Tag Archives: white

Colour symbolism at Christmas

culture, fun, , , , , , , , ,

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.

https://www.thephantastic.com/home/narnia-always-winter-and-never-christmas

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.

UK favourite car colours

culture, design, news, ,

The top three favourite car colours in the UK in 2016 were white, black and grey (in that order). White has been the best seeing colour for four years which is interesting because it never used to be popular in the UK. Car salesman used to refer to the colour as three-week white because it took three weeks longer to sell a white car compared with other colours. But it’s 10 years now since a chromatic colour was number 1.

For further details see here.

Has technology for Harry Potter’s Daily Prophet just arrived?

news, technology, , , , , ,

I believe that print as we know it is dead. I know that there are some arguing that print is having a resurgence – just as there are those who think that vinyl is on the way back for music – but reports that physical books are gaining ground at the expense of digital are just plain wrong as is explained in this article. I saw this before with digital images where people argued that digital images would never replace traditional photography because of quality and price. Well, of course, we know that the quality of digital images increased and the cost of getting them decreased (when I was a student in the 80s it would have been bizarre to imagine that everyone would have a couple of cameras on them at all times) – but it was not this that killed traditional photography and eventually put the giant Kodak out of business. What killed traditional photography was when you could go to a gig, take a photo, and share it almost instantly with your friends around the world. Traditional photography could never compete with this.

Some people prefer reading print to looking at a screen though I am not one of them. But imagine when an e-document feels like paper, is light and flexible, but you can carry a whole newspaper with you (not to mention all the novels you have ever read) by carrying just one piece of it. And it looks just like print.

E ink, the company behind the pigment-based, low-energy monochromatic displays found in many of today’s popular readers has worked out how to create up to 32,000 colours using almost the same technology. For the first time they can create colours at each pixel using yellow, cyan, magenta and white pigments. The new display is 20-inch with 2500 x 1600 resolution. The image below is rendered in this way. This leads to the possibility of having coloured moving images made out of ink – just like the Daily Prophet in the Harry Potter movies. Well, not quite like that yet. But it’s coming. More details here.

ink

Dudley taxi colour

culture, design, news, , , , , , , , ,

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.

taxi

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.

new British flag

culture, design, news, opinions/rants, , , , , , , , , , ,

Some of you may recall that last year – a big year for the UK with the Olympics in London and Queen’s jubilee – there was a lot of waving of British flags. I posted about how the flag was derived historically and noted the absence of any representation by Wales. For those who are less familiar, the United Kingdom is a union of four countries (England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland). By contrast Great Britain is just England, Scotland and Wales (not including Northern Ireland) and the British Isles is a geographical feature that includes the United Kingdom and the Republic of Ireland. Simple?

Next year the Scottish people be asked if they want to be independent. If they vote yes (in my opinion this is not very likely, but possible) it will signal the end of the union of Great Britain and Northern Ireland. Today the BBC ran a feature about possible new designs of the new flag. I wasn’t very impressed by any of them, including the horrible one below. Try reading my post first and then the new BBC article.

flag

white taxis

fun, opinions/rants, , , ,

In 2009 I blogged about a row in Derby about the yellow colour of taxis. But times change. Things move on, Today I am reading about a problem in Durham – for those who don’t know, Durham is in the north-east of England – about white taxis!! Apparently, this week ten drivers stormed out of a meeting with councillors over a proposal to adopt a policy for all-white colour taxis in the county of Durham. The argument for white taxis is that it would make them stand out and ensure that customers knew which taxis were legitimate. Sounds pretty sensible to me. It would work because white is a very unpopular colour for cars in the UK. I have heard that second-hand car salesmen refer to white as six-week white because it takes 6 weeks longer to sell a white car than other coloured cars. Whereas in other parts of the world, I have noticed in my travels that white cars are quite popular. Perhaps there is a business opportunity here – to export the unpopular white cars to places where they may sell for a premium.

colourful greeks

design, knowledge, , , , , , ,

It’s often thought that black, white and grey are mature and sophisticated colours and that saturated reds and yellows are childish colours. Part of the reason for this is that the Romans and Greeks didn’t use colour. All those classic statues we see in museums are achromatic. However. this may be all based on a misunderstanding. At a CREATE conference in Italy last year I first came across the idea that the Romans and Greeks used colour quite extensively but that over the centuries the colour faded. Today I saw this story in the popular press.

An exhibition of work – Gods In Colour: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity – recoloured as it is believed to have originally been features more than 20 full-size colour reconstructions of Greek and Roman works. Currently on show at the Pergamon Museum in Berlin, Germany.

favourite colour

design, opinions/rants, , , , , ,

I was reading on a web page that white is the usual response if you ask people their favourite colour – http://www.pressdistribution.net/14735/apple-iphone-4-white-show-true-colour

I don’t think its true. Most studies show that people’s favourite colour is blue. I have never heard of a study that found white to be the favourite colour. The article was about the iPod though and we all know that the use of white was an inspired choice by Apple. The white earphone leads have become iconic and are part of the brand that consumers buy into by the millions. In fact, I think this is a very interesting phenomenon – there is a lot of research that shows that people prefer one colour to another. But what use is it? Over the last few years my research has focussed on the context of colour preference; that is, which colours would be most effective when used for a particular product (and by extension, for a particular market).

sustainable colour design

design, news, , , , ,