and S cones in the retina is not uniform but is random.

A recent paper – http://www.plosone.org/article/info%3Adoi%2F10.1371%2Fjournal.pone.0008992 – by scientists at Washington University School of Medicine (St Louis, USA) reveals that chickens have five types of cone. Interestingly, one of these types of cones (so-called double cones) seems to encode luminance, whereas the other four cones (red, green, blue and violet) give rise to tetrachromatic vision. The cones are very regulary spaced in the retina.

The spacing of cones in the human retina may result from a compromise – the same cones need to encode colour and luminance. The avian colour vision system seems to be more sophisticated. One can only wonder at what benefit was bestowed in avians by separating the processing of colour and luminance information.

yellow line is offensive

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Atlanta’s transit system will rename a train route into the heart of the city’s Asian community in response to complaints that calling it the “yellow line” showed a lack of racial sensitivity. The Metropolitan Atlanta Rapid Transit Authority issued a statement Thursday afternoon announcing it would change the name of the line to the “gold line.”

Iran green

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The colour green has become synonymous with protests in Iran. Apparently, the Iranian government has been surprised by the number of protesters (greens) waving their flags in public places making it hard to show pro-government supporters because of all the green. Ihave read reports that they have developed a colour filter that would reduce the amount of green on their TV broadcasts. Does anyone know any more about this?

depressed people feel more gray than blue

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People with anxiety and depression are most likely to use a shade of gray to represent their mental state. 

Peter Whorwell, Professor of Medicine and Gastroenterology at University Hospital South Manchester, worked with a team of researchers from the University of Manchester, UK, to create an instrument that would allow people a choice of colours in response to questions. He said, “Colours are frequently used to describe emotions, such as being ‘green with envy’ or ‘in the blues’. Although there is a large, often anecdotal, literature on color preferences and the relationship of color to mood and emotion, there has been relatively little serious research on the subject”.

The researchers have developed a colour chart, The Manchester Color Wheel, which can be used to study people’s preferred colour in relation to their state of mind.

For more information see http://www.alphagalileo.org/ViewItem.aspx?ItemId=67637&CultureCode=en

dinosaurs were ginger

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In a previous post I wrote about the work of Jakob Vinther at Yale who was studying dinosaur fossils – http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/08/15/what-colour-were-the-dinosaurs/. This work raised the intriguing possibility that we may be able to work out the colours of dinosaurs based on an analysis of fossil records. Today I read a report that a team of British, Irish and Chinese scientists have done just that – they studied microscopic structures inside the fossilised feathers from a Sinosauropteryx discovered in north-east China and found that the Sinosauropteryx had alternating ginger and white rings down its tail. The work was published in Nature.

Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-1246535/Dinosaurs-colour-discovered-time–GINGER.html#ixzz0eEDBTy0Z

CREATE – deadline for applications approaching!!

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The deadline for applications to attend the final CREATE event in Norway is coming up – end of January. Please take a look at the CREATE webpage – http://www.create.uwe.ac.uk/ – and think about putting an application into this event. If accepted you will receive funding for travel and living expenses and, more importantly, you’ll get a fantastic networking opportunity to meet about 100 other people from all around Europe who are as interested in colour as you are. You don’t have to be European to qualify but you probably need to be based in Europe.

The venue in Norway is stunning and well worth the trip.

dark alchohol makes you feel worse

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A paper in the journal Alchoholism: Clinical and Experiment Research by researchers at Brown University reveals that the colour of alchoholic drinks really does affect how bad you feel the next morning. Darker drinks (such as whisky) contain more chemical by-products than do lighter ones (such as vodka). However, how you feel (in terms of hangover) does not necessary correlate with performance loss the next day. So you may feel better drinking vodka but you would be just as incapable of driving or using heavy machines etc than if you drank whisky – though the latter may make you feel worse.

See http://www3.interscience.wiley.com/journal/123216970/abstract