This week we had a three-day colour conference at the University of Leeds. You can see details of it here. This follows on from our successful event in 2019. COVID meant that it took 4 years to host our second conference but hopefully it won’t take so long for the next one. We had so many excellent speakers but one of these was Dimitris Mylonas (pictured) from Northeastern University London, UK who spoke about Colour Naming in Humanity-Centred Design. Dimitris is one of those people whose work I admire but I don’t get much chance to meet him even though we both live in the UK. I particularly like the use of on-line experiments in his research.

Last night I was chilling after the event finished and browsing youtube and I came across this interesting youtube video about the origins of English colour words. It is definitely worth a watch. It includes the idea that some ancient cultures didn’t have a word for blue and that they couldn’t see blue. Although I think it is true that they didn’t have a name for blue I am less convinced that they couldn’t see blue. As evidence for this people often cite Homer’s description of the sea as being wine dark in both the Iliad and Odyssey. If only I had seen this video the day before it would have reminded me to ask Dimitris what he thinks about this. I am sure he would have had something to say.