What’s your favorite color? This may be the most innocuous ice-breaker to open a conversation with a child or ask on a first date. A survey of ten countries across four continents shows that one color – blue – is the most popular answer, whether it is in Great Britain, China, or Indonesia. The best selling crayons of all time, Crayola Crayons gives us a choice of 64 colors. Cognitive experts have shown that we can see about 100 levels of red-green and 100 levels of yellow-blue, with thousands more variations for levels of light and dark. They calculate that the total number of colors the human eye can perceive is as much as 10 million.
Color is how we express our moods. I’ve got the blues. Shakespeare coined, green with envy. Color is associated with national identity. Dutch Olympic athletes always wear orange. A patriotic American is said to bleed red, white, and blue. Color influences what we eat. Comedian George Carlin once did a comedy routine asking where is the blue food? We use color for short hand expressions of political parties. Is that a red state or blue state? Or a symbol of a revolution. Better Red than dead. And of course sports teams have their colors, the most popular being red. In some cases, universities like Cornell or Denison are simply known on the athletic field as Big Red.
Color is introduced to stimulate children’s creativity. There are subject matter experts who are called upon to select the right calming colors for hotels, public buildings, and our homes. Color therapy is used to help unsettled patients work through their issues. Painters would not exist with color. And even writers and poets could not do their work without color. The counterculture celebrates the intense colors of a psychedelic experience. Television network NBC adopted a peacock fanning its tail as its mascot to market their innovation of living color. Likewise, Motels in the 1960s specially advertised on their signs, All Rooms with Color TV. Four percent of the population has synesthesia, a cognitive condition where letters and numbers are perceived to have inherent colors.
Color is so embedded in our cognitive process we may even forget when we are using it in our everyday language: green thumb, pink slip, blue collar job, white collar crime, yellow bellied, golden opportunity, white elephant, red tape, and silver screen.
Color is deeply rooted in daily associations. Americans want their paper money green. School buses and pencils should be yellow. Fire engines must be engines red. The first rule of driving school is green means go, red means stop. Traditional colors at baby showers have been blue for boys, pink for girls. Pink also goes with fantasy as in seeing a pink elephant. Orange life vests are universally recognized as a signal for safety and rescue. White in western cultures means purity and the traditional color of a wedding dress, while in eastern cultures, it is associated with death.
And the world of color continues to grow with the help of scientists. A team of chemists at Oregon State University, was experimenting with rare earth elements while developing materials for use in electronics in 2009 accidentally created the pigment YInMn Blue. Named after its components — Yttrium, Indium, and Manganese -- it was the first new chemically-made pigment in two centuries.
In talking about my book Color Capital of the World, I even got to play a fun color association game on Inner Loop Radio [link] with founders Rachel Coonce and Courtney Sexton.
In researching my book, here are a couple of books I came across that tell the stories of color, its symbolism in culture and importance in history.
The Secret Lives of Color, Kassia St. Clair (2016). St.Clair uses stories to describes 75 various shades of color families such as Lead Whit to Beige, Blonde, Baker-Miller pink to Amaranth. Her stories have strong historical connections such as white protected against the plague, charcoal on the cave walls at Lascaux, scarlet women to imperial purple. Bought new online.
The World According to Colour: A Cultural History, James Fox (2021). British author, James Fox ("Colour" is the giveaway) takes seven primary colors—black, red, yellow,
blue, white, purple, and green—and explores the origins of each their symbolism throughout history. 25 beautiful color pictures from a red hand painted in the Chauvet Cave in France to Hollywood's use of Black and White in westerns. Bought second-hand on a Sunday afternoon at an open air flea market in London's Southbank neighborhood.
Paint Chip Poetry: A Game of Color and Wordplay, Lea Redmond. Not a book but a game with 400 paint chip cards and prompt cards meant to inspire impromptu poetry and wordplay. Bought new at Potter's House books in Washington, DC. =========================================
*If you're reading this in the U.K, What's Your Favourite Colour?
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