What a great job!

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Color Designer
Nike, Inc.
Beaverton, Oregon

As a Color Designer in Nike Sportwear, you’ll work under the direction of the Design and Color Leaders to lead a category to create innovative color design solutions for a line of footwear. You’ll collaborate with category cross-functional teams to create a merchandisable line from concept to retail presentation; build innovative, retail viable color solutions for category or gender-specific lines; create seasonal direction of color; and lead color merchandising strategies and stories seasonally. You’ll also research and deliver color, design, market and lifestyle trends that influence and impact the product category process from product briefing to product concept to salesman samples. You’ll plan and execute color designs; collaborate with Design, Product Marketing, Development and Material Designers to focus color solutions for market success; finalize product details; and proactively follow through on the execution of color on each product.

See http://www.coroflot.com/public/job_details.asp?job_id=23381

colour picker pen design

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The idea is that you can use this pen to point at any object in the world, the pen then ‘extracts’ the colour, and then is able to write in that colour using a mixture of RGB inks that it contains.

Unfortunately, it’s just a concept, designed by Jinsu Park.

color_picking02color_picking01-THUMB

As far as I know there are no practical implementations of this interesting idea. One could make a strong argument that the pen should use CMY (or even red, yellow and blue) primaries since RGB primaries would result in a tiny colour gamut and wouldn’t allow the pen to reproduce any real colours at all. See http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/07/08/what-is-a-colour-primary/

automatic extraction of colour palette from image

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I just came across another interesting colour site – www.colorexplorer.com

This site provides a free service – you can upload an image and the site will extact a colour palette from the image (you can specify how many colours you wish to extract). Palettes are notated in hex codes and RGB values.

I just tried with with one of my images and chose to extact three colours; the result is shown below:

drum4

pallete

If you want to use a photograph as an inspiration for interior design, for example, you can write down the RGB values and then go to www.easyrgb.com – this site allows you to convert RGB values into commercial paint codes.

software aids colour design for colour blindness

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In a previous post I talked about colour blindness and the possibility of using coloured lenses to improve colour discrimination for suffers of colour blindness – http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/07/04/colour-blindness-news/

The task of designing images or copy that are legible to colour-blind users is a major concern in design. In the past I have used websites that allow you to submit an image or even a whole website and a simulation of how it might apear to a colour-blind viewer would be produced. Today I came across a really great tool called Color Oracle – see http://colororacle.cartography.ch/. This tool is free to download and runs on Windows or Mac systems. Once installed it runs in your system tray and allows you to simulate various colour-blindnessc conditions. The software is free to download and claims to use the latest algorithms for simulating colour-vision impairments.  Below is one of my images and a simulation of how it would appear to someone with tritanopia.

carlberg

new white roof coating

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A new white coating that reflects 85% of the heat that hits it is being trialled in Los Angeles. The new coating, developed by former military scientists Ronald Savin, reduces the surface temperature of the roof by as much as 50 C and thus reduces the amount of energy required to cool the interior of the building. Suffice to say, as I write this in rainy Cornwall, there is no requirement as yet for this coating in the UK!

white roof

For full story see http://seattletimes.nwsource.com/html/realestate/2009578076_roofs02.html

colormunki colour management

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Colour management is needed to try to ensure that when using computer systems colour fidelity is achieved across different machines and between soft and hard copy. Computers represent colour as three numbers, RGB. But the same RGB values displayed on different monitors will usually result in a different on-screen colour. In addition, there could be colour gamut issues; one monitor may be able to display colours that are simply out of the achievable range of another. When we consider printers the problem is even worse. The gamut of a printer is very different to that of a computer display. And printers tend to represent colour in terms of CMY or CMYK values. So the colour-management software has rather a lot to do to satisfy users.

A great deal of colour management goes on in computer systems of which the average user is completely unaware. This uses default settings and makes various assumptions but is normally good enough so that reds appear red and blues appear blue on any computer display or printer. Colour management has been built in to Apple software for a long while and is now also part of the Microsoft operating system. But the professional user may require more than is offered by the basic colour management that comes as part of all new systems. However, professional-level colour management comes at a cost and it’s not just financial. It is usually necessary to have to characterize each device (monitor display, printer etc.) that is to be used; and this requires colour measurment and some knowledge of colorimetry.

I recently came across a new product – ColorMunki 1.1 – released by X-rite that promises enhanced colour performance for colour-critical users. This seems to be an interesting product in that it is aimed at designers and photographers.

ColorMunk 1.1 – http://www.colormunki.com/ – is in fact a suite of software that also include a device for measuring colour. I am looking forward to trying this out. If anyone has any experience of this system that they would like to share it would be vey helpful.

sheep change colour

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A few weeks ago I wrote about the moths in the UK that are now changing colour as a result of changes in their environment. The species that darkened in colour in response to the industrial revolution is now becoming lighter again – http://colourware.wordpress.com/2009/07/01/moths-change-colour-again/.

Today I came across a story about sheep changing colour; this time in response to global warming, apparently. According to Dr Maloney at the University of Western Australia,  in colder environments, mammals with darker coats absorb more solar radiation and so need to expend less food energy keeping warm than do their lighter counterparts. He has found fewer dark coloured Soay sheet over the last 20 years and links this to changing temperatures. H expects the proportion of dark sheep to decrease further over the coming years. His work was reported in the Royal Society journal Biology Letters but a summary is availale online at The Telegraph – http://www.telegraph.co.uk/earth/earthnews/5879613/Bye-bye-black-sheep—climate-change-making-sheep-change-colour.html.

sheep_1447668c

Colour personality test

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There has long been an interest in trying to predict aspects of personality based on colour preferences. The Lüscher test is perhaps the best known example. There are a number of on-line tests that purport to be based on Max Lüscher’s system, for example, http://www.colorquiz.com/. In this test you are asked to select eight coloured patches in order of preference. These are the patches:

luscher

So I just did the test on-line and these were some of the things the test said about me:

“Craves change and new things, always looking for new adventures and activities. Becomes restless and frustrated when he has to wait to long for things to develop. His impatience leads to irritability and a desire to move on to the next project.”

“Highly optimistic and outgoing personality. Loves to learn new and exciting things, and craves new interests. Looking for a well-rounded life full of success and new experiences. Does not allow himself to be overcome with negative thoughts or self-doubt. Takes life head on, with enthusiasm. “

Well, it’s interesting, because it does sound a little bit like me to be honest. Does anyone who knows me agree? But then, we should be aware of  the Forer effect (also called personal validation fallacy): the observation that individuals will give high accuracy ratings to descriptions of their personality that supposedly are tailored specifically for them, but are in fact vague and general enough to apply to a wide range of people. We all tend to do this with horoscopes in the daily newspapers. So, I tried the test again – this time using a random colour selection – and these were the corresponding statements:

“Is a little on the lazy side when it comes to putting forth a lot of effort. Needs to build roots and have a peaceful, loving partner.”

Relies on love and friendship to bring him happiness. He is in constant need for approval and this makes him willing to help others in exchange for love and understanding. He is open to new ideas as long as they are productive and interesting.

These certainly don’t sound so much like me. Perhaps there is something in it. Of course, we would need to do a proper scientific study to really get to the bottom of what is going on. Which brings me to the purpose of this post – today I came across a colour personality test that does seem to have had some statistical/scientific validation. The test is called the Dewey Color System (http://www.deweycolorsystem.com/). This test has been assessed with a scientific study conducted by Rense Lange and Jason Rentfrow, the latter being a Lecturer in Psychology at the University of Cambridge (UK). The work has not yet been published but a “pre-journal white paper report” can be downloaded – http://www.deweycolorsystem.com/credentials/proven.html. I will leave it to you to read the report and make your own conclusions.