Tag Archives: colour

The Wizard of Oz

culture, opinions/rants, , , ,

This week I had to mark about 50 essays that had been submitted for the Colour: Art and Science module I teach at the University of Leeds. One essay looks rather like another after the first 10 or so. So it was a delight to discover that one student had decided to focus on a movie – The Wizard of Oz – and demonstrate her understanding of colour by analysing this classic movie.

It reminded me of a story my mother told me. When she went to see the Wizard of Oz in the cinema (she would have been about 8 at the time) she had never seen a colour movie before. She was so much looking forward to this new-fangled and exciting technology. It’s hard to imagine how exciting that would have been – if every movie you had ever seen had been in black and white!!

Well, imagine her disappointment when the movie started and the movie was black and white after all. For those who don’t know, the movie starts off in black and white (in the Kansas scenes) and only turns coloured when Dorothy is whisked off by the tornado and dropped off in the land of Oz. It must have been a wonderful moment when the screen just turned full colour!!

chess app for iPhone

opinions/rants, , , , , ,

Though this is a blog about colour I can’t help but take this opportunity to announce that I recently had my first app for the iPhone accepted by Apple on the appstore – no mean feat I can assure you – and it is now available for download.

It’s a chess app called ChessTutor Lite. Most chess apps allow you to play the computer or even play your friends. Mine doesn’t allow either of those things. Booooooo! However, it does something equally exciting in my opinion – it allows you to step through a grandmaster game and predict the moves at each step. For each move you make you get a score (100% if you make the move made by the grandmaster – or as good as – right down to 0% if you make a game that results in a catastrophic defeat!!). You also get a natural language comment about why the move you made is good or bad. Huzzzzaahahah. So it allows you to assess how good your chess is and learn how to play better. It’s pretty unique I think. And it’s completely free.

Here’s a screen shot from the app so you can at least admire my use of complementary colour harmony in the design!!

You can find out further details about here – http://www.colourchat.co.uk/apps/chesstutor/ – or just put chesstutor into the search box an your iphone apps page.

colour e-paper

technology, , , ,

I’m very excited by colour e-paper. Not least because I like Harry Potter – and I really look forward to the day when we buy newspapers (as in Harry Potter’s magical world) and the photos move and change. That’s what e-paper has the potential to do.

So it was great to read that colour e-paper is just around the corner. Fujitsu has announced its next-generation colour e-paper; this is more likely to lead to the possibility of lightweight colour ebooks with long battery life than newspapers with moving pictures in the short term – but the long term is another matter.

For further information see – http://www.theregister.co.uk/2010/05/11/fujitsu_color_epaper/

The technology still seems to lack the ability to generate really vibrant colours but I am sure this is a problem that will soon be resolved.

Pantone Plus

design, professional, , ,

Everyone who works in colour has heard of Pantone. The Pantone Matching System has been used for decades for colour specification and colour communication. This month Pantone have unveiled a new system – Pantone Plus. Apparently, Pantone Plus provides users with expanded colour sets and more intuitive selection method to help streamline the creative process. I look forward to seeing it.

Color Marketing Group

design, news, professional, , , ,

I have been thinking of attending a meeting of the Color Marketing Group which is to be held in Amsterdam on 26-28th May 2010. Amsterdam is only about 45 mins by plane from Leeds so if I can get a flight I will go. It looks a really good event. For further details see www.colormarketing.org


pink balls anyone?

design, news, , , ,

Cricket authorities have been experimenting with pink cricket balls. A cricket match in Abu Dhabi used new pink cricket balls for a game that took place under floodlights.

 The argument is that the traditional red ball used in cricket, being of a relatively deep shade is hard to see under night conditions even with floodlights. The recent experiments seem to have been a success. John Stephenson, Head of Cricket at MCC (the world’s most famous cricket club), said “We have proved that the pink ball is clearly visible in day or night conditions and that day/night first-class cricket is a viable option for cricket administrators. Certainly the pink ball itself could be improved – such as by darkening the seam so batsmen can pick up the spinning delivery – but I don’t see an insurmountable block to progress.”

It’s not a view necessarily shared by the ICC though. The ICC is the International Cricket Council. “The MCC has been great in initiating trials around the world, but before we look at these projects we need to establish up front, from a scientific point of view, what makes sense,” said Dave Richardson, the ICC’s general manager of cricket. “The balls that have been developed so far are still a long way off being able to last 80 overs,” he added. “They just get too dirty. The beauty of the red ball is that it keeps its colour even when it’s old.”

The ball shown below is a pink ball after 14 overs (that’s 96 deliveries for the non-cricket-aware colour lovers).

For further information see – http://tinyurl.com/yhak2g5

 A pink ball was used for the first time in a match in England on 21 April 2008 in a match between an MCC XI and Scotland. See http://news.bbc.co.uk/sport1/hi/cricket/7352516.stm

physical and perceptual colour?

design, opinions/rants, , , , , ,

Consider the image below:

The four grey patches in the centre of the four squares are phsyically the same. If seen in isolation (or against a common background) they would look the same. So are the grey colours the same or different? 

Some people would argue the two greys are really different (this is convincing because after all they look different). However, others would argue that they are the same colour – it’s just an illusion that they look different because of the background and context. Which is right? Actually, I think both are correct. The former would be talking about perceptual colour and the latter would be talking about physical colour. Part of the reason that colour is so complex and that there seem to be so many ideas that clash is that colour is not very well defined. When people talk about colour they are sometimes talking about different things. I am wondering whether it would be really helpful to develop more formally the ideas of physical and perceptual colour.

In case on your screen the greys look more similar that they do on my screen I append another example of colour contrast below.

In this example, there are only two physical colours (red and green) or three (if you include white). However, perceptually there are two reds and two greens.

colour theory for eye makeup?

design, fun, , , , , ,

The impressionists understood about colour contrast. If you put a colour patch on a coloured background the colour of the patch will usually change (compared to if, for example, the patch was observed on a chromatically neutral background). The colour of the patch tends to move towards the complementary colour of the background. If the background is the complementary colour of the patch then the patch becomes particularly vivid.

 

In Van Gogh’s cafe and night cafe paintings you can see the juxtaposition of yellow and blue and red and green. Today I came across a more contemporary application of colour theory – eye make-up!

DoWop have produced something called EyeCatcher Shadows where the colour that is applied to the eyelid is the complementary colour of the iris. To see more visit – http://www.asos.com/Duwop/Duwop-Eyecatcher-Shadows/Prod/pgeproduct.aspx?iid=1047107

holiday in colour

fun, , ,

A new website – www.explorra.com – allows you to pick a holiday based upon your colour preference.

I just put click on red (my favourite colour) and it suggested Spain, Africa, and Mauritania, none of which are places I have a burning desire to visit. Maybe it’s just me. Why don’t you try it!!

Colourful leeds

opinions/rants, ,

This site is usually about education …. but also sharing my passion for colour. I couldn’t resist posting this photo I took I’m Leeds today – the Victorian quarter.