It may be a little late in the year to be sharing the colour of the year, but here goes. Most of you may know about Pantone, but for those unaware, PANTONE TM is a system for matching colours, used in specifying printing inks. “Pantone colours” as an identifying system gained popularity since the 1900’s.
Well in January 2017, Pantone announced “GREENERY” as the colour of the year! Obviously you can just bounce over to pantone’s website to read more about why they’re celebrating this tone of green this year. A symbol of reconnection with nature, that’s what they’re saying.
For most of us colour is so intrinsically ingrained in our world we often take it for granted. Less we speak to someone colour-blind or vision-impaired, it’s easy to cruise through your day, your life not noticing the wonders of our rainbow, colour-filled world.
Let’s take a deep breath for a minute. Ponder and stand in awe at the magnificence at play to allow us to actually “see” colour.
Without going into too much scienc-y, tech-y, geek-y details, we’re all aware that white light is part of the visible spectrum that we can all see. And from that singular source of white light contains the vast expanse of all colours possibly imaginable. I mean we’ve all learnt that in school haven’t we? Nothing new here.
Breathe
That, if you take time to reflect, is in itself a marvel, is it not? Every, and I mean every single colour we’ve ever seen, will ever see, every hue, shade, tone imaginable is encompassed in one singular color source. All the reds, blues, greens, yellows, everything are fragments of a greater whole. White. Maybe it’s just me, but I find that truly amazing and humbling! There exists no colour that hasn’t already existed. It’s all already there. In white, as a part of white.
Breathe
How do we actually “see” colour? Again, this is no far out concept, we all know that our eyes have receptors that translate these light messages to our brain. Cones of some sort, right? Hence, those who have defective “cones” have difficulty interpreting the colours.
Now, this is where I’ve always and kinda still do wonder. How do we know we’re all seeing the same colour?!! How do we know for sure the “red” of the red car that I see parked outside this lovely cafe I’m at as I’m writing this article is the same “red” that, say, those 2 boys playing cards across from me are seeing?
Breathe
Sure, we’re all physically comprised of pretty much the same biological structure and of course we all identify and concur that red is red! But, I mean, how do we really really know that my exact shade of red that I see in my brain is the exact shade of red you see in yours? Again, I’m only a designer and i deal with colour every day. But say, my “cones” are 99.9% slightly different from yours, can we both say for sure that we are seeing exactly the same thing?
Is that maybe why sometimes, someone hates a certain colour combination, while some other people may really love it? Why some people unconsciously select garish colours which may seem “matching” but appalling to others?
Breathe
No answers here, just food for thought, throwing something out there to think about.
Thank you, thank you, thank you for reading and have a rainbow day ahead y’all.
Info extracted from : https://www.pantone.com/color-of-the-year-2017
Post first appeared on Ask An Architect
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