I found this interesting blog about colour – it’s called Stories behind Colours and is written by Susan Mathen. It contains interesting posts that relate to meanings of colour and, particularly, the stories about where those meanings come from. Please visit it.
http://www.storiesbehindcolours.blogspot.co.uk/
This year I hosted two Italian students as part of a European project. Silvia and Enrico both had the most fantastic design skills and both undertook projects about how to promote or represent a city – in their case, the city of Leeds where I work at the University of Leeds.
Here are two videos they produced at the end of their work here.
And here is a small diary about their time here in Leeds – http://colourdocks.wordpress.com/
The oil giant BP has again failed in its long-running bid to trademark the colour green in Australia.
The intellectual property watchdog, IP Australia, found BP was unable to show “convincing evidence” that it was indelibly linked in the average petrol consumer’s mind to the dark green shade known as Pantone 348C, a spokeswoman for the government agency said.
BP first tried to register a trademark for the colour in 1991, and until 2013 fought legal battles against another corporate titan, Woolworths, to stake its claim to the colour as the dominant shade for its service stations.
For the full story see http://www.theguardian.com/business/2014/jul/03/bp-loses-battle-to-trademark-the-colour-green-in-australia
Interesting review by Charles Hope of Making Colour exhibition at the National Gallery.
In particular it shows the changes made possible by the introduction of new types of paint after 1800. Most of the exhibits are drawn from the gallery’s own holdings, with a few loans from other museums and private collections in Britain.
Anything that reminds us that paintings are objects whose production required much technical knowledge and manual skill, and often a desire to overcome the physical limitations of the materials used, is to be welcomed.
Runs until 9th September 2014.
See http://www.lrb.co.uk/v36/n14/charles-hope/at-the-national-gallery
Drinking alcohol not only affects your speech and balance. It can also affect your colour vision. Not just alcohol. Various drugs (some contraceptives and analgesics, for example) make you less good at discriminating between colours. And there are a load of medical conditions that also affect your colour vision including MS and diabetes. In fact, often a deterioration in colour vision can be one of the first indications of a problem. This is why it is a good idea, from a health perspective, to have your vision checked by a qualified professional on a regular basis.
Now some research from Japan suggests that deterioration in colour vision may be a predictor of hypertension – a condition in which the arteries have persistently elevated blood pressure. The study looked at 872 men aged between 20 and 60. They found that, when other factors were taken into account, as blood pressure values rose, the odds of having impaired colour vision increased as well.
For further information see here.
Many of you will have seen the Scribble Pen which uses a colour sensor to detect colours. The sensor is embedded at the end of the pen opposite the nib. The pen then mixes the required coloured ink (cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black) for drawing, using small refillable ink cartridges that fit inside its body. The device can hold 100,000 unique colours in its internal memory and can reproduce over 16 million unique colours.
But wait. Don’t think that means you will be able to use the pen to write in 16 million different colours. You won’t. A typical phone screen can display about 16 million unique combinations of RGB (red, green and blue). But many of the RGB combinations are indistinguishable. Open up powerpoint and make two squares. Set the RGB values of one to [10 220 10] and of the other to [10 220 11]. I would be amazed if you could really tell the difference between them. And anyone who has read much of my blog will know that I believe that if two colours look the same then they are the same. So the pen might be able to create 16 million combinations of cyan, magenta, yellow, white, and black – but that doesn’t mean 16 million different colours.
The second problem is that just because your pen can grab a colour (using its sensor) doesn’t mean it can create it. There are lots of colours out there in the world that are outside the colour gamut of an ink-based system (even one using five primaries – cyan, magenta, yellow, white and black).
Read more: http://www.dailymail.co.uk/sciencetech/article-2647129/Forget-crayons-Multicolour-pen-lets-pick-colour-draw-16-million-shades.html#ixzz35gJ0racJ
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Just key urine colour chart into google images and prepare to be amazed. There are so many different charts and blogs and experts. Who would have thought it!! Today I saw an article in The Guardian that inspired to be to make this search. It turns out that there is a new urine colour chart from a clinic in USA that allows you to make a self diagnosis of your health based on the colour of your wee. A case of cross-media colour reproduction if ever I saw one (a poor joke that, for colour imaging scientists who may come across this blog).
I’m not sure it’s news though since there are a plethora of interesting charts for this already in existence and according to The Guardian the philosopher Theophilus noted the medical value in looking at the colour of urine as long ago as 700AD. However, if you have strangely coloured urine you might want to have a quick peek at The Guardian article to put your mind at rest (or not, as the case may be). Mine, for those who are interested, is sometimes clear but sometimes yellow verging on orange which is, I believe, because I don’t drink enough water. If you have blue urine it’s time to worry apparently.
I don’t just blog about flags and taxis – it just seems like it sometimes.
But today I came across a news story in the Express and Star (a newspaper in the Wolverhampton area of the UK) about a review of rules permitting taxi drivers in Dudley to use only white-coloured cars. The taxi association says that white cars are more expensive because of the popularity of the colour – with some even forced to respray their vehicles to comply with the rule. The single-colour scheme was introduced in 1996.
Just put taxi in the search box (at the bottom of the page) to see my other posts about taxi colour controversies. Or don’t, if you have a life to live.
I blog about anything related to colour and I am interested in all sorts of aspects of colour whether they be based in arts and design, cultural studies, evolution, chemistry, physics, biology or technology. But a couple of themes keep cropping up and I end up posting about them at regular intervals. So, in 2012 I posted about the historical development of the UK flag – the union jack. And then earlier this year I posted about an article on the BBC about the possible redesign on the union jack is Scotland votes to leave the United Kingdom in the forthcoming referendum there. Some of the designs that were being put forward were really horrible. Perhaps I am too attached to the union jack. A few days ago I came across another BBC story which included 25 readers’ designs for the union jack should Scotland leave. . I must say I much prefer the readers’ designs rather than those previously proposed by experts – the BBC reliably informs me that such experts are known as vexillologists. I like this flag (by David and Gwyneth Parker) – where the blue of Scotland has simply been swapped for the green of Wales, thus preserving the traditional look. (If you wonder why the green of Wales is not in the current flag see my earlier post.)
And I also like the following design (by Matthew Welch), where England and Wales are represented in the top left and bottom right corners respectively and the diagonal stripe represents Northern Ireland of course.
You probably have to be from the UK to understand this humorous design (by Al Main).
You can see all 25 readers’ designs at the BBC here.
If you are interested in vexillology (is that a word?) you may like to read another BBC story about a potential new flag for Norther Ireland. And finally, I was interested that the CIA apparently has a flag database that it makes available to the public.