On the lines and colors blog about drawing I came across a post about the work of dutch artist Femke Hiemstra – http://www.linesandcolors.com/2011/08/21/femke-hiemstra/. Her anthropomorphised animals and fantasy landscapes remind me of Alice in Wonderland. What do you think?
I once read that 20th Century research indicated that most people dream in black and white but that modern research reveals that most people dream in colour. The difference is attributed to the fact that in the early 20th century the majority of people spent a long time looking at black and white media. I came across this idea again in The Times today. Sadly, I can’t link to the story because The Times Online is no longer free. Boooo. In fact, I read this in The Review section of The Times today (paper version – I am too mean to pay for the online version). The article stated that a Japanese study published this month by the American Psychological Association found that most people in their sixties dreamt in black and white while the majority of university students (the implication being, I suppose, that these represent a much younger subset of the population) dreamt in rich colour (rich colour – not just colour!). The researchers suggest that younger participants had grown up watching colour TV. However, a psychologist – Ian Wallace – was quoted as saying that he thought this explanation was unlikely sine television represents a tiny part of the visual field and old viewers would have spent far less time watching television that we do today. In fact, the main article was about REM and about how having too much deep REM sleep where we dream could be associated with depression. Anyway, I think it must be very difficult to actually know whether people dream in colour – you could ask them when they wake up, but remembering could, of course, be the result of a false memory.
Why are leaves green? The most obvious answer is that they contain green pigments, the most abundant being chlorophyll and that chlorophyll absorbs the short and long wavelengths in the visible spectrum leaving the middle wavelengths to be reflected and scattered. However, the deeper question is why should chlorophyll absorb in the short and long wavelengths of the visible spectrum when there is more light available in the middle of the spectrum?
The spectral irradiance of sunlight varies with the time of day, the weather conditions, the time of year, and the latitude/longitude. However, I think it would be reasonable to say that by and large, in most situations, the peak irradiance is in the middle of the spectrum (that which we would normally associate with being green and yellow).
So if one assumes that evolution has produced a perfect engineering solution to this aspect of nature in particular then I think one may expect plants to absorb mainly in the middle part of the spectrum (and this would result in the bluish and reddish wavelengths being reflected and a purplish colour).
So why don’t we have a chlorophyll equivalent that is purple? I have come across a number of arguments.
1. One could go further and say that if a plant wanted to be really efficient it would absorb all wavelengths of the visible spectrum and would therefore appear black. So black, rather than purple, would be the perfect engineering solution. Given that most plants are neither black nor purple then I think we can assume that evolution did not find the perfect engineering problem or that the problem is more complex than we think. For example, it could be that a plant that is black would absorb too much light and overheat. Or it could be that chlorophyll evolved from some earlier light-sensitive chemical and that genetic mutations could lead more easily to chlorophyll than to purple or black pigments.
2. Taking this point further, I have heard it suggested that most plants evolved from earlier plants that lived under water and that absorbed mainly short wavelengths of light (long wavelengths – red – cannot penetrate much more than 1 m of water). These earlier cousins of the modern plant would most likely have been brownish. Indeed, if one looks today ay plants in seawater, green plants are only seen on the surface or at very low depths. So the ancestor of chlorophyll could have been a brown pigment which mutated into green chlorophyll more easily than it could have mutated into a purple pigment.
3. I have also come across the ‘early purple earth’ hypothesis. This suggests that originally most plant life on land was indeed optimally purple and that chlorophyll absorbed to take advantage of those wavelengths that were not already being gobbled up by the dominant species. Subsequently, chlorophyll proved more successful than its purple companion.
4. It could be argued that optimally absorbing light (and being purple) is not the most important thing and that there are other aspects of the problem that are more important. Green chlorophyll could be the optimal solution to this more complex problem.
In short, the real answer is … I don’t know. I am not overwhelmingly convinced by any of the above arguments.
If you enjoyed this post you may like to look at my special christmas post on carrots and why they are orange.
Many studies have been carried out over the last 50-100 years to look at which colours people like and which they don’t like. Although there is variability between individuals (not everyone likes the same colours) there is surprising consistency when the results of lots of different studies are compared. In short people like blues and greens and don’t like yellows and (to a lesser extent) reds. The hue parameter is probably the most important but brightness and colourfulness also affect colour preference. People tend to like brighter and more colourful colours than darker and less colourful ones. Just for fun, I have been running my own survey on this web site. You can still add your two-penneth worth if you like – please go to http://colourware.wordpress.com/2011/02/22/favourite-colour-poll/. Interestingly, my fun survey is also in broad agreement with all those previously published experiments. I found that people’s preferences were:
blue 19%
green 19%
purple 14%
red 11%
orange 8%
yellow 8%
pink 8%
black 4%
grey 4%
white 3%
brown 1%
other 1%
I am not sure what practical application there could be in knowing which colours are more popular. For example, my favourite colour is red but I probably wouldn’t want to buy a red coat. Though on average most people really like blue, this doesn’t mean it would be sensible to make a product blue without consideration of many other factors. In design, colour is almost always in context and that context makes all the difference in the world.
More interesting though is recent research I have read which proposes a reason why there is individual variation in colour preference. According to this idea, we like those colours that remind us of things that we like (we like blue skies and green grass). It could explain dark yellows and oranges are particularly unpopular; these colours are normally associated with some rather unsavoury things (dark orange is the colour of poo and dark yellow the colour of vomit). Further, if people have a strong affiliation with an idea/concept that is strongly associated with a colour, then they may have some preference bias towards that colour. It makes me think – I am a hug fan of Manchester United and red is my favourite colour; but do I like red because I like Manchester United or do I like Manchester United because I like red? I am too old to remember which came first.
In 2009 I blogged about a row in Derby about the yellow colour of taxis. But times change. Things move on, Today I am reading about a problem in Durham – for those who don’t know, Durham is in the north-east of England – about white taxis!! Apparently, this week ten drivers stormed out of a meeting with councillors over a proposal to adopt a policy for all-white colour taxis in the county of Durham. The argument for white taxis is that it would make them stand out and ensure that customers knew which taxis were legitimate. Sounds pretty sensible to me. It would work because white is a very unpopular colour for cars in the UK. I have heard that second-hand car salesmen refer to white as six-week white because it takes 6 weeks longer to sell a white car than other coloured cars. Whereas in other parts of the world, I have noticed in my travels that white cars are quite popular. Perhaps there is a business opportunity here – to export the unpopular white cars to places where they may sell for a premium.
There are two phrases I keep seeing written down all over the internet that cause my blood pressure to increase.
The first is that the colour primaries are red, yellow and blue (RYB). And the second is that the primaries are colours that cannot be made by mixing other colours. Neither of these statements are true, of course.
The first statement makes no distinction between additive colour mixing (of lights) and subtractive colour mixing (of paints and inks) but subtractive colour mixing is normally implied. However, RYB is a relatively poor choice for three colour primaries. The range of colours that can be produced is actually quite small. For most painters and artists it doesn’t matter because very few work in just three primaries – if they did so they would probably be frustrated by the small gamut of colours achievable. Many artists (painters) will use 10 or more basic colours to mix their palette. However, there is a group of people who care passionately about the gamut of colours that can be obtained by mixing three colour primaries – that is the people who work for companies such as HP and Canon. These companies make CMYK printers for the consumer market and their jobs depend upon consumers liking their printers. They understand that the largest gamut (in subtractive mixing) can be obtained if the primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow (CMY). The teaching of RYB as the (subtractive) primaries should be stopped. It’s already gone on for far too long.
One reason I don’t like the teaching of RYB as being the subtractive primaries, in addition to the fact that it is wrong, is that it confuses people who are trying to learn colour theory. This is because red, yellow and blue seem to be quite pure colours and this encourages people to hold the second belief I don’t like which is that the primaries are pure colours that cannot be mixed from other colours. If people understood that the primaries were CMY it would be less tempting to hold this belief about the purity of the primaries. Of course, if you make a palette of colours of three primaries then it is true that no mixture of two or more colours from that palette can match any of the primaries. However, there are other colours (that are outside the gamut of the primary system) that could be mixed together to match the primaries. This false notion of purity confuses the real issue – that is, that the subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow because the additive primaries are red, green and blue. Look at this picture below:
The additive primaries are red, green and blue and the secondaries are cyan, magenta and yellow. Correspondingly, the subtractive primaries are cyan, magenta and yellow and the subtractive secondaries are red, green and blue. Simple.
I wrote about this before so for a slightly different perspective see my earlier post.
Perhaps I am so agitated about it today because I am just watching England getting trounced by Ireland at rugby when the Grand Slam was so tantalisingly close. Or maybe I will feel just the same tomorrow.
It’s possible to say that everything is designed. When we think of design we often think of fashion design or graphic design, or perhaps automtotive design or software design. But everything is designed. When we put a meal together, couldn’t you say we are designing? A chef is a food-designer!! When we are arrange our furniture, aren’t we engaging in interior design? Isn’t a chemist engaging in design at the moulecular level? Thinking like this leads to the idea that design is everything. However, if design is everything and everywhere then it is no thing and nowhere in particular. So if design is everything then it is also nothing. Discuss.
The longer I teach colour the more frustrated I become about the lack of accurate and precise language to talk about colour. It creates so much confusion.
Take the opening few lines on wikipedia for the entry on Black –
Black is the color of objects that do not emit or reflect light in any part of the visible spectrum; they absorb all such frequencies of light. Although black is sometimes described as an “achromatic”, or hueless, color, in practice it can be considered a color, as in expressions like “black cat” or “black paint”.
Well, I have an issue with the first sentence because every object you have ever seen (even the black ones) reflects light at almost every wavelength in the visible spectrum. Black objects just don’t reflect very much light. The only thing I know that does not reflect any light is a black hole. And I have never seen one of those. But it is the second sentence that I think is interesting. It essentially says (paraphrasing) that although black is sometimes described as a colour it is a colour. This does not make sense. It should read – Black is described as a colour and is a colour. Why the “Although”? The answer to this is that colour is being used with two different meanings in the same sentence.
In the first part of the sentence colour is used to define the holistic sensation of colour (colours according to this definition have at least three attributes: such as lightness, chroma and hue). Hue is whether a colour is red, green, blue, yellow etc. Chroma is how the colour deviates from grey. Lightness is about how much light is generally reflected or emitted. In short. Colours that have no chroma are said to be achromatic (grey, black, white etc.). On the other hand, in the second part of the sentence colour is used to represent that component of colour that is hue. It is only by invoking these two separate definitions of colour (the holistic and the partial) that the sentence makes sense.
There may be more than these two definitions of colour. There is also the notion that colour is used to represent the physical and the perceptual that I have raised in an earlier post.
Famously Henry Ford, speaking of the Model T car in 1909, said “Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.”
Black is, I think, one of the most interesting colours. I recently came across a book – think it was called A History of Black – which was all about this one colour. In my 25 years working in colour perhaps the most frequent question I have ever been asked is “Is black a colour?”
One interesting aspect of black is that it is almost timeless in its ability to be fashionable. This is one reason why it is worn by lots of people who are particularly conscious of colour (because they work in fashion or interior design etc.). It seems strange at first that people who are most interested and aware of colour are more than likely to wear black. Black is a regular occurrence in the attire of my colleagues in the School of Design at the University of Leeds. Given that it’s timeless, it is also safe. There is no danger of being seen in the wrong colour.
I mainly wear brown. I wonder what that says about me?
I was reading on a web page that white is the usual response if you ask people their favourite colour – http://www.pressdistribution.net/14735/apple-iphone-4-white-show-true-colour
I don’t think its true. Most studies show that people’s favourite colour is blue. I have never heard of a study that found white to be the favourite colour. The article was about the iPod though and we all know that the use of white was an inspired choice by Apple. The white earphone leads have become iconic and are part of the brand that consumers buy into by the millions. In fact, I think this is a very interesting phenomenon – there is a lot of research that shows that people prefer one colour to another. But what use is it? Over the last few years my research has focussed on the context of colour preference; that is, which colours would be most effective when used for a particular product (and by extension, for a particular market).
