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.
colour choice
I met a chap from an Advertising Agency today and was surprised when he offered me his business card. He didn’t offer me a single card; he offered me a selection from a fan of cards of different colour.
I chose the purple one and was then surprised when my PhD student told me she has chosen the same colour. A clever experiment in colour preference perhaps? Next time we meet I’ll have to ask him for the data. I hope he is keeping a record of which colour cards are proving most popular.
If you are interested in this you may like to have a look at my colour preference poll. After you take part in the poll (takes only a few seconds) you can see the results of the study so far.
If you like this blog http://colourware.wordpress.com/ you can follow it on twitter – go to http://twitter.com/#!/stephenwestland
totally colour blind
I was recently writing about colour blindness in the context of design and noted that most colour blind people see colour – it’s just they have poor discrimination and some colours look the same to them whereas to a so-called normal observers they would look different.
People who don’t see colour at all are rare. But I was just reading about one, Neil Harbisson, a classically trained pianist who has been colour blind since birth. He suffers from a condition called Achromatopsia which means he can only see the world in grey. However, he has recently being used a piece of technology that allows him to hear variations in colours. The eyeborg helps translate colours into sound and transforms the colour information picked up by the built-in camera into sound frequencies. For example, when he looks at a red, for example, he hears an F (= 349.23Hz); if he sees a yellow he hears a G. For more information see http://www.techeye.net/science/technology-helps-man-hear-colours.
I wonder what this would feel like. Of course, synesthesia sometimes occurs naturally. That is, some people can hear colours, see sounds, taste numbers etc. I sometimes think that Kandinsky (the artist who worked at the Bauhaus) may have been synesthesic because of his interest in the relationship between colour and shape. Quite possibly, sensing the world in a way that is different to how most people perceive it may me an advantage to an artist.
colour blind designers?
Is colour blindness a problem in design? Colour blind is rare amongst females but is very common amongst males. Approximately 8% of all the men in the world have some form of colour blindness. Colour blindness is a bit of a misnomer of colour; most colour-blind people can see colour but confuse colours that so-called normal observers can easily distinguish between. The most common case is red-green colour blindness and such sufferers find it hard to tell reds and greens apart.
But does design take this into account sufficiently? One area where there may be a problem is in the gaming industry. I came across the following comment today where someone is reporting a problem using Call of Duty (a game I don;t play but which I understand is quite popular) on the Xbox. Apparently, the Gamertags of all the players are either green if they are on your team, or red if they are an enemy. Oops!! I wonder how much of a problem this is. The problem is probably greatest when colour is used to convey information (as in this case, friend or enemy) rather just for aesthetics (where the information may be conveyed by contrast alone).
blue appetite suppressant
It is said that blue is an appetite suppressant and that red stimulates appetite. But is this really true? I would be interested if anyone knows of any studies into this.
I have also read that the reason that blue is an appetite suppressant is that blue food is very rare. I think blue food is less frequent than, say, green or red. But there is, of course, blueberries. And I just came across a type of mushroom that is naturally blue. It’s called Lactarius Indigo. I’ve also come across blue food more commonly in other places such as Japan.
The invention of colour
If I was not going to Sweden on Monday – where I have to examine a PhD in colour harmony – it would be nice to attend the lecture I just saw advertised in Bristol by Philip Ball. The lecture will trace the chemical history of the pigments in an artist’s palette. Painters once had to be chemically literate. The lecture is taking place next Tuesday – see http://www.bristol.ac.uk/news/2011/7503.html
favourite colour poll
define colour
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.
any colour as long as it is black
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?