Category Archives: opinions/rants

why I don’t like the colour wheel

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There are many reasons why I don’t like colour wheels of the type shown below:

The first reason is because it perpetuates the myth that the subtractive primaries are red, yellow and blue whereas the fact is that red, yellow and blue produces a rather small gamut of colours. It is certainly not the best choice of subtractive primaries though it is taught as dogma in many art and design schools and throughout children’s education. The problem is that whenever two colours are mixed together there is saturation loss; that is, the resultant mixture ends up being more desaturated than the two components were. The saturation loss is greatest when mixing colours on the opposite side of the colour circle where the resultant mixture can be almost grey. However, for certain choices of primaries, the saturation loss is greater than for others. If red, yellow and blue are used as the primaries then of course it is possible to generate any other hue. However, there is significant saturation loss and the above colour wheel gives completely the wrong impression. It suggests that mixing blue and yellow together, for example, results in a really bright vivid green.

The reality of pigment mixing is much more like the triangular colour wheel shown below:

In the above diagram it can be seen that mixing together yellow and blue results in a really muddy dark green. The purple resulting from mixing blue and red is almost black!! Now it is possible to mix together a blue and a yellow to get a better green. For example, mixing a greenish blue with a yellow will give a much more vivid green. Mixing a bluish red with a greenish blue will result in a lovely purple. We have a name for a greenish blue and a blueish red – we call them cyan and magenta. A much better colour gamut is obtained if we start with the primaries, cyan, magenta and yellow.

Footnote: Some people may look at the triangular colour wheel and think that the reason the colours are dull is that the red, yellow, and blue primaries used are not ‘pure’ enough. Nothing could be farther from the truth. If it was possible to make really vivid and bright red and blue pigments then the resultant colour gamut would be even smaller. Fundamentally, red, yellow and blue just don’t make good subtractive primaries.

How to self publish

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I spent the last week working out how to self publish my Colour Physics FAQ. This is not a post about colour but I thought it would be useful to document my experience; in case I forget 🙂 and in case it helps anyone else. It’s not rocket science but it turned out to be a bit more complicated than I thought.

Perhaps the most important thing about publishing is to have content. You need to have something that at least one other person – though hopefully more, if it’s going to be worth the effort – will want to read. I am lucky – I have something called the Colour Physics FAQ which I have been writing since 1996 and which I know quite a lot of people like to read. Currently it is offline, looking for a new home, so I decided to look at various publishing routes to make it available again, to learn the ropes of self publishing for bigger projects in the future, and also to maybe earn a few squids in the process. Before I start, I should say that my content is in the form of a Microsoft Word document and I am working on a Mac. So that’s my starting point.

I started by looking at e-books. There are various platforms to choose from of course. I did some research and quickly realised Amazon Kindle would be a great place to start. Of course, I also considered Apple but I have read that the process with Apple is a lot more complicated and I can believe this after my experience a year or so ago of launching an app for the iPhone. So let me start by describing how I got my FAQ onto the Amazon Kindle platform.

The first thing you need to do is register on https://kdp.amazon.com/self-publishing/signin. This is simple and painless. You need to create a new project and enter a name. For me, it was Frequently Asked Questions About Colour Physics. There are options to say whether the book is part of a series or has an edition number. None of this applied so I just left them blank. You need to add a description. This is what people see in the Kindle store. For my project I wrote:

What is colour? How does colour vision work? Why is the sky blue? What is the colour spectrum? The answers to these and many other related questions about colour physics are each provided in a short and easy-to-understand form. Will delight and entertain colour professionals and curious members of the public.

What is additive colour mixing?

Additive colour mixing refers to the mixing of different (coloured) lights and can be easily demonstrated by the superposition of lights (known as primaries) on a white projection screen. When this is done using red, green, and blue primaries, the colours yellow, cyan, and magenta are produced where two of the primaries overlap. Where all three primaries overlap the sensation of white is produced if the spectral distributions and intensities of the three primaries are carefully chosen.

Additivity is not a special property of any particular set of three primaries. The range of colours that can be matched with any three primaries is called the gamut of those primaries.

One often reads that the primaries are pure and cannot be matched from other colours. This is not true. If one uses three primaries such as red, green and blue it is true that none of the primaries can be matched by mixtures of the other two or by mixtures of any other colours in the gamut of the primary system. However, one could select colours outside the gamut of the system which when mixed together could match the primaries.

It turns out that no three real primaries can be chosen so that their gamut includes all possible colours. If the primaries are chosen to be red, green, and blue, however, a very large number of colours can be matched. Red, green, and blue are therefore usually the colours of the primaries in an additive colour reproduction system such as colour television.

You then have to say who the author is, what the publication date is, and, if you have one, what the ISBN number is. I didn’t bother with an ISBN number for the ebook (but more on ISBN numbers later). You also need to say who your target audience is. For this you have to choose from certain categories – I selected Textiles & Polymer and Color Theory. The book addresses colour physics mainly from a textile perspective so the first category seemed a good idea. You then have to verify that you own the publishing rights to the content and upload a cover. (There is an option not to upload a book cover if your main file already contains one.) For my cover I created a png file that I designed myself. You can see it on this page, if you are interested.

The final step in this part is to upload your document. Actually, the Amazon Kindle site recommends that you use WORD to write the document and then convert it to Web Page, Filtered (*HTM & *HTML) format. I didn’t do this and I think it may have been a mistake. I decided to create an epub document and upload this. To create the epub document I downloaded some free somewhere called Calibre. Downloading and using calibre was quite easy. You need to save your WORD file as an rtf file, add it to Calibre, and then convert it to epub. I did this and uploaded the file. It seemed to work just fine. However, I am not entirely convinced I have everything right. In the next week I may have a go at uploading the format recommended by Amazon Kindle. I can’t be sure how my ebook looks because I don’t have a kindle. But I know I have made some mistakes here (something I am prone to because I am too impetuous). I am pretty sure my greek symbols are not displaying properly and I don’t know if I have an active table of contents. Even if I do, the page numbers I used in my automatically created TOCs in WORD are meaningless. The kindle allows the user to change font size and so the page numbers are not relevant at all. Ebooks flow much more fluidly as documents than do, say, physical books. There is a previewer that allows you to get a good idea of how your ebook will look on a Kindle; this is why I don’t think my table of contents are working well. I didn’t use any images in this ebook. There are some issues with using images because many ebook devices do not support colour images yet. I would recommend anyone else to read this help page before deciding how to format their ebook for the Amazon Kindle.

Having uploaded your book you then have to select pricing etc. The first step is to confirm you want Worldwide rights – seemed like a good idea so I selected this option. Then you need to set the price. You can choose a 70% royalty or a 30% royalty. You can only choose the 70% level if your book is less than $10. I chose this option and set the price to $5.99. Prices for UK, Germany, France, Italy and Spain were set automatically based on my dollar price (you can over-ride this).

There are a couple of other options. One is to allow Kindle lending – this means that someone who has bought the book can can transfer it to a friend’s kindle for a short time (14 days, I think, during which time they cannot access it themselves). I decided to allow Kindle lending. It would be mean not to. There is also an option for KDP Select. I didn’t fully understand what this was about – I am still confused – and so I did not choose this option.

You also have to give your bank account details to allow you to be paid. You can choose the currency to be paid in. I chose UK pounds for all of the sites that allowed this – the US site did not allow it. You have to be paid in dollars by amazon usa and you need a dollar account for this. I don’t have one so opted to be paid by cheque (they will send me a cheque if my royalties trigger the $100 threshold for a cheque). There is no mention of tax so I don’t know how that is going to work.

Finally you click submit and you have the guys at amazon look over your files and come back and say everything is ok. This takes about 10 hours. The men from del monte said everything was fine and I was live! After that I made a small change to the price (having had second thoughts) and that took another 10 hours (but I think the first submission stayed live whilst the changes took time to take effect), and then I made a small change to the book file itself and that took another 10 hours. Part of the reason I had to do this was I was learning as I went along (that was my aim, of course). For my next project, now that I know all the required steps, I can work out everything that I need to before I start the upload process.

That was it. Not too painful at all and the upload webpage guides you through quite well. I am not entirely satisfied with what I have produced but it is live and you can see the final project here.

I took a day or so off, and then decided I would like to explore making the Colour Physics FAQ available as a physical book. For this I have used CreateSpace. You need to create an account. One of the nice things about this process is that CreateSpace creates an ISBN number for you. In my case it was

ISBN-13: 978-1470101534
ISBN-10: 147010153X

You can provide your own ISBN if you have one but this seemed to be the easiest option for me. Once set though, the ISBN is locked. It cannot be changed. The preferred format to upload your content (which they refer to as interior) is pdf which suits me quite fine. However, they provide WORD templates for the book size you select. I chose 6″ by 9″ (which they said was the most popular option – so why argue?) and downloaded the template. This was a little frustrating as anyone who has ever worked with a WORD template will know. But probably would not have been anywhere near as difficult had I not been simultaneously trying to look after my little boy (three years old). I created the pdf and uploaded it.

You then have to provide a cover. Again, you can do this yourself and upload a pdf file if you wish or you can use their cover design software. I decided to do the latter and within 10 minutes I had produced this:

I then had to set pricing. I chose $11.99 for my book. The royalty per book was automatically calculated as $5.04 from Amazon and $7.44 from CreateSpace eStore. I don’t know why they are different but urge you to choose to buy from CreateSpace eStore if you were thinking of buying it. Distribution to Amazon and CreateSpace eStore is free (essentially because it is print on demand there I think). However, you can pay to have the book available to bookstores, other on-line outlets, and university libraries. It seems to be a one-off cost of $25. I did not explore it. I will be interested in this for more substantial projects I plan in the future. But for now, I am happy with the standard distribution channels.

It seems like the only option to be paid is by cheque (for which there is an $8 fee – of course). I don’t have a dollar account. But there is even worse news. Amazon will deduct 30% tax. I don’t know if the royalties quoted above are before this deduction or after it. Either way, it is apparent I am not going to become a millionaire from this project. I can stop the 30% tax being deducted. But I have to get something called a TIN (US Tax Identification Number) which I do by filling in IRS Form SS-4. I downloaded this form. It looks horrific and when I have completed it (if I ever do) I need to send it by snail mail to the IRS in America and then wait …. I guess this is done once though, that is, for each person rather than for each project. So it probably is worth doing in the long run if I am planning further publications, which I am.

So that’s it. My CreateSpace book is currently in review and I expect it to go live later today.

Colour Physics FAQ

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In the 1990s I used to host a colour physics FAQ on the web. The FAQ was bite-sized answers to the most common questions I used to get in those days about colour physics.

Really, this FAQ was the precursor to this blog. I much prefer the blog format because it allows a greater degree of interactivity and also fluid evolution of content. But the FAQ was quite popular. Even some university libraries used to ask me about it (I noticed a few days ago that a website in India had ‘stolen’ the content and presented it as theirs – these things happen I guess).

I had to move the location of the the Colour Physics FAQ quite a few times on the web and it became quite painful trying to maintain it. So I decided to make it available as an e-book and as a physical book via Amazon. I spent quite a few days working on the e-book format. To be honest I am not sure I got the format ready. I used the epub format and there are things I don’t like about it. Displaying greek characters is difficult and images are often converted to black and white, especially for display on the kindle or similar devices. Also, footnotes are not allowed and I am a big fan of footnotes. So I am not 100% impressed. We’ll see how it goes. But Amazon’s CreateSpace allows you to create a physical book. This seems much better. The book is printed on demand as far as I can see and I am looking forward to how it looks.

To see the e-book go to amazon. I’ll add a comment below when the physical book is available.

don’t go down dark alleys

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A report in the Scunthorpe Telegraph describes a project where alleyways – traditionally dark, lined with brick walls or fences, with no colour and plenty of possibilities for crime – are being filled with plants to create a colourful and welcoming environment. A recent report by the Royal Horticultural Society shows that this sort of activity has a significant positive effect on communities.

For further information visit www.rhs.org.uk/communities.

I am not a gardener. I don’t particularly like gardens. But this does seem like a great scheme. And I do think that colour can have an effect on our well-being. Perhaps we should use it more carefully – whether it is to correct situations where we are bombarded with a myriad clashing colours that can be disorienting (for example, in a shopping mall or airport terminal) or where there is a lack of colour (for example, dark alleys or many hospital environments).

obsessed with brown?

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I sometimes think that people think I am a bit of a weirdo – well, a nerd at the very least. Why? Because I have a blog that’s just about colour. I have interests in all sorts of things. I love music (play drums in a band), play chess (I have about 60 games on the go at any one time on www.chess.com, and I am slightly obsessed with Haruki Murakami (his latest novel 1Q84 is just better than you can imagine). But the thing I blog about is colour. Not any one colour, or even any one aspect of colour, but anything about colour – I am interested in colour physics, chemistry, psychology, philosophy, design, marketing, branding etc.

But today I may found that someone who is a bit nerdy even by my standards because I just found a website called http://www.howtomakebrown.com/. This page is interested not only in one colour, but in how to make it. How to make brown paint, brown rice, brown sugar …. is it just me or is this really weird!!

Koreans hate pink!

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About six months ago I posted about popular car colours in Canada. Silver and grey were the most popular colours according to sales data with black not far behind. I think it would be a rather similar story in the UK. Certainly silvery grey has become very popular over the last 10 years or so. My own car is black. My last car was grey. White is not popular here – I heard that car salesman refer to the colour of second-hand white cars as “three-week white” because it takes three weeks longer to sell them than cars in other colours. Though I think the last few years has seen a slight increase in the popularity of white cars in the UK.

Anyway, according to The Color Association of the United States nine out of ten cars sold in South Korea are white, silver (grey) or black – a higher proportion for these three colours than in any other country. Apparently, white cars have the highest resale value; white is associated with families and therefore white cars are thought to have been owned by responsible family types like me and therefore will have been well maintained. (My car is definitely not well maintained.)

It’s very unusual to see a pink car in Korea – only a rebellious type would have such a car! The Wall Street Journal are currently reporting a story about such a non-conformant and feature on a Mr Park who bought a white sports car and had it painted pink. Whereas in France, the Citreon DS3 has just been launched with a fuchsia pink roof. There still remains a cultural difference where social pressure in the east urges people to fit in whereas in the west it is more about “look at me”. A japanese person once told me there is a proverb about the nail that sticks out gets hammered down.

Personally, I would love a pink car, though certainly not a Citreon. This story also reminds me that a web-based study suggests that the most frequently mis-spelled colour word in the English language is fuchsia – or is it fuschia?

blue is the favourite colour

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Very impressed by this post from Janice’s blog. Who is Janice? One of Canada’s leading colour designers. She’s also a colour consultant.

I have never been to Canada but I know a canadian professor and he is extremely funny. He told me a story that CBC radio held a competition to complete the sentence “As Canadian as ….”, as in “as American as apple pie”. The winning entry was “As canadian as possible under the circumstances“. Very funny. I am convinced this sort of entry could never have won in a similar competition in USA, for example. It’s more like British humour. Reminds me of Monty Python. It’s a nice story. Is it true? Yes, if you believe Wikipedia. And we all believe wikipedia don’t we? See http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Canadian_identity.

Back to Janice’s post … She raises the question of what is the favourite colour (resulting from polls). She says it is blue, but not just any old blue. Janice says it is royal blue or indigo, as opposed to something like baby blue. I ran a poll, just for fun … you can see the results here, though you have to take part in order to see the results. Blue comes out pretty near the top, of course, with green and purple; though in my fun survey I don’t get into the fine detail of which blue is favourite (warmer or cooler, reddish, neutral, or greenish?). Janice must be referring to some more detailed surveys … interesting.

Janice talks about indigo, lapis lazuli, Picasso and Yves Klein’s experimental work with blue (IKB); all things I talk about in the module I teach at the University of Leeds (Colour: Art and Science). Perhaps Janice should have my job!! Haha!

meanings of car colours

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I came across another study on which colours sell best, commissioned by a car company of course. Turns out that in Canada the most popular is silver/grey (22.3%) with black second favourite.

But more interesting what the second part of the study which purported to reveal what your choice of car colour says about you:

Silver: “Since silver and grey are technical colours, they communicate a sense of aspiration and at times, an embrace of futurism.”

Black: “Overall black communicates strength, aspiration and a respect for the classic and the elegant.”

Blue: “Darker blue is perceived as more traditional. However, a bright or light blue is the opposite and is seen as the least ‘classic’ of the other colour groups.”

Red: “A colour which screams sporty and energetic but in certain shades can also be associated with distinction.”

White: “White is clean and modern. Premium specialty whites (also known as ‘tri-coat whites’) are also associated with luxury and ‘premium-ness,’

My experience of buying cars though is that though I may have a preference for buying a car of a certain colour, since I normally buy a second-hand one, in the end it is just what is available in the model I would like (or close to it) and the price I would like to pay (or just above it). My current car is black. My last one was grey. I have also had white and maroon in the last 10 years. So don’t read too much into it.

 

odd coincidence

fun, opinions/rants

My name is Stephen Westland and my blog is called Colour Chat – because I like to chat (informally but hopefully in a way that is informed) about colour. Westland is a reasonably unusual name. Searching on google for my own blog today I noticed there is a company called Colourchat Services Ltd in Nairobi – guess what district they are in? Yes – Westlands. Coincidence or what? I wonder what this company does … perhaps they should sponsor this blog! Haha. 🙂

Why not green?

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I am a scientist working in a design school who researches colour. I sometimes get frustrated by the simplistic view of colour and its use in branding, marketing and advertising pervades the internet (where anyone can be an expert). People often misinterpret my own work and imagine that all sorts of simplistic ideas stem from my research. So, for example, imagine that there is a company (that is aiming to deliver sustainable and environmentally responsible power) that is looking to brand itself and also imagine that my research reveals that the colour green is associated with the environment and nature. Typically people may say (or imagine that I would say) that it is obvious that the company should use the colour green as the basis of its branding strategy. However, this is a very simplistic view and one that I certainly don’t subscribe to.

When a company is constructing a branding strategy one has to consider many facets of the branding and marketing. What is the proposition that the company is making? How can colour support that or help to communicate it? A company may, for example, even may an ironic statement where it chooses colours and imagery that is the opposite of what it really stands for, just as an example. I quite enjoyed reading a post today by thebrandsquad that gave quite an intelligent and thoughtful analysis of colour in branding (using a case study rather like the fictitious example I refer to above).

See also Greenwashing – http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Greenwashing