I noticed a story today about a bull that escaped during a rugby game in France. Why would a bull even be there? I have no idea. But what interested me was the trope that was repeated in the article about the concern that one of the teams was wearing red shirts and that this could put those players in particular danger.
As you may know, bull fighters use a red cape during bull fighting events and this is popularly believed to be to enrage the bull.
However, it turns out that bulls are dichromats. They only have two types of cones – the light-sensitive cells in our eyes – and they are missing the long-wavelength cones. This makes them colour blind and red-green colour blind in particular.
It isn’t the case that bulls are enraged by red; it is the movement of the cape that irritates them. It is my understanding that the red colour is used so that the cape doesn’t show the blood. This was discussed in the first of my podcasts – do dogs see colour – which you can listen to here.
I don’t like Mondays blue. I do actually like Mondays, unlike The Bangles. But I don’t like blue. In this, I am out of step with the majority of people. Most studies on colour preference show that blue is one of the most preferred colours, irrespective of gender or culture. But, of course, some people don’t like it and I am one of those people.
The graph below is from one of my papers. It shows the per cent of people who selected each of 6 colours when we asked which was their favourite.
When we talk about liking or disliking a colour there are two caveats of course. The first is that there are lots of different blues. You might quite like one blue but not another. Most of the literature – including some of my own papers – not only focus exclusively on hue (as in the graph above) but only look at what we might call the focal colours of these hues. This grossly over simplifies the situation.
The second caveat is that although it is fine to talk about colour preference in an abstract sense, in practical terms you might like a colour in one context but not another. To give a ludicrously simple example: you might like a red car but not a red wedding dress. So we need to talk about context in a professional design scenario.
I am writing this because today I was walking in Leeds and heading towards the university where I work and I was reminded of this interesting blue structure that appeared a few years ago.
To say I don’t like it is an under statement. I think it is horrid. I cringe every time I see it. I generally don’t like blue but this particularly colour of blue is the most horrible.
Sometimes in Leeds I would go to a coffee shop that is associated with Harvey Nichols. They have rebranded it as Rabbit Hole Coffee. Imagine my shock when I saw the horrible blue that they used.
In a design context there is a role for blue and for this sort of blue. It is used quite a lot by Greggs and Tesco.
In these two cases it is a good use of the colour blue. In my opinion it looks cheap. And for Greggs that is fine. They don’t pretend to compete with Harvey Nichols. They want to communicate to their consumers that what they sell is not expensive and that is great. And it also works well for Tesco (although it is a slightly different blue to the blue used by Greggs). Tesco don’t specifically want to communicate that they are cheap but they do want to communicate that they are good value. Definitely not on the pricey side, as we say in the UK.
So even though I don’t like blue personally I can endorse its use by Tesco and Greggs. But the University of Leeds and the Harvey Nichols cafe? I think it is a really poor choice. I would have much preferred the lovely Leeds (legacy) green which you can see on the structure just to the left of the blue tower. Even a lovely red would nice. These are the University of Leeds brand colours, which have a gorgeous dark red,
This weekend Manchester Utd played Middlesborough in the FA cup. We won’t talk about the result. However, so interesting that Utd changed the colour of their socks from black to white to make it easier for people with colour discrimination issues to enjoy the game. Above you can see a shot from the game with a simulation on the right of how it might look to a someone missing the L-class cone (red-green colour blind).
This comes just after I posted about the rugby game and the problem trying to discriminate between the red and green shorts of Wales and Ireland respectively. Given the news in that post that World Rugby is bringing in some legislation it does seem that colour blindness (as poor colour discrimination is often referred to) is finally being taken seriously.
Interesting article today in the BBC about the colour of rugby shirts and the experience of viewers who may be colour blind.
According to one fan, the Irish and Welsh national kits are particularly difficult to distinguish for some people. As you can see from the simulation below, it is particularly challenging for protanopia (where the long-wavelength cone class is missing and the viewer is a dichromat).
Apparently, World Rugby has proposed new laws to help people affected by Colour Vision Deficiency (CVD), meaning teams may have to change kit from 2027 in the event of a colour clash.
However, it would not be difficult for one team to make their kit a little darker and one a little lighter to allow more people to enjoy the game and follow the action more easily.
In the image below, on the left you can see the original colours and on the right you can see the simulated colours for a protanope.
The top rows shows the colours that will be used in the match this weekend. The bottom rows show slightly shifted reds and greens that are more inclusive on the left, and their simulated appearance on the right.
At this time of year my thoughts sometimes turn to the colours that we associate with Christmas: red, green, gold, silver and white, in various combinations. One of the things that I sometimes read about is where Father Christmas always had a red suit or whether he had a green one. I note that in The Lion, the Witch and the Wardrobe, Santa is wearing a dull brownish tunic.
Father Christmas in Narnia
Though apparently according to CS Lewis himself in the book: on the sledge sat a person everyone knew the moment they set eyes on him. He was a huge man in a bright red robe (bright as hollyberries) with a hood that had fur inside it and a great white beard that fell like a foamy waterfall over his chest.
There are also annual stories about whether the traditional red we now associate with Father Christmas was influenced by Coca-Cola for marketing reasons. So, today I thought I would share this blog post about the truth of Father Christmas and red. It does refer to Coca-Cola who, I believe, had a role in popularising our current image of Santa but were not actually responsible for the colour change. This view is also reinforced by this blog post about Santa and red.
Anyway, the thing I read today that inspired me to write this post is actually this blog post which is about colour symbolism and Christmas.
Finally, if you want to explore the meanings that colours have in a more academic perspective here is a link to two papers that are free to read in JAIC – the Journal of the International Colour Association. One was written by me and Seahwa Won (who was my PhD student at the time) and you can see that one here. The other is written by José Luis Caivano and Mabel Amanda Lopéz, well known colour experts in Argentina, and you can see that here.
I really like this page by John Lovett about colour mixing.
We all know that you can’t mix all colours by starting from three primaries. You can’t do this in theory and you can’t do it in practice. You can’t do it with additive colour mixing and you can’t do it with subtractive mixing. In fact, with subtractive mixing, the oft-cited primaries of red, yellow and blue are actually not a very good choice.
Mixing red and blue pigments, for example, won’t give you a great purple. You will lose saturation and you almost certainly won’t get the vivid purple that is suggested by many colour wheels. However, John Lovett’s page explains how, if you do start with red, yellow and blue, you can do a little better by understanding that there is not just one blue and one red, for example. If you want to mix yellow and blue you should use a greenish yellow and a grreenish blue. On the other hand, if you want to mix blue and red you should use a reddish blue and a bluish red. This reduces the loss in saturation.
However, although Lovett’s advice is superb, you still can’t make all of the colours this way (though you can make all the hues of course). And arguably what Lovett is proposing is a six-primary system rather than a three-primary system. Lovett ends up proposing a six-primary system in an attempt to make the out-dated idea of RYB work.
A number of studies have concluded that wearing the colour red make us seem more attractive to other people. However, perhaps surprisingly, this is still an effect that is unclear. Although many studies have reported the effect, others have not found it.
Today I was reading a paper by Lehmann, Elliot and Calin-Jageman who conducted a meta-analysis of published work on this topic in 2018. They analysed a large number of studies to try to come to a definitive conclusion. Overall they found a small but statistically significant effect when men were rating women. The effect was much smaller for women rating men.
Interestingly, the authors could not agree on the conclusions and presented two concluding remarks in the paper. The first and third author concluded that the effect of red on attraction was small, potentially nonexistent. However, the second author concluded that there was a small but reliable effect for both men rating women and women rating men.
This reminds me a little of the work on the effect of colour on blood pressure and heart rate where, again, the literature show contrasting results. In this area I have concluded that there might be an effect but that, if there is, it is probably very small. Measuring very small effects can be difficult because of the problem of needing large sample sizes.
Staff at a primary school in Dundee want to change the colour of the uniform because they think the red colour could affect children’s behaviour. According to the Headmistress Gillian Knox:
‘Red is often used to energise body and mind, and some research indicates that it can increase heart and breathing rates. [This is] not the calm, relaxed learning state we hope to achieve. A recent study linked red to impaired performance on achievement tasks.’
Pupils currently wear a bright red jumper or cardigan with grey trousers or skirt. But teachers want there to be only ‘small amounts’ of red – such as in the school tie.
However, although statements such as this – that red raises heart rates – are all over the red and often cited as facts (as in ‘everybody knows’) in fact there is very little evidence that looking at red can affect heart rates. We ran a study at University of Leeds last year and found no statistically significant effect of the colour of light on subjects’ heart rates or on their blood pressure. A review of the literature reveals little evidence: there is a PhD thesis from California from about 1950 that nobody can get hold off and a study with mentally handicapped children in the 80s. That’s it. Light certainly affects us physiologically but it is far from fact that red raises blood pressure.
The work that has been done has been done in petri dishes in lab however and further studies are needed to see if certain coloured sheets could be effective bug deterrents.
According to Joseph Corbo, an associate professor of pathology and immunology at Washington University, the genes affecting red coloration belong to a wider family of genes involved in detoxification. Redness may be a sign of a robust, quality mate who can easily cleanse harmful substances from his body.
“In many bird species, the redder the male, the more successful it is at finding mates,” – Joseph Corbo.
