Colourful

Language

MAJOR PROJECT
REPORT

Eleanor Maclure

Colourful
Language

LONDON COLLEGE OF COMMUNICATION

MA GRAPHIC DESIGN
PART TIME
PERSONAL TUTOR: JOHN BATESON

MAJOR PROJECT
REPORT

Eleanor Maclure

Acknowledgments

I would like to thank my personal tutor John, and all the other tutors
and fellow students on MA Graphic Design at London College of
Communication for their advice and encouragement, it has been much
appreciated. I would also like to say a special thanks to Richard Ashworth,
Karen Skorski and Lisa Roberts at the Society of Dyers and Colourists for
their time, expertise and opinions and to Simon Tiutwein, David Batchelor,
Patrick Baty, Rob and Nick Carter, Karen Haller, Janet Best and Alan Dye
for allowing me to interview them for this project. Also to Colin Jones and
everyone at Blindness In Greenwich for their contributions and openness in
discussing their experiences of colour.
I would also like to acknowledge everyone who participated in the survey
for this project, your contributions have helped to demonstrate the sheer
variety in the way we describe colours, making the outcome of the project
a viable proposition. I am also eternally grateful to Chris Duke and the print
team at Blissetts for their endeavours to produce all the printed material for
this project on time, to a tight budget.
Finally, thanks to Andrew and my family for their support and understanding
over the last two years and everyone else who has given their time or
expertise to my research, without which this project would not have been
possible.

Contents

01 Introduction

06 Development of Outputs

02 Proposal Outline

07 Evaluation

2.1
2.2
2.3
2.4
2.5
2.6
2.7

Field of Study
Focus
Research Question
Project Aims
Relationship to Design Practise
Audience
Validity

7.1
7.2
7.3
7.4

Evaluation of Methodology
Evaluation of Outcome
Critical Reflection
Personal Reflection

08 Conclusion

03 Context

List of Illustrations

References

3.1
3.2
3.3
3.4
3.5

The Physics of Colour

The Biology of Colour Perception
Theories of Colour
Colour and Language
Colour Naming

04 Key Concepts
05 Research Methodologies
5.1

Focus 1
5.1.1 Essays on Colour
5.1.2 Strooping the Colour
5.1.3 Colour my Words
5.1.4 When Green is Not Green
5.1.5 Colour by Numbers

5.2






5.3

Focus 2
5.2.1 Searching for the Rainbow
5.2.2 Transforming the Rainbow
5.2.3 Looking for Hue
5.2.4 Say What You See
5.2.5 Deconstructing the Rainbow
Focus 3
5.3.1 Quantitative Research
5.3.2 Qualitative Research

Further Reading
Appendices A-C

Report Aims

This report aims to deliver an informative and comprehensive account

and analysis of the research, methodologies and outcomes of Colourful
Language, the investigation submitted as the Major Project for my MA
Graphic Design, at London College of Communication.
Colour and language, the subjects of this investigation are both vast fields
of study, with overlaps into a number of other areas. Ample context has
been provided in this report as a reflection of the size of the subject area
and the quantity of research undertaken to support the project overall.
The framework of the investigation is established through the inclusion of
key points, concepts and considerations from the original proposal for the
project. This should allow the reader to gain a full understanding of the
background, purpose and aims of the research.
The various research methodologies employed throughout the project are
described in detail and evaluated to give both an account and analysis of
the progress of the project, as is the development of the design outcomes
that have subsequently resulted from the research.
It is intended that this document synthesise and rationalize the concepts that
inform, support and have developed at a result of the project. The structure
and content of the report aims to unite the numerous components of this
investigation and present the project as a cohesive and reasoned body of
work with a considered conclusion.

Introduction

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously

asked How do I know that this color
is red?It would be an answer to say: I
have learnt English.
(Batchelor, 2000 pp.91)

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Introduction

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously asked How do

I know that this color is red?It would be an answer to
say: I have learnt English. (Batchelor, 2000 pp.91)
But how do we know what is red, or blue or green?
How does our understanding of these colours relate to
how we label them? And how well do our colour names
reflect the colours we are trying to identify?
We all use colour names to describe things in everyday
life, whether to describe someones appearance, give
directions, or decipher colour-coded information. But
how well do we use these terms? How consistent and
precise are we when it comes to defining what is claret,
maroon or burgundy? Would we feel confident asserting
that something was beige rather than taupe? Do we
know the difference between lilac and lavender? Is there
a real difference?
How effectively can this aspect of our communication
function, when our own understanding of colour terms
is insufficient or our language itself is lacking the precise
descriptions we are grasping for?

These questions and others are but some of the issues

that afflict the way we use language to describe
and define our experience of colour. The system is
complicated further, in that there are no standards
of individual colour perception. Colours vary with
context, surface texture and viewing conditions, while
colour terms are imprecise, have no chromatic content
in themselves and there is no way of knowing that
my notion of a particular hue is the same as anyone
elses. Trying to devise a system based on language, to
accurately define colours is an impossible task.
Despite this we use language to reference colour all
the time, we have too. Often there is no other available
means of referring to the particular hue we are trying
to describe. That the language system we use to talk
about colour is inherently flawed, is all the more reason
why it should be studied and analysed to further our
understanding.

Proposal
Outline

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Project
Outline
This section outlines key points from the original
proposal submitted for this project. It details the
parameters and frames of reference established
for the investigation.

2.1

FIELD OF STUDY

The subject of this investigation unites two independent

and largely unrelated fields of study: colour theory
and linguistics. It could more accurately be described
as being situated where these two areas intersect, the
marriage of colour and language.
Both of these areas have long histories and incorporate
many concepts and theories. Colour theory alone
bridges a number of subjects from: physics and
optics, to the visual arts, to biology and neuroscience.
Linguistics is also a substantial field of study, so in order
to contain the scope of the research I have concentrated
my attention only on the concepts that are particularly
relevant to the research question. That both fields have
well-established bodies of knowledge has validated my
own investigation and provided a wealth of information
with which to support it.
I have also elected to focus this research on English
colour names only. Although colour naming across
different language systems is a rich area of study, it is a
whole subject in itself and too extensive to investigate in
any detail as it raises problems of translation and crosscultural sensitivity.
To further define the areas of interest, within colour
theory I will specifically be concerned with colour
perception and semiotics, with regards to linguistics.

2.2

FOCUS

Within the fields of study previously outlined, the focus

of this investigation is defined as Colour Naming. It can
be described as the process by which we equate the
colours we perceive through our visual sensory system
with how we identify them using our language system. It
is concerned with the body of colour terms that exist in
English, their relationships to each other, their real world
application and the problems that can occur when using
language to identify and describe colours.

2.3

RESEARCH QUESTION

The research question originally stated in the proposal

for this project was:

HOW WE TALK ABOUT COLOUR:

Observing the way we use language to describe
colours.
This question has stood throughout the project but can
be expanded and clarified as focussing on the names of
colours and in the following ways:
1. The names of colours: Analysis of the body of
words used to describe colour, how they can be
categorised, their origins, their meanings.
2. The names of colours: how do they visually relate
to each other. For example how does red relate to
pink, maroon or terracotta? How do these colour
terms relate to each other in turn?
3. The names of colours: The consistency of their
application, interpretation, definition and
understanding. For example, the variation in how
colour terms can be used to label colours and how
varying colours can be identified using the same
term.
Although broken down into three sections, the order
is not indicative of the importance of each concept.
The first part is intended to carry less weight in the
investigation, primarily acting as a foundation for the
rest of the research, which is comprised of parts two
and three, and should generate the more interesting
and visually appealing aspect of the project.

2.4

PROJECT AIMS

The fundamental aim of this research project is to

contribute to the understanding of how language
is used to express colour, through observations,
quantitative research, analysis and particularly visual
representation.
The problems of using language to describe colour has
been commented on by a number of writers, described
in more detail in the Context section of this report.
Colour stretches the limits of our descriptive abilities
and consequently our language.
While there are evidently a number of difficulties with
colour and language, this project has never set out
to solve them. Several thousand years of philosophy
have failed to produce an adequate theory or model
of colour and some aspects of the problem of the
relationship between colour and language are
theoretically impossible to solve, due to the nature of
verbal language itself.
The discourse on colour and language, through
philosophy, linguistics and even fine art exists largely
as text, resulting in the discussion of a subject
which is entrenched in our visual culture, but using
a system of communication widely acknowledged
as utterly deficient in describing it. Therefore, what
this project does aim to achieve is a contribution to
the understanding of the problem through visual
documentation and representation, to use graphic
design to show what the relationships between colours
and their names look like.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

2.5

RELATIONSHIP TO DESIGN PRACTICE

Although the focus of my research is not directly related

to graphic design itself, both colour and language are
key features of visual communication and vital tools
for a graphic designer. Colour naming is, ultimately, a
communication problem, and although it is a potentially
unsolvable problem graphic design processes are a
valid method for exploring it.
As described earlier, a disproportionate amount of
the research that exists on colour naming is written
discourse not visual representation. Therefore, this
project finds its relationship to design practise by using
design methodologies to visually represent research
in an area where two fields closely related to graphic
design coincide.

2.6

AUDIENCE

The audience for this project was defined in the

proposal as primarily being designers and those who
work in the creative industry or visual arts. This could
also be extended to include anyone who works with
colour as part of their profession.
However, the research carried out for this project and
the visual outcomes produced have the possibility of
appealing to anyone who has an interest in colour,
among the wider audience of the general population.
I also hope to find an audience in those who also
are studying colour naming, or who have an interest
in linguistics, semiotics, colour theory, culture, the
visual arts, perception, philosophy or simply the
general advancement of knowledge, learning and
understanding.

2.7

VALIDITY

Colour is often seen as a purely decorative medium, and

it would be easy to assume that the language we use to
describe colours is a somewhat esoteric area of study.
However, as the research for this project has come to
reinforce, colour is a highly prominent aspect of our
environment. We all have a relationship with it, even
those with a visual impairment.
The way we use language to break down colour into
categories and the names that we use for colours
are intrinsically linked to the way we perceive and
interpret them. Thus, increasing the awareness and
understanding of how we use words to describe colours
is particularly valid.
The work by Nathan Moroney, described in further
detail in Research Methodology, has also served to
reinforce the real-world purpose of this area of study,
citing a number of relevant applications for an increased
understanding of how we use language to describe
colour:
Applications of color naming include graphical user
interface design, color schemes for data visualization,
object segmentation in images, as a property in image
database queries, and derivation of color palettes for
designers. (Moroney, 2003)

Applications of color naming include graphical user

interface design, color schemes for data visualization, object
segmentation in images, as a property in image database
queries, and derivation of color palettes for designers.
(Moroney, 2003)

Context

Before we could speak, colour

was our language .
(Haller, 2011)

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Context
The subjects of colour and language are both supported
by significant bodies of theory. This section of the report
details relevant background research and describes
similar projects and studies that have helped the
development of this investigation.

3.1

THE PHYSICS OF COLOUR

All the colours that saturate the world around us today,

have existed since the beginning of time. Photons, the
tiny particles that make up waves of light, were one of
the elementary particles created during the birth of the
universe.
Photons travelling at different wavelengths create the
frequencies of electromagnetic radiation that make up
the electromagnetic spectrum. The frequencies range
from Gamma waves, the shortest at a fraction of the
size of an atom, to longer radio waves. However, what
humans see as visible light is only a tiny portion of it,
our spectrum of colours lies between the wavelengths
of infrared and ultra-violet radiation. As Isaac Newton
demonstrated in his prism experiment over three
hundred years ago, white light can be refracted and
split in to the colours of the spectrum. Red is seen in
wavelengths of between 700 and 635 nanometres (nm),
orange between 635-590 nm, yellow between 590 and
560 nm, green 560 and 490 nm, blue 490 and 450 nm
and purple between 450 and 400 nm.
The colours around us dont physically exists in objects
themselves, they are in some respects, illusions.
Colour is largely created by electromagnetic energy,
light, interacting with electrons. This can manifest

itself as a number of different processes, for example

incandescence, diffraction and scattering, depending
on the physical structure and properties of the surface.
Many of the colours we see in the world around us
are a result of light reflecting off pigmented surfaces.
Pigments occur everywhere and can be natural, as in
skin and hair, or synthetic as with dyes and paints.
When light hits a pigmented surface, photons of
particular energies interact with the electrons in the
part of the pigment molecule that is responsible for
colour, the chromophore, causing them to react. Those
wavelengths of light are absorbed by the object, others
are rejected, reflected back at us and are received by
the receptors in our eyes.
The electrons in the chromophore of different
materials will only react to photons travelling at specific
frequencies. This represents the particular amount of
energy that will excite the electrons, so some molecular
arrangements will create structures where certain
bands of light waves will be reflected more than others.
This explains how some objects absorb low energy
frequencies and reflect wavelengths that we see as blue
and others will absorb higher energy frequencies and
appear red to us.

3.2

THE BIOLOGY OF COLOUR PERCEPTION

It is possible that we originally developed our sensitivity

to different wavelengths of light as far back in our
evolutionary history as when life existed as single
cell amoebas in the ocean. In order to harvest vital
energy from the sun whilst protecting themselves from
destructive UV rays the organisms moved to different
depths of water at different times of day. They sunk
deeper during full daylight, when the sky was blue
and moved to shallower water at dusk when the sun
appeared more yellow. It has been speculated that
this yellow/blue colour system is hardwired into our
biological make up.
Primates developed an additional red/green colour
system forty million years ago, when it became useful to
have this ability for finding food and avoiding danger.
This new level of colour distinction enabled primates to
flourish and evolved into the colour vision system that
human have today.
Newborn babies are not born with colour vision. Over
the first three months of life the receptor cells in their
eyes eventually develop, allowing them to see colour.
The human eye is a highly complex organ, light enters
our eyes through the cornea, then the iris, which can
expand and contract to let more or less light into the
pupil, then the lens. This reflects the light on to the
retina which is made up of a number of cells, including
two types of photoreceptors, rods and cones. The
rods enable us to see in low light, facilitating the
distinction between light and dark. While, the cones are
responsible allowing us to see fine detail and colour.
Humans are referred to as trichromats, because our
vision is based on a system of three colour receptors.
There are three different types of cone cells ones which

absorb red, ones which absorb blue and ones which

absorb green. We have around 100 million rod cells and
7 million cone cells in each eye. Detailed scans of living
human retina have shown that although the proportion
of red, green and blue cones can vary wildly between
person to person, sometimes up to 40 times (Goudarzi,
2005), the way we see colours is remarkably similar.
However, there are a significant percentage of men who
have a colour vision deficiency, compared to women.
In North American this proportion is 8% verses 0.5%
(Wikipedia, 2011). This often occurs because two of our
cone cell genes occur on the X chromosome. A number
of colour deficiencies can arise when one of these
genes mutates. As men only have one X chromosome
there is nothing to override that mutation, as there is
in women, who have two. The same process could also
create tetrachromacy in women, who would theoretically
have four different types of cone receptors, resulting
in exceptional colour distinction. It is thought to affect
2-3% women worldwide, although only one case has
been confirmed.
Light is processed by the rods and cones of the retina
by means of a series of chemical reactions which are
translated in to electrical impulses, transmitted to
the brain through the optic nerve. The impulses are
interpreted by comparing the signals from each of the
different types of cones, in the primary visual cortex,
at the back of the brain. So the yellow of a banana is
neither in the fruit itself nor the light reflected off it, but
in our heads. Exactly how the brain processes colour
from the signals it receives is still something that science
has yet to fully understand, but it is in some respects an
illusion.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

3.3
There are a number of ways to demonstrate this
aspect of colour. Many optical illusions play on the
idiosyncrasies of our visual system, as seen in the Mach
Band Effect and simultaneous contrast.
Some occur because we see colour in context. Josef
Albers described colour as the most relative medium in
art (Albers, 2006 pp.1). This quality of our colour vision,
that the colours that we interpret is greatly influenced by
what surrounds them, was demonstrated systematically,
to great effect in his visual experiments in Interaction of
Colour, see Figures 122 and 123, Appendix A.
While all almost all of us have senses that function
to give us a similar experience of the world, there
will always be a degree of variation in our sensory
perception. So our physiology and the way our brains
interpret colour are but two of the potential sources of
subjectivity in our experience of colour.

THEORIES OF COLOUR

The nature of colour has been contemplated throughout

history, and much has been discussed and theorised
in both ancient and modern philosophy. This includes
discussion by Pythagoras (570-c. 495 BC) on colour
harmony, Plato (427 - 347 BC) on colour perception, and
Aristotle (384-322 BC) on colour mixing.
Other theories of colour were later developed, through
painting by Leonardo da Vinci (Treatise on Painting) and
scientific methods, by Sir Isaac Newton in 1666. More
recent philosophical works have included writing on the
complex relationship between colour and language, in
particular Goethes Theory of Colours (1810).
Wittgensteins Remarks on Colour (1977) was a response
to this and used language games to contemplate the
apparent contradictions in our perception of colour. In
contrast to this Hardins Colour for Philosophers (1988),
aimed to provide a scientific basis for the philosophy of
colour, in order to acknowledge how developments in
this area that have greatly improved our understanding
of colour.

All that is necessary for any language to exist is an agreement

amongst a group of people that one thing will stand for another.
(Crow, 2003 pp.20)

3.4

COLOUR AND LANGUAGE

The Optical Society of America suggests that the human

eye can identify between 7.5 and 10 million distinct
colours (Wershler-Henry, 2001). The average adult has
a vocabulary of up to 50 000 words (Gall, 2009) and
although continuously growing, the estimated number
of words in the English language is one to two million
(Gall, 2009). If every word in the English language was
used, we still would only be able to give names to
around one tenth of the colours we can recognize.
Colour terms are the words we use to identify colours,
in other words, their names. They are classified as
adjective and can be categorised in several ways,
beginning with abstract and descriptive terms. Abstract
terms refer to colour names that are used only to
designate a colour, for example blue. Descriptive
colour terms usually come from the colour of objects
the world around us, and can be used to denote both
a colour and an object, for example lemon or fuchsia.
Many descriptive colour terms are taken from flowering
plants or food items. Some colour terms which are now
abstract originated from a descriptive term, for example
the English colour Pink which was originally the name
used for the wild flower mallow.
In the late 1960s Brett Berlin and Paul Kay conducted
a worldwide linguistic and anthropological study into
the development of colour terms within the language
systems of different cultures. From the results of this
study they developed a universalist theory of how colour
terms evolve within the development of a language.
They used it to categorise language systems based on
how many basic colour terms existed within it. English
was identified as having the maximum number of basic
colour terms: eleven. These are black, white, red, yellow,
green, blue, brown, purple, pink, orange and grey
(Berlin & Kay, 1999). Of these terms only orange is not
abstract, referring to the citrus fruit. This clearly defined

set of colour names has been used as a foundation for

a number of the colour and language explorations,
described in the Research Methodology section of this
report.
In contrast to this is the relativist Sapir-Whorf
hypothesis. This states that our colour categories
influence the way we understand the world and could
possibly influence the way we actually perceive colours.
There is potential empirical evidence of this concept
through experiments conducted on the Himba, a tribe
based in northern Namibia, who have very different
colour categories to English. Shown on the BBC series
Horizon (Figures 123 and 124), the Himba were able
to differentiate shades of green far more easily than
people in Western cultures, as they had different words
for those colours. However, they had great difficulty in
distinguishing blue from green because they create no
distinction between the two hues in their language.
The ancient Greeks were once thought of being unable
to see the colour blue, as they too had no word for it
in their language (Eco, 1985 pp.157). While research
by Paul Green-Armytage (2010) on the limits of colour
coding indicates that if a colour can be named it is
easier to identify and recall from memory.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

3.5

COLOUR NAMING

There is a scene in Sofia Coppolas film debut, Lost in

Translation, where Bill Murrays character, Bob receives
a package of red toned carpet samples from his wife,
while away filming an advert, accompanied by he note
I like the burgundy one, what do you think?. To which
he responds despairingly, after tipping them out on the
floor, which one is burgundy?. This scenario highlights
a typical example of the frustrations that can occur when
trying to use language to communicate colour.
There exists a sizeable body of research specifically on
colour naming. A significant amount has been carried
out by Paul Kay (co-author of the Berlin-Kay hypothesis)
with others, since the late 1960s, including the World
Colour Survey. There are also currently a number of
online colour naming projects particularly experiments
by Nathan Moroney, for Hewlett-Packard, Figure 126,
cumulating in The Colour Thesaurus Figures 127 and
128, An Online Colour Naming Model by LCC MSc.
Digital Colour Imaging student Dimitris Mylonas, Public
Perception of Colour project by Rob and Nick Carter
(Figures 129 and 130) and the Interactive Colour Label
Explorer by CrowdFlower (Figures 130-133). A number
of other online colour naming applications are shown in
the Visual Summary and Supporting Material Volume 5.
In the comments on Colour Recollection and Visual
Memory in his influential text The Interaction of
Colour, Josef Albers (2006, pp.3) describes a scenario
particularly relevant this project:
If one says Red (the name of a color) and there are
50 people listening, it can be expected that there will
be 50 reds in their minds. And one can be sure that
all these reds will be very different.
Even when a certain color is specified which all
listener have seen innumerable timessuch as the
red of the Coca-Cola sign which is the same red al
over the countrythey will still think of many different
reds.

Even if all the listeners have hundreds of reds in front

of them from which to choose the Coca-Cola red,
they will again select quite different colors. And no
one can be sure that he has found the precise red
shade.
And even if that round red Coca-Cola sign with the
white name in the middle is actually shown so that
everyone focuses on the same red, each will receive
the same projection on his retina, but no one can be
sure whether each has the same perception.
When we consider further the associations and
reactions which are experienced in connection with
the color and the name, probably everyone will
diverge again in many different directions.
What does this show?
First, it is hard, if not impossible, to remember distinct
colors. This underscores that important fact that the
visual memory is very poor in comparison with our
auditory memory. Often the latter is able to repeat a
melody heard only once or twice.
Second, the nomenclature of color is most
inadequate. Though there are innumerable colors
shades and tonesin daily vocabulary, there are only
about 30 names.
Some of these problems can be resolved through the
use of colour standards. The imprecision of colour terms
was addressed by Albert Munsell creator of the Munsell
Colour System, who described colour names as foolish
and misleading (1905, pp.9) and the Pantone Matching
System, both of which employ numeric methods
to define colours. However, these systems are only
applicable in certain contexts and are impractical for
everyday conversation.

Key
Concepts

Key Concepts
Summarised here are the principal concepts, identified
throughout the course of this research that either; inform,
support or have developed as a result of the project. They are
fundamental to the understanding of the way we perceive
colour, the relationship between colour and language and
support the validity of the subject as an area of study.

Colour doesnt physically exist in objects or in light.

It is in essence, an illusion. Our eyes absorb the
different wavelengths of light that are reflected by
objects and surfaces. It is our brains, which then
interpret them as colour.
We see colour in context. The colours that we see
are influenced by surface, texture and material,
the amount, direction and quality of light, and in
particular, other surrounding colours and surfaces.

Language is inadequate in its description of colours

because we are able to optically identify many more
individual colours than we have words for, even in the
whole of the English language.
The names of colour have no chromatic content in
themselves. This results in a lack of consensus over
the exact hue a particular name refers to. If an author
writes the word green in a text, they will never know
if the reader understood the precise hue that is
meant by the term.

Our perception of colour is subjective. Even

excluding those with major visual and colour vision
deficiencies, we still all perceive colour slightly
differently. It can be influenced by age, gender and,
some argue, by how a culture divides colour into
categories using language.

We lack the ability to use language to identify the

vast range of hues in the world around us precisely
and often resort to pointing to a similar colour or
improvising using references to the colour of familiar
objects or brands.

We are unable to convey our individual perception

of colour accurately with language because a
shared understanding of words is required for
communicating meaning, even though the sensory
experience may be slightly different.

Despite there being limits to our language, we still

have several thousand colour terms at our disposal.
Yet we predominantly resort to a small collection
of basic terms to describe a vast range of colour
experiences.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

The way that a culture divides colour into categories

with language is a reflection of how pertinent those
distinctions are in that culture. In the future, it is
possible that in industrialised cultures, where there
is a widely coloured visual landscape, it may be
necessary to expand our vocabulary of basic colour
terms.
With colour names that are less frequently used or
more sophisticated there tends to be a breakdown in
the understanding of what hue a term refers to.
By using language to define and describe colours
we attach a variety of connotations and cultural
meanings to a hue, so it is incredibly difficult to talk
about a colour objectively, as pure chroma, without
evoking a multitude of associations.
There is no effective way of explaining colours or a
particular colour to someone who has never seen it or
cannot see.

Devising a system that would give us a truly

accurate way of describing colour using language is
theoretically impossible.
Language, although flawed, is the best system
we have for describing colour in a conversational
context. Numerical colour systems are somewhat
impractical and complex for widespread use and
conversation, failing to capture the full extent of our
sensory experience.

Research
Methodology

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Research
Methodology
This section of the report details the research methodologies
and used for the various explorations into the relationship
between colour and language that form this investigation.
They are structured to follow the three approaches
identified through the analysis of the research question.

5.1

FOCUS 1

The Names of Colours: Analysis of the body of words

used to describe colour, how they can be divided, their
origins, their uses.
To create a foundation for the project I felt it necessary
to examine the body of words that comprise our colour
naming vocabulary. This initially involved compiling a
list of colour names from various publications and online
sources, which had been identified during the initial
research for this project.
This exercise then progressed to dividing the colour
names into groups of abstract and descriptive colour
terms, for example red and orange, then compound
and non-compound terms, for example blue and sky
blue. The division of colour names into abstract and
descriptive terms proved to be more difficult than
initially expected. Far more colour names are actually

descriptive and there are some like pink for example

that are now considered abstract but derive from a
descriptive source. Of the eleven basic colour terms
only orange is still considered descriptive. However
researching the epistemology of colour names became
essential for this process and in some cases it was
difficult to discern whether the colour name had
originated from an object or not.
However, this exercise proved highly valuable formed
the basis of a number of further investigations,
described over the following pages.

5.1.1

ESSAYS ON COLOUR

One of the first investigations into the relationship

between colour and language began with a series of
essays published in Cabinet Magazine, an American
quarterly arts and culture journal. Every issue the editors
asked one of their regular contributor to write about a
colour. I first discovered the columns while writing the
proposal for this project and was able to collect the
essays from all forty-two of Cabinets published issues.
Initially the essays were another piece of background
research providing valuable source of interesting
information about colour and colour names. However,
collectively they represented a varied and engaging
body of writing that demonstrated a variety of
approaches to talking about colour, ranging from the
highly factual to the deeply personal. Some focussed
very much on the colour in question, others described
stories from history or politics.
As the essays had played a significant role in informing
my view on colour I collated them in a book called
Essays on Colour so that the collection could be
appreciated as a whole, and the different approaches to
writing about a colour could be compared. Iterations of
the book layout are shown in Figures 14. Figures 58
show spreads of the final design for the book.

As an extension of this research I was keen to discover

how colour terms were used within the individual essays,
to reflected how the subject had been broached in each
case. Using a number of different methods I analysed
the distribution of colour terms throughout all of the
essays. There was a vast difference in the number of
instances, which was also converted both into a bar
graph and shown as a ratio of the total word count.
The distribution of the colour terms was shown by
highlighting all of the colour terms within each essay
and then layering them to create areas of varying
density. The exercises were then edited and collated
as a book and poster series: Essays on Colour Analysis
(Figures 916). The full range of iterations is presented in
Supporting Material Volume 2.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 1 4, ESSAYS ON COLOUR LAYOUT ITERATIONS

Hazel
Jonathan Lethem

h, Hazel, youre making me crazy and lazy

and hazy! Hazel, I think I love you! Hazel,
you were the beginning of sex to me, a boys
love for an adult womans mystery. Im a little drunk
on you, when I dim the lights and let the memories
flood in... Hazel, you are a gypsy dancer... but let me
try to explain.
My eyes are blue. Blue-gray. My father, a
Midwestern Quaker, has blue eyes. My Jewish mother
had eyes that were something other. Brown, I would
have said. My brother ended up with those eyes too.
Hazel, my parents both explained. This was important.
Look for the green in the brown, the shimmerthats
Hazel. I tried, I looked. I pretended to see it, gazing
into my mothers eyes, yes, sure, its thereHazel. They
looked brown to me.
I associated this with a game of my mothers,
another trick of gaze: Shed put her nose to mine so
that our faces were too near to see in focus and say,
with bullying enthusiasm, See the owl! Do you see
the owl? Its an owl, do you see it? I never could see
the owl. A blur, a cyclops, maybe a moth, but never an
owl. I didnt know how to look for the owl. But I didnt
know how to refuse: Yes, I see the owl! It was the
same with Hazel. I saw and I didnt see. I saw the idea:
something green in the brown, a richness, something
Jewish and enviable and special, not mere brown eyes.
The notion of Hazel balanced, in our family, against
the specialness of blue eyes, it stood for everything
that wasnt obvious in the sum of advantages or virtues
between two parents. Hazel was my mothers beatnik
Jewish side, her soulfulness. I granted itI was in love
with it! So Hazel was my first imaginary color, before
Infrared, before Ultraviolet, and more sticky and
stirring than either of those: Hazel is to Ultraviolet as
Marijuana is to Cocaine, as Patchouli is to Obsession.
My mother wore patchouliit smelled Hazel.

Indigo
Frances Richard

My next Hazel was when I was fourteen or fifteen.

My father is a painter, and I was following in his
footsteps. He had a drawing group, every Thursday
night. Id go and draw, sitting in the circle of artists,
the one kid allowed. From the nude model. A mixed
experience, a rich one. I was sneaking looks for hours
at a time, in plain sight. This was the 70s. I demanded
they treat me as an adult, and I was obliged. And
there were two beautiful women, artists, who sat in
the circle and drew from the model as well: Laurel
and Hazel. Like the names of two rabbits. Laurel was
blonde and Hazel dark, no kidding. I loved them both,
mad crushes. Again, an intoxicating mix, the nude
before me, Hazel and Laurel my peers in the circle. The
model would finish with a pose and youd go around,
murmuring approval of one anothers drawings,
pointing out flourishes. Steamy, for a boy. Crushes
on your parents female friends, when youre a hippie
child, mash mothery feeling with earthy first stirrings
of lustyoure not afraid of womens bodies when
youre a hippie child. Thats got to be invented later,
retroactively. I took showers outdoors with nudists,
it was all good. Hazel was waiting for me, she was in
store.
Then the Dylan song, of course, from Planet
Waves. Hazel. Planet Waves Id put with New
Morning and Desire, the three records of Dylans
most saturated with hippie aesthetics, the sexy gypsy
stuff, the handkerchief-on-the-head phase. Hazel
is a ragged, tumbling song of lust, that Rick Danko
organ sound: You got something I want plenty of
And from the same record, another lyric: It was
hotter than a crotch My mother loved Dylan, so it
all folded together, the hot murk of Hazel, what Id
never seen but was ready to see, the green in the brown,
Hazel, Dolores Haze-l, oh, I long for you still, you were
the beaded, reeking initiation I never quite had, girls

Im just a soul whos bluer than blue can be

When I get that mood indigo
Duke Ellington

with potters clay under their fingers, maybe, girls who

when they danced spun in whirling skirts, and sex
outdoors with bugs around and the sun in hazel eyes.
And at night wed see the owl, I was sure. Instead by
the time I was ready it was an infrared or ultraviolet
world, we danced with knock-kneed Elvis Costello
jerks, sneering at Hazel, those grubby Deadhead girls
in the next dorm, and made out with short-haired
punks in cocaine fluorescent light. We reinvented
body-fear, pale anemic anorexic sex-ambivalence.
Hazel might be having all the fun, but she was
shameful now, David Byrne had explained the problem
perfectly. I pretended Id never known her, and I
hadntonly trusted shed be there, and detected the
patchouli scent of her promise to me, the promise I
failed to keep. Hazel, I never saw you.

he blues are a swath of the emotional/visible

spectrum, and indigo weights its heavy
end. Pure indigo is a darkness with hints of
reddish purple, ashen black, burnt green; a saturated,
inky, night-and-ocean tone. Its affective nature is
not unchangeable: Indigo buntings are jaunty little
birds, and Timex watches with Indiglo lighted faces
glow a comfy, television blue. When extended with
white, indigos intensity softens like beloved worn-in
jeansLevi Strauss & Co. was an early bulk consumer
of vegetable indigo, and contemporary denim is dyed
with a synthetic version that is as fugitive or fadeprone as its natural counterpart. But generally, indigo
imbues things equal parts melancholia and serenity.
What makes the color-as-idea so sensual is the Sturm
und Drang of its lowering visual presence, encapsulated
by the musical complexity of its name. Ellington
knew the elaborate play hed get by rearticulating a
funky, lovelorn blues with the sophisticated, liquid os
and is and ds of Mood Indigo,in which a lilting
moon is imbricated as if behind blue-black clouds.
Indigo stands for the dyers hands indelibly stained to
the elbow and the patch of sky adjacent to starlight;
the indigenous hues of Japanese printed cottons,
Indonesian batiks, mussel shells, and bruises are all
in the word. Hence, in part, the appeal of the Indigo
Girls, or Joni Mitchells almost-redundantly titled
album Turbulent Indigo. In this allusive flexibility, as
well as in its aural cadence, indigo implies the psyche,
subtly indicating in, I, ego. In the midst of its
clouds-and-water tonalities, it appeals to something
interior, subconscious, and fundamentally earthy.
The history of indigo, in fact, intertwines with

Bice
Jonathan Ames

hen I was a little boy, I liked to pick my

nose. In fact, Ive enjoyed picking my nose
for most of my life. This is not something
to be proud of, but telling you about my nosepicking
brings me to the word bice. Perhaps its not clear how
this brings me to bice, but I will try to explain.
The good and clever editors at Cabinet asked me
to write about a color. I said I would do this. I am a
writer and writers usually say yes when editors offer
them work. So the idea was that they would choose
the color for me and I was to respond. But they didnt
give me the color right away, they told me they would
call me back in a few days. Fine, I said, and I looked
forward to this. I saw it as a version of that classic word
association gamethe pschia-trist says to you, Just
tell me the first thing that comes to your mind after I
give you a word. Then he says, for example, Cereal
and you say, Morning, and then he says, Picnic,
and you say, Apples, nocopulation, and nobody
figures anything out, but the game is fun to play. So I
waited for my color, to which I was going to respond to
with immediate first-thought, first-feeling sensitivity
and clarity and enthusiasm. I did find myself, though,
cheating and mentally preparing my essay in advance,
hoping for blue, about which I could write about my
grandfathers eyes, or red, the color of my hair, my
sons hair, my great-aunts hair, my grandmothers hair,
numerous uncles and cousins hair, and I envisioned
an essay with the winning title A Family of Red
Heads, or just Red Heads.
Then the phone call came. The Cabinet editor
said, Your color is bice. I was silent, mildly ashamed
at a deficient vocabulary, as well as a deficient
knowledge of colors. Blue and red were striking me
as quite pedestrian now. Do you need to look it up?
asked the editor. Dont worry if you do. I didnt know
it either. It was my colleagues idea... Do you want

something easier? Like yellow?

I felt tempted to say yes. My eyes are often yellow
because of a dysfunctional liver, and I immediately
thought about how I could write about my liver and
about the bodys humors. But steeling myself, showing
a flinty courage, I said, No, bice is fine. I have a good
dictionary. Im on it. You can count on a thousand
words on bice from me.
We rang off.
I opened my dictionaryits an OED for the
field, so to speak; its about the size of the Bible, as
opposed to the colossus numerous-volume regular
OED. I found bice, though, out of curiosity, I checked
my American Heritage Dictionary, and there was
no bice. Good thing I have my Junior OED. What
I encountered in the dictionary was this: pigments
made from blue, green, hydrocarbonate of copper;
similar pigment made from smalt, etc.; dull shades of
blue & green given by these.
Well, my immediate response to bice was straight
out of the ethers of my long ago childhood; it was
Proustian; it was tactile; it was visual; it was beautiful,
sad, and lonely. It was better than blue or red or yellow.
What I saw in my minds eye, my souls heart, was
the standing, tube-like copper lamp, which used to
be beside the couch in the living room of the house I
grew up in. And every night, I would sit on this couch
in the darkness, alongside this unlighted lamp, and I
would watch television all by my very young (six, seven,
eight; this went on for years), lonesome, yet happy self.
I felt a solitary contentment in the darkness watching
my programs before dinner, my mother cooking in
the kitchen beside the living room, and all the while
as I absorbed the stories from the TV and soaked up
the radiation from that ancient, large contraption
(TVs, like cars, were made uniformly big back then), I
would pick and pick my nose and then wipe my small

treasures in the tubing and grooves of that long lamp.

And no one saw me doing this because I was in the
darkness. And the effect of my salty mucouslike sea
air on a statuewas that the copper lamp slowly, in
streaky spots, turned greenish-blue. To everyone but
me this was a mystery. Why is this lamp eroding? my
father would sometimes ponder.
On occasion, showing largesse, I would put my
snotty treasures on the underside of the wooden coffee
table in front of the couch and our dog Toto, named
by my older sister after Toto in the Wizard of Oz,
would come and bend his red and brown Welsh Terrier
neck and happily and aggressively lick up the snots. I
can still see him in my mind, craning to get under the
table. And my parents and relatives would notice this
and everyone thought that he must like the taste of
wood.
I was clandestine in my actions, but I didnt feel
too much shame about any of thisnose picking was
too much something I had to do. But as I got older, the
lamp was looking more and more terrible, and there
was talk of throwing it out. I secretly tried to clean
it, but the blue-green streaks would not go away. But
I didnt want this lamp to be forsaken by my family;
things back then, objects, were nearly animate to me,
dear even, and to lose a thing from the living room, my
special room of TV and darkness, would be terrible. I
wanted everything to stay the same forever; and, too,
I felt horribly guilty that I was killing this lamp. So
I pleaded with my parents on its behalf, told them I
loved the lamp, and it wasnt thrown away. With this
reprieve, I tried not to wipe my snots on it anymore,
to only coat the bottom of the coffee table and feed
my beautiful dog, but sometimes I would weaken,
and Id find a new unstreaked spotI could feel
them with my fingersand so Id make my mark, my
hydrocarbonated snotthere must be hydrogen and

carbon in my mucous, all the elements of the world

must be in me, in everyonewould mingle with the
copper and make a union, a new thing, alchemically,
chemically, pigmentally. And that thing was the color
bice, a good color, I think, because it has brought
back to me that TV and darkened living room and
childhood and lamp and coffee table and beloved
dogall things gone a long time ago. All things that
didnt last forever.

earth on a more than lyrical level, linked to the

establishment of colonialism and the patterning
of trade routes. The dyes subdued allure has been
seducing beauty-seekers for millennia, and in
exploring techniques by which to reliably create its
particular dark blueness, industries were founded
and international relations influenced. The story of
indigos cultivation, preparation, and distribution
as a tangible commodity reads as a primer on the
development of luxury-goods markets on a global
scale. This history can be boiled down to two weedylooking plants. Whenever a neutral substrate takes
on the short-wavelength spectral reflectance peculiar
to indigo, the active ingredient is a lustrous copperymidnight powder known as indican [C16H10N2O2].
Indican must be extracted via a complicated
fermentation, aeration, and precipitation process, and
it can be derived from some thirty different kinds
of vegetation. But the most important of these are
Indigofera tinctoria, the common indigonamed
for India, the species original habitatand Isatis
tinctoria, also known as dyers woad. Woad is basically
indigos poor relation, a European herb of the mustard
family producing a similar tint, but offering roughly
thirty times less indican per comparable mass of
organic material. Both types, despite the involved
processes of their facture, boast ancient pedigrees
in literature. Mentions of woad occur in Sumerian
cuneiform, ancient Egyptian papyrus, and Carolingian
manuscripts; there is far-flung evidence for its use
in classical and medieval times, from the Russian
Caucasus to northern France; from Manchuria
to western Africa. Vitruvius describes it in De
Architectura and Chaucer in The Canterbury Tales,
while in his treatise De Bello Gallico, Julius Caesar
records that All Britons paint themselves with woad,
which grows wild and produces a blue dye. This gives

The blind aura of safety orange

has entered everyday living
space. One pure distillation
appears in the logo for Home
Depot, which posits ones most
intimate sphere, the household,
as a site that is under perpetual
construction, re-organization,
and improvement. The home
becomes unnatural, industrial,
singed with toxic energy.

Safety
Orange
Tim Griffin

them a terrifying appearance in battle. Pliny the Elder

concurs: There they have a plantwith which the
women and daughters in Britain paint their bodies
at certain festivities; they go naked and are similar
to the Ethiopians in color. Ovid reported that early
Teutonic tribes used woad to cover graying hair.
Indigo, meanwhile, circulated in the bazaars
of ancient Egypt, Greece, Byzantium, and Rome; in
China, Japan, pre-Colombian Central and South
America; in Java, Ceylon, Persia, and of course,
Indiawhere Marco Polo observed production
methods thought to have been practiced since 2000
B.C. After the 17th century, indigo was rarely used
by artists, who found that Prussian blue, ultramarine,
and azurite dispersed more easily in oil binders. But
prior to that era, agents in the ports of Venice, Genoa,
and Marseilles traded with Persian middlemen in Asia
Minor and Hormuz, providing the pigment identified
in blue passages from The Last Supper and Madonna
and Child by Leonardo, in Rubenss Descent from the
Cross and Vermeers Christ in the House of Mary and
Martha, as well as in other artworks of various periods
from Turkey to Tibet.
The waning of indigos use as a fine-art pigment
coincided with an increase in its importance as a
textile dye. In the early 18th century, European society
was swept by a fad for Indian exotica (parallel to
crazes for chinoiserie, or tulips), and in order to satisfy
the accompanying lust for brilliant blue, French and
English entrepreneurs founded hundreds of New
World indigo plantations. Facilitated by the slave
trade, dyeworks in the West Indies and the American
Carolinas were manned by Africans from the regions
of Nigeria, Sierra Leone, and Cameroon, who were
sometimes seized specifically for their native skills
in growing and processing indigo. (Knowledge of
rice cultivation was an African intellectual property

similarly capitalized upon; for a time, indigo rivaled

rice, sugar, and tobacco as the primary cash crop
on colonial American and Caribbean plantations.)
Interestingly, the growing of indigowhich, unlike
rice, does not require standing water, and therefore
does not breed mosquitoesnearly eradicated both
malaria and yellow fever, which were decimating
colonists. When the Indigo Craze subsided in the
1790s, both diseases resurfaced in new and more
virulent strains. For the next hundred years, indigo
remained a staple commodity in the international
textile tradethe interplay of chromatics and political
economy achieving a kind of full circle when, having
lost access to American sources after the Revolutionary
War, England imposed a plantation system on indigoproducing villages in India. Finally, in 1897, the
German firm Badische Anilin Soda Fabrik developed
a synthetic substitute. Loosed from its physical roots in
the dyers fields and vats, indigo migrated toward the
abstract as a title-writers dream, a one-word poem.

These are the days of disappearing winters, and

of anthrax spores whose origin remains unknown, or
unrevealed. Concrete phenomena float on abstract
winds, seeming like mere signatures of dynamics
that supercede immediate perception. The world
is a living place of literature, interstitial, eclipsing
objects with the sensibility of information, and
experience floating on the surface of lexicons.
Everything is so characterless and abstract as the
weather: Wars are engaged without front lines, and
weapons operate according to postindustrial logic,
intended to destabilize economies or render large areas
uninhabitable by the detonation of homemade dirty
bombs that annihilate culture but do little damage
to hard, architectural space. Radical thought is also
displaced, as the military, not the academy, offers the
greatest collective of theorists today; all possibilities
are considered by its think tanks, without skepticism
or humanist pretensions, and all nations are potential
targets. Ordinary health risks described in the popular
press are totally relational, regularly enmeshing
microwaves and genetic codes; the fate of ice caps
belongs to carbon. Everything is a synthetic realism.
Everything belongs to safety orange.
It is a gaseous color: fluid, invisible, capable of
moving out of those legislated topographies that have
been traditionally fenced off from nature to provide
significant nuances for daily living. Perhaps it is a
perfume: an optical Chanel No. 5 for the turn of
the millennium, imbuing our bodies with its diffuse
form. (Chanel was the first abstract perfume, as it
was completely chemical and not based on any flower;
appropriately, it arrived on the scene at roughly the
same time as Cubism.) The blind aura of safety orange
has entered everyday living space. One pure distillation
appears in the logo for Home Depot, which posits
ones most intimate sphere, the household, as a site
that is under perpetual construction, re-organization,
and improvement. The home becomes unnatural,
industrial, singed with toxic energy. Microsoft also
uses the color for its lettering, conjuring its associative
power to suggest that a scientific future is always here
around us, but may be fruitfully harnessed (Your home
computer is a nuclear reactor).
Such associative leaps are not unique. In
postindustrial capitalism, experience is often codified
in color. During the economic surge of the past decade,
corporations recognized and implemented on a grand
scale what newspapers documented only after the
onset of the recession: that colors function like drugs.
Tunneled through the optic nerve, they generate
specific biochemical reactions and so determine
moods in psychotropic fashion; they create emotional
experiences that lend themselves to projections upon

the world, transforming the act of living into lifestyle.

Something so intangible as emotion, in turn, assumes
a kind of property value as it becomes intimately
maneuvered by, and then associated with, products.
(One business manual recently went so far as to suggest
that consumers are our products.)
The iMac, to take one artifact of the 1990s,
was introduced to the general public in a blue that
was more than blue: Bondi Blue, which obtained
the emotional heat accorded to the aquatic tones of
a cosmopolitan beach in Australia, for which the
color is named. Similarly, the iMacs clear sheath is
neither clear nor whiteit is Ice. (Synesthesia reigns
in capitalism; postindustrial exchange value depends
on the creation of ephemeral worlds and auras within
which to house products. And so, as colors perform
psychotropic functions, total, if virtual, realities are
located within single, monochromatic optical fields.
Control of bodies, the original role designated for
safety orange, is set aside for access to minds, which
adopt the logic of addiction.) In fact, the 1990s boom
might be usefully read through two specific television
commercials that were geared to hues: It began with
the iMacs introduction in blue, orange, green and gray
models, in a spot that was accompanied by the Rolling
Stones lyric She comes in colors. Later, against the
backdrop of 2001s dot-com wasteland, Target released
an advertisement featuring shoppers moving through
a hyper-saturated, blood-red, vacuum-sealed field of
repeating corporate logoscolors and brands were by
then entirely deterritorialized, lifted from objects and
displaced onto architectureto the sound of Devos
post-punk, tongue-in-cheek number Its a Beautiful
World.
Devo often wore jumpsuits of safety orange,
which was, at the time, the color of nuclear power
plants and biohazardsa color created to oppose
nature, something never to be confused with it. It is
the color of information, bureaucracy, and toxicity.
Variations of orange have often played this role.
Ancient Chinese bookmakers, for example, printed
the edges of paper with an orange mineral to save their
books from silverfish.
Times change. In 1981, the Day-Glo connoisseur
Peter Halley suggested that New Wave bands like
Devo were rejecting the cloddish substance of
traditional humanistic values, comparing their work
to that of the Minimalists. (All colors are minimal.)
Yet the course of Devo has been the course of culture:
the bands rejection of humanistic values has become
more abstract and expansive, and enmeshed in cultural
tissue. Their music moved away from the specialized
artistic realm of electro-synth composers like Robert
Fripp and Brian Eno (who produced the bands first

You aint been blue; no, no, no.

You aint been blue,
Till youve had that mood indigo.
Duke Ellington

FIGURES 5 8, ESSAYS ON COLOUR SPREADS OF FINAL DESIGN

W
But what if weve got it backwards?
What if scarlet caused us to
become passionately fixated
on transcending ourselves, via
merging with others in the act of sex,
or by killing and being killed? What
if scarlet was a drug

SCARLET
JOSHUA GLENN

hen paranoid types encounter a word as

enduring and pervasive as scarlet (OF,
escarlate; It., scarlatto; ON, skarlat; mod.
Gr. skarlaton; Serbian, skrlet; etc.), we sit up and take
notice.
A signifier used nowadays to refer to a vivid red
color inclining to orange or yellow, scarlet is believed
to be an alteration of the Persian saqalat (saqirlat,
in modern Arabic), meaning a high-quality cloth,
usually dyed red. Not just any red, though! In nonindustrial societies, flame-red scarlet symbolizes
fertility and vitality. Color therapists consider scarlet a
vasoconstrictor, arterial stimulant, and renal energizer:
they employ it to raise blood pressure, stimulate
erections, increase menstruation, and promote
libido. And in our popular culture, its associated with
fallen women (The Scarlet Letter) and those women
whom wed like to see fall (Scarlett OHara, Scarlett
Johansson, Miss Scarlet from the boardgame Clue).
It is an intoxicating, maddening hue.
But if scarlet is reminiscent of sex, its also
reminiscent of death. Since the days of Genghis Khan,
poets have marveled at how poppies as scarlet as
blood tend to spring up in war-torn meadows; thats
why veterans wear poppies on Memorial Day. And
recent archaeological discoveries in the Middle East
suggest that scarlet has symbolized death for nearly
as long as humans have engaged in symbolic thinking:
lumps of ocher found near the 90,000-year-old graves
in the Qafzeh Cave in Israel, scholars have claimed,
were carefully heated in hearths to yield a scarlet hue,
then used in ritual activities related to burying the
dead.
Thus in the history of symbolic thought, scarlet has
meant both Eros and Thanatos, Sex and Death, the
conflicting drives thataccording to Freudgovern
every aspect of human activity. But what if weve got
it backwards? What if scarlet caused us to become
passionately fixated on transcending ourselves, via
merging with others in the act of sex, or by killing
and being killed? What if scarlet was a druglike
rhoeadine, the sedative in scarlet poppies used by
the god Morpheus, and the Wicked Witch of Ozfirst
distilled in the ancient Middle East? What if saqalat
was not merely a luxury item but an intoxicant that
once possessed entire peoples and changed the
course of history?

C
Women and homosexuals wear
the color, use the word. Code
for gay until lavender took over,
mauve is the gender expression
shibboleththe example most
often given of things real men
dont say.

MAUVE
SHELLEY JACKSON

ontusions and confusions. Half-mourning and

melancholia. Twilight and adolescence, home
decorators and homosexuals. Drag queen
hair, cheap swag, braggadocio. Oscar Wilde and
Aubrey Beardsley (that monstrous orchid, said
Wilde). Orchids, especially Cattleya labiata. All things
orchidaceous, including the word orchidaceous.
Prose just shy of purple. According to Nabokov, time
itself.
A young chemist tinkering with coal tar, hoping to
find a way to synthesize quinine to treat the malaria
felling British soldiers stationed in India, discovers,
instead, a color. Mauve, the color of disappointment.
But, strangely beautiful, thinks the chemist, and
dips some silk in it, finds the color takes. He sends a
sample to a Scottish dyer, who sees possibilities. The
color lasts like no natural purple. And the ladies seem
to like it.
Mauve, the color of opportunity.
It is 1856. Madame Bovary, who would have looked
luscious in mauve, is about to poison herself in the
pages of the Revue de Paris. A year later, Empress
Eugnie will fall for the new huematches her eyes,
she says. In 1858, Queen Victoria wears it to her
daughters wedding and gives it her royal imprimatur.
Cooked up in a laboratory by a scientist who
thought, like that other earnest young scientist Dr.
Frankenstein, that he was beating back death, mauve
is the first artificial color. And like Frankensteins
creation, mauve is vital but unnatural, a little
monstrous. Even pestilential: The Mauve Measles,
quipped Punch, are spreading to so serious an extent
that it is high time to consider by what means [they]
may be checked. Everyone is wearing it. And since
skirts are enormous, and worn with crinolines, not to
mention the unmentionables, mauve unfolds by the
yard (or the meter) out of dye-works across Europe.
It is followed in quick succession by other synthetic
colors, also derived from coal tar: aniline yellow,
aldehyde green, bleu de Paris. An entire industry
foams up out of furbelows, demonstrating the power
of both science and the female consumer. As Simon
Garfield points out in his book Mauve (to which this
essay is heavily indebted), by launching industrial
chemistry, mauve will change the fate, not just of
fashion, but of science, medicine, art, and war. It will
also make the chemist, William Perkin, a very rich man.

At the risk of being flippant, one might go so far as

to suggest that this crackpot theory makes sense of
the Old Testament.
Lets face it: the Pentateuch, or the first five books
of the Hebrew Bible, authored by Moses himself, tells
a far-out story. Skipping over Genesis, the prequel
to the main narrative (its The Hobbit, if you will, to
Moses Lord of the Rings), we read in Exodus that
the author, an adopted Egyptian prince who came
to sympathize with the multiracial community of
slaves known as Hebrews, encountered an entity in
flames of fire from within a bush: If God has a color,
that is, its flame-red, or scarlet. This unnameable
phenomenon (YHWH means I am who I am) seems
to possess and inflame Moses: when Moses comes
down from Mount Sinai after spending 40 days
with YHWH, he was not aware that his face was
radiant(Ex 34:29), and forever after, one reads, he
wears a veil when hes out in public (Ex 34:3334).
What does YHWH want? To shape the Hebrews into
a nation unlike other nations, one with no king but
YHWH; to reveal Its laws to the Hebrews; and, oddly
enough, to instruct the Hebrews in exacting detail on
how to erect a tabernacle where It will dwell.
Does this take-me-to-your-leader business put
anyone in mind of JHVH-1 (JEHOVAH), the evil,
godlike space creature dreamed up by the parodic
Church of the SubGenius? No surprise there, because
in several important respects YHWH does resemble an
extraterrestrial. Like the radioactive alien in the movie
Repo Man, YHWH cant be directly viewed by the
Hebrews. Its kept under lock and key in a protective
containment sphere of sorts: the tabernacle. Though
the Hebrews have fled into the wilderness with
only a few possessions, throughout Exodus YHWH
demands from them rare and specific materials for
his dwelling place. First and foremost, It orders them
to bring offerings of blue, purple, and scarlet (Ex
25:4), meaning dyes derived (in the case of blue and
purple) from shellfish that swarm in the waters of the
northeast Mediterranean, and (in the case of scarlet)
from Dactylopius coccus, the cochineal bug, as well as
from the various caterpillars and larvae that feed on
cochineals.
Now, the scarlet pigment harvested from
cochineals and their predators is a compound
called carminic acid, whichaccording to chemical

ecologistsfunctions as a protective substance. So

when YHWH tells Moses that It wants Its tabernacle
and Its door to be constructed of saqalat, and that
furthermore It wants the ark in which It lives to be
surrounded by more saqalat (Ex 26:1,36 and 27:16),
It is obviously sterilizing Its environment. YHWH
goes on to design the vestments of its priests, also
of richly dyed cloth, and It forbids anyone unclean
to enter the tabernacle: any priest who has become
unclean through contact with other Hebrews, YHWH
insists, must wash himself in scarlet. Leviticus, a book
dedicated entirely to the special duties of YHWHs
priests, seems to suggest that scarlet dye was
also used by the priests to infect others with what
we might call the YHWH virus. In Leviticus 14, for
example, we read that YHWH instructed the Levites
to use a length of scarlet-dyed cord to sprinkle liquids
onto the open sores of any ailing Hebrews. As we shall
see, the scarlet cord, which functioned something like
a syringe, would become an important symbol for the
Hebrews.
There is a great deal more of this kind of thing
in Leviticus and also in Numbers, an account of
the Hebrews nomadic existence in the Middle
East following their initial organization at Sinai. But
in Numbers, YHWH finally reveals his plan to the
Hebrews: they are to invade Canaan. Why? Because
Canaan, later called Phoenicia, was a land where the
dyeing industry was of central importance to the
economy (both names in fact mean land of purple);
and YHWH must have desired to corner the market.
Having possessed the minds and bodies of the
Hebrews via his priests scarlet cords, YHWH organizes
them into a military camp and they march from Sinai
as Its conquering army. The only problem is that the
Hebrews keep defying YHWH: after thirty-nine years,
they still havent invaded Canaan, and the old guard
of tabernacle insiders is dying off. In Deuteronomy,
the final book of the Pentateuch, Moses makes a lastditch series of speeches urging the Hebrews to remain
faithful to YHWH, and then dies himself.
This might have been the end of the history of
YHWH on Earth, were it not for the efforts of Joshua,
a Hebrew strongman who got his start standing guard
outside the first, temporary tent that Moses set up for
YHWH. Joshua leads the Hebrews across the Jordan
into Canaan, occupies the kingdoms of Og and Sihon,
and sends spies into the fortified kingdom of Jericho.
At this transitional moment in the Book of Joshua (and
the history of mankind), sex and death play a crucial
role. Rahab, a prostitute, shelters Joshuas spies and
delivers to them the intel that the Canaanites are
terrified of the Hebrews and YHWH. The spies then
inform Rahab that when the Hebrews take Jericho, she
can spare the lives of her family by hanging something
out of her window. Remember what it was? Thats
right: a scarlet cord.
Joshua and the Hebrews conquered Jericho and
went on to seize control of all the hill country and
the Negev, thus gaining control of the areas dye
industries. The next three major books of the Hebrew

BibleJudges, Samuel, and Kingsrecord Israels

rise and fall. Judges portrays a kind of anarchist utopia
unlike any other nation (i.e., an exploitative monarchy),
because it could have only one king: YHWH. Early in
Samuel, however, the Israelites bring YHWHs ark into
battle against the Philistines, and it is captured. For
twenty years, the ark remains outside its protective
tabernacle, and diseases follow it everywhere (1
Sam 5:6). It seems correct to assume that YHWH,
unprotected by saqalat, was destroyed at some point
during this period. Perhaps this is what Philip K. Dick
was getting at in Our Friends from Frolix 8, in which
a character announces, God is dead. They found his
carcass in 2019. Floating out in space near Alpha.
The Hebrews, meanwhile, minds no longer clouded
by whatever ego-obliterating substance theyd
received via the priests scarlet cords, ceased to obey
YHWHs injunction that they should have no other
king. Immediately after we learn of the arks capture,
we read that Samuel, the most distinguished of Israels
judges, was approached by a committee of Hebrews
who demanded, Now appoint a king to lead us, such
as all the other nations have. Samuel anointed Saul,
who proceeded to do what kings everywhere have
always done: he built a standing army, invaded other
countries, and exploited the populace. By the end of
1st and 2nd Kings, we cannot help but agree with the
Hebrew prophets. Alas, Israel became a nation like all
the other nations.
So what role does scarlet play in our lives today?
We Americans have always enjoyed portraying
ourselves as a new Israel, but these days its only
too apparent that were the empire-building Israel
about which Isaiah lamented. Not only that, were a
nation of sex and death addicts, ricocheting from one
extreme to anotheranorexia/obesity, Puritanism/
pornography, sloth/war. Why? Call it an attempt to
recapture the annihilating highs and lows experienced
thousands of years ago by the Hebrews. Like them,
were only happy when were drinking the scarlet
Kool-Aid.

One does not necessarily think of a color as a

commodity. Colors, the ancients reasoned, are
qualities of objects, or our eyes subjective response
to those objects, not entities in themselves. They
tinge and dapple and pass on. Nonetheless, some
ancients paid high prices for one color: purple. So
Tyrian purple is the name Perkin gives his new
hue, referencing the dye eked out of the glandular
secretions of tiny, spiny sea snails in ancient Tyre
to color the imperial robes of Rome. But real Tyrian
purple was the near-black of dried blood. Whats
more, Perkins color is cheap, but thats mauve for
you, the color of ostentation. The name doesnt take.
Instead, mauve gets its name from a French flower, the
one the English call mallow. (Though Nabokov, licking
his lips, would liken the color to an orchids instead:
Cattleya labiata.)
Say mauve. It takes longer than most English
words of its length. Long enough to lose heart
part-way through. Were not quite sure how to
pronounce its soft center: aw or oh. Mauve collapses
in the mouth like a chocolate truffle. Like a truffle,
it tastes expensive, decadent, imported. The word
is to American English as the color is to American
clothes. It enters ones vocabulary late if at all, an
adult word, with a tinge of the boudoir, and so it
signals sophistication and a possibly unhealthy
attention to aesthetics. Its a little too knowing (shades
of swimsuits to tempt Lolita: Dream pink, frosted
aqua, glans mauve). Its a little too French. Mauve
signifies over-refinement, the exhaustion of potency
in the making of ever-finer discriminations; thats why
Code Mauve is the stuff of stand-up. A prose writer
knows shes getting fancypurplewhen she uses
mauve, as she isnt, paradoxically, when using purple.
Mauve prose: the phrase gets a wink, unlike the
prosaic purple, though its not always clear whether
mauve avoids purples excesses, or fails to rise to its
imperial pomp. But either way, mauve is fey, rococo,
mandarin (all decidedly purplish words). It comes
across as calculated, even factitious. Decorative
rather than forceful, its a crepe veil or piece of jet
pinned on a sentence, not its muscle. Women and
homosexuals wear the color, use the word. Code for
gay until lavender took over, mauve is the gender
expression shibboleththe example most often given
of things real men dont say. (Given by, frequently,

men themselves, though that would seem to strain the

tenet.) Man rule: We have no idea what mauve is,
woofs one blogger.
What is mauve? That pale violet that makes certain
flowers seem to fluoresce at dusk, or the sullen, sullied
rose of Victorian lampshades and mourning dresses?
A cooler magenta, a gooier violet? Mauve, the color of
ish, is defined most clearly by hedging negatives: not
quite pink, not quite purple. Its less a hue in its own
right than a diminution or intensification of some other
hue; it has about it, simultaneously, an air of petulant
retreat and overweening assertion. Pink trying to be
purple, sniffs Whistler. Or the visited link, its vitality
depleted. Mauve is a feminine color, but not a
yielding one. It is adult, imperious. But its strength
is ambivalent. Though pugnacious, it is not candid.
Like Victorian fashions, it stresses femininity while
repressing the frankly female.
This ambivalence is characteristic. Mauve is the
color of suspended choice and uncertain boundaries.
One of the few colors permitted to women in halfmourning, the period of transition between black
crpe and the full spectrum, mauve signals the
transition from despair to reconciliation. A transition
that recapitulates the dyes own emergence from a
beaker of black gunk. The association with death is
not just metaphorical. Only a few years after Perkins
discovery, suspicions arose that mauve, and the other
new dyes it led to, could raise real rashes, that the
efflux of factories could poison villages. And Pynchon
traces an arc in Gravitys Rainbow from mauve to the
dye industry, from the dye industry to IG Farben, from
IG Farben to Zyklon B.
Consider coal and steel. There is a place where
they meet, Pynchon writes: the coal-tars. A
thousand different molecules waited in the preterite
dung. This is the sign of revealing. Of unfolding. This
is one meaning of mauve, the first new color on Earth,
leaping to Earths light from its grave miles and aeons
below. But was it a new color? Surely mauve, the hue,
already existed in naturein the orchid, the mallow,
the mauve. The glans, even. Except that, as Oscar
Wilde writes, it is not Nature but Artin the persons
of Monet and Pissarrothat creates the white
quivering sunlight that one sees now in France, with
its strange blotches of mauve, and its restless violet
shadows ... and, on the whole, Nature reproduces it

quite admirably. Nature imitates art, and artists cant

paint nature mauve without mauve paint. In 1856, the
world changed color.
As colors go, that is a very recent birthdate, which
makes mauve, precisely, dated. The color of now
became the color of then. But mauve came back in
the nineteen-eighties, and the eighties came back, are
coming back, will come back any day now (time, like
mauve, is an alloy, not an element). Mauve is the past;
the future is mauve.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 9 12, ESSAYS ON COLOUR ANALYSIS BOOK

FURTHER ANALYSIS

FURTHER ANALYSIS

TEXT BLOCKS ORDERED BY AREA

TEXT BLOCKS ORDERED CHRONOLOGICALLY

FURTHER ANALYSIS

FURTHER ANALYSIS

COLOUR TERM DISTRIBUTION

Orange
Opal
puce
Silver
Cyan
gray
pink
pistachio
pistachio
Silver
gray
Magenta
Verdigris
White
brown silver
violet
scarlet Hazel
tawny
6 Amber
Beige
Hazel Verdigris
ash opaldrab porphyry
Sulphur Ash Chartreuse
Hazel
Sulphur
gold
orange amber cyan Prussian
puce
Puce
opalVioletPuce Violet
pistachio
pink
gray gold
ivory
ivory
Violet
scarlet ivory white
White
bice
indigo
Hazel
bice
sulphur
ash
ash
orange
Blue
puce
Mauve
ivory
gray
Silver
purple
khaki
Ivory
cyan
grayscarlet
Gray
scarlet
Sulphur ivoryopal
beige
sulphur Ash
Ruby
Amber
amber maroon Hazel
opal amber
Chartreuse
pink
purple
purple
Chartreuse
blackamber
black
black sepia
Black
White
tawny amber puce
Scarlet pink
Hazel
opal
porphyry
puce
puce
purple
Pink
cyan
Gray
gray
gray
Verdigris red black
Verdigris
Black khaki
black
Scarlet red
Scarlet
Hazel
beige
indigo
indigo
beigeCyan
gold
Amber
Purple
cyankhaki Maroon
Cyan
black white white
Olive
scarlet
whitemaroon
white
scarletcyan
ashblack
sulphur yellow Indigoblack
rubypink
safety
orange. indigo
amber
Mauvemaroon gray
opal
pink
purple
sepia Red
ivory
Magenta
black
yellow
scarlet
rust
indigo
orange
amber
amber
Orange amber
amber
opal
Puce indigo
maroon Hazel
cyan
gray
Ivory
White
tawny mauve
Yellow
scarlet
Hazel
Ash
Ash
amber
orange
orange
opal
gray
khaki
purple Indigo
pink
Verdigris
magenta red gold
white
white
white
white
white
beige White
bice
safety orange
Hazel
rust white
red ultramarine
orange
amber
porphyry
mauve
Khaki
ivory
cyan
Chartreuse
sepia
pistachio
Graykhaki
magenta
magenta
olive
white
Whitescarlet
yellowHazel
Hazel
Indigo
gold
mauve opal
Mauve
gray
scarlet
yellowIndigo ruby
tawny
scarlet
Hazel
Indigo
amber
porphyry
maroon
maroon
maroon
Gray
pinkbice
sepia
gray
Khaki
Chartreuse
magenta
White
scarlet
Hazel
indigo
rust Magenta
bice mauvegrayPink
amber
amber
puce
ivory
Sepia olive
Khaki
chartreuse
gray
pink
Verdigris
black ivory
tawny
olive
ash indigo
Rubybeige
ruby
amber
Maroon
puce
Mauve
maroon
mauve Magenta
pistachio
sepia orange
cyan silver
khaki
pink
sepia
yellow
olive
Rust
Hazel
rust pucerust
beige
Rust
bice
Hazel
indigo
orange
gold tawny
ivory
pistachio
chartreuse
verdigris drab
White tawnyyellow
White
tawny
bice sulphur Hazel Sulphur
ruby
gold Sepia
red
gold
opal White
khaki
khaki indigo
Olive
yellow
white ash
White
beige beigegray purple
ruby
ultramarine
amber
khaki
ivory
gray
Sepiaamber
Black
White
scarlet
bice
sulphur
ash
Hazel
sulphur
ash
mauveblack Olive
pink
pink
verdigris
cyan
Oliveblack
olive
tawny
indigo
Hazel
Sulphur
indigo
amber
gold
gold
mauve
pink orange
Black
yellow
brown
brown
rust
Hazel
safety
ruby
amber
Black
Whitebeige White
White
White
White
tawny WhiteHazel amberWhite
Whiteblack
White
White
tawny
White
beige beige
ash purple
Hazel
rust
red
opal
Mauve
khaki mauve
silver
gray
gray
White
Whitepink
White gold
White
tawny
Golddrab
red
khaki
olive
hazel amber
Hazel ivory
amber
gold
porphyry
Puce yellow
mauve
khaki
pistachio
ivory
pistachio
ivory
White
safety
orange
beige
Hazel
red
Mauve
maroon White
Mauve
pistachio
ivory amber
pistachio
verdigris
White
White
yellow
White
White
White
white
Brown
scarlet
yellow
white
White
Ultramarine
Indigo
sulphur verdigris
gold magenta
amber
maroon
porphyry
mauve
Chartreuse pistachio
scarlet
brown Mauve
olive
yellow
Hazel mauve
indigo
ultramarine
red
amber
red tawny
amber
mauve
maroon
porphyry
graybeige
verdigris
verdigris
scarlet
brown
brown
sulphur Ash ashultramarine
ash
drab
Gold
amberolive
orange
mauve
ivory
sepia
White
Brown
brown orange
Brown red
ash
amber
mauve
ivory opal
pink orange
porphyry
black
whitegold
white
whiteBlack ash drab
white
white
whitebrown
yellow
beige
Gold
ivory
Sepia mauve indigo
sepia
ivory white scarlet whitegray
Purple
ivory
black
scarlet
white Mauve
silver
ivory
purple
white
white beige white
white
white khaki white
white
brown
brownpink scarlet indigo Yellow
Yellow
gold
amberSepia
orange
Amber
Mauve
pink
silver
pistachio
gray
pink
verdigris
Yellowporphyry
Brown
Yellow
scarlet
yellow
olive
beige
orange
Prussian
blue
Pistachio
Pink
ivory
porphyry
porphyry
White
brown
sulphur
sulphur
indigo
beige olive
sulphur khaki
sulphur
indigo Prussian blue
sulphur
amber
Mauve
gray
khaki
porphyryivory
yellow bice
yellow
Yellow
rust
indigo
amberverdigris
red White
mauvePistachio
Prussian
blue Brown amber
puce.
pink yellow
gray
Chartreuse
scarlet
beige Yellow
Beige
rust
Indigo white
orange
Amber
pucegold
mauve
gray
ivory
Porphyry
yellow
indigo
Rustyellow
beige
orange
goldPuce
Prussian
Blue
Sepia
Pink
pink
verdigris
Porphyry
Cyan
WhiteRed
safetymauve
orange
indigo
beige
orange
maroon
Pink
Ivory amber
sepia
silver
gray
pink
ivory
magenta
brown
Cyan
Cyan
olive
white
white
Cyan
white Chartreuserust
indigo
beige
orange Magenta
orange
red
Prussian
maroon
Blue
mauveyellow
pistachio
pistachio
ivory
silver
olive
amber
mauve
silver
Pink
pistachio
Porphyry
Magenta
White
sulphur
sulphur
Sulphur
drab
orange pistachio red Magenta
mauve Cyan
mauve
pistachio
Ivory
chartreuse
green
green
green
brown
scarlet rustmauve
sulphur orange
Prussian
maroon white
gray
Pink
pistachio
pink
white
white white
white Blue sepia
indigo
Sulphur
mauve
mauve
pistachio
Chartreuse
Cyan
white
brown
orange
orange
mauve
Mauve
mauve
gray ivory
Pistachio
Ivory
sepia
magenta
cyan
brown
Prussian Blue
pistachio
pistachio sepia pink puce
chartreuse
silvercyan
White
gray cyan
Sepia
pink
magenta
white
white
Prussian Blue
puce
ivory
silver
chartreuse
gray
cyan
cyan
scarlet
cyan
puce
pink
white
Cyan
drab
Pink
pink
pink White
green
White
cyan
White sepia
White
cyan
Cyan
White
maroon
ivory
pink
pink
Porphyry
ultramarine
orange
red
sepiaivory
ivory
Cyan
scarlet
sulphur
Red
pink
pink
White
Cyan
White
pink ultramarine
white
scarlet
maroon
white
Sulphur
puce
orange
puce
White
sulphur
ultramarine
orange
puce
maroon
white
white
white
White
orange
sulphur

White

ultramarine
white

White

orange
ultramarine
orange white
white

cyan
porphyry
white

white

ultramarine
orange orange cyan
sulphur
Sulphur

white
orange

cyan
orange

orange

Cyan
cyan
green

green
white

ultramarine

white
White
white
White
white

White

White

White
White

ultramarine
White
white
White

White
White

White
white

White
white

ultramarine

white

white

white
white

white

white

white

white

White

White White

white
green
White

White

White
White

White
White

FURTHER ANALYSIS

bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel safety orange rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel safety orange rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel safety orange rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel safety orange rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel safety orange rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel
rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel
rust sulphur
bice beige ash ruby indigo hazel
rust sulphur
bice beige ash
indigo hazel
rust sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
rust sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
rust sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
rust sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
rust sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
rust sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige ash
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige
indigo hazel
sulphur
beige
indigo hazel
sulphur
indigo hazel
sulphur
indigo hazel
sulphur
indigo hazel
sulphur
indigo
sulphur
indigo
sulphur
indigo
sulphur
sulphur

FURTHER ANALYSIS

COLOUR TERM FREQUENCY

ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine

pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink
pink

chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse
chartreuse

khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki
khaki

sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet violet brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet violet brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet violet brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet violet brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon prussian blue
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon
sepia purple pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory silver cyan yellow tawny scarlet
brown olive white mauve opal maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown olive white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown olive white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown olive white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown
white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown
white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown
white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
brown
white mauve
maroon
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
sepia
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
pistachio gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
gray ivory
cyan yellow
scarlet
white mauve
gray ivory
cyan yellow
white mauve
gray ivory
cyan
white mauve
gray
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
cyan
white mauve
white mauve
white mauve
white mauve
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white
white

puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce
puce

porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry
porphyry

magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta
magenta

verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris
verdigris

black green red amber gold orange drab

black green red amber gold orange drab
black green red amber gold orange drab
black green red amber gold orange drab
black green red amber gold orange drab
black green red amber gold orange drab
black
red amber gold orange drab
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
red amber gold orange
black
amber gold orange
black
amber gold orange
black
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
orange
amber
amber
amber
amber
amber

COLOUR TERM FREQUENCY AS A GRAPH

white

white

white

white

FURTHER ANALYSIS

RATIO OF COLOUR TERMS TO WORD COUNT

White

cyan
cyan

COLOUR TERM DISTRIBUTION AS BLOCKS

FIGURES 13 16, ESSAYS ON COLOUR ANALYSIS POSTERS

Essays on Colour Analysis

For every issue the editors of Cabinet Magazine, an American quarterly arts
and culture journal, ask one of their regular contributors to write about a
specific colour. The essays are printed as Cabinets regular Colours column.
This poster illustrates the relative length of each of the forty-two articles in their
designated colour, from the shortest to the longest.

Essays on Colour Analysis

For every issue the editors of Cabinet Magazine, an American quarterly arts
and culture journal, ask one of their regular contributors to write about a
specific colour. The essays are printed as Cabinets regular Colours column.
This poster illustrates the relative length of each of the forty-two articles in
chronological order and designated colour.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Orange
Amber
Magenta
Verdigris
White
brown silver
violet
scarlet Hazel
tawny
Opal
puce
6 Beige
Silver
Cyan
Hazel Verdigris
pink
gray
ash opaldrab porphyry
pistachio
Sulphur Ash Chartreuse
Hazel
Sulphur
pistachio
Silver
gray
pistachio
bice
gold
gold ivory
orange
amber
scarlet
white ivory
Puce
Whiteopal Violet
Puce
Violet
Prussian
Bluegray
pink puceindigoHazel
biceViolet
graysulphur
ivory
ash
ash
cyan
ivory
Amber
amber
amber Ashsulphur
amber
opalkhaki
scarlet
puce
scarlet
Mauve
Silver
ivorySulphur
purple
beigeorange
Ivory amber
gray
Ruby
cyan
Gray
Hazel
black pink purple
black Hazel
black
Black
tawny
White
puce
opal
maroon
Scarlet
Chartreuse
sepia
purple
pink ChartreuseHazel
purple
Verdigris
gold
black
red
Verdigris
red
Amber
Black
black
Scarlet
Olive
porphyry
opal
puceindigo
puce
Pink
beigeScarlet
cyan
Gray
gray
gray indigo
khaki
Cyan
beige
black
black
Mauvescarlet
whiteblack
white ash amber
yellow
maroon khaki
Maroon
scarlet
Cyanorange.
sulphurPurple
Indigo
pink
ruby white white
cyan
cyan
safety
indigo
amber
amber
amber
black
orange
maroon
opalamber
scarlet
gray
purple rust
pinkmauve Magentaindigo sepia yellowRed
ivory
amber
Orange
magenta
gold
White
Puce
opal
cyan
tawny
Yellow
scarlet
maroon
olive
Hazel
indigo
Ash
gray
Ash
Ivory
Hazel pink
Verdigris redmagenta
orange
orange
amber white
magenta
white
white
scarlet
White
opal
mauve
white
white
white
khaki white
beige
gray bice
safety orange
purple
Hazel
Indigo
rust
porphyry
gold
red
orange
mauve
scarlet sepia
White
cyan
Mauve khaki
yellow
scarlet
Khaki
Hazel
Indigoivory
Chartreuse
pistachio
Gray
Hazel
ultramarine
amber
magenta
Magentaruby
black
porphyry
scarlet
opal
yellow
mauve Indigo
tawny
olive
Hazel pink
Indigo
gray
Pink
indigo
amber
amber
White
maroon
olive rust
maroon
maroon
olive
puce
Gray
Hazel
ash
bicesepia
gray
Khaki
bice
gray
Chartreuse
pink
ivory
amber
Magenta
tawny
mauve
puce
Sepia
indigo
beigeRuby
Khaki
silver
pink Verdigris Mauve
chartreuse
ivory
gray
ruby
pistachio
orange
gold
Maroon
yellow
cyan
maroonHazel
puce
khaki
sepia
sepia Rust
rust
rust
Rust
beige
Hazel
bice
indigo
orange Black
gold
gold
verdigris tawny
drab
tawny
White
Olive
White
purple yellow
ivory
pistachio
bice sulphur
Hazel
Sulphur
ruby tawny
chartreuseash
black
redindigo
amber
black
yellow
white
opal
White
White
gray beigeamber
Sepia
beige
khaki
khaki ash scarlet
ruby
ash
khaki
ultramarine
Black
amber
White
Olive bice
olive
mauve
Olive
pink
sulphur
Hazel ivory
sulphur
pink
Sepia
gray
indigo
rust
verdigris
gold cyan
black
mauve Black pink
tawny gold
Hazel Sulphur
indigo
purple
amber
amber
mauve
yellow
brown silver
Mauve brown
safety
pink orange
Hazel
ruby
ash
rust
gold White
amber
Whitebeige White
White
tawny
White
White
White
White
White
olive
tawny
White
White
beige beigeWhite
Hazel
Hazel
khaki
Gold
red
White
opal
White
White
tawny
gray mauve
hazel gray
drab
amberkhaki
red
gold
Mauve
Mauve
yellow
khaki
Hazel
ivory
porphyry
amber scarlet
verdigris
White
mauve
yellow
yellow
olive
mauve
Puce
pistachio
safety
orange
beige Mauve
ivory
pistachio
ivory
Hazel
pistachio
amber ivory
verdigris
redpistachio
White
scarlet
mauve
White maroonWhitemagenta
White
White
Brown
White
white
white
White
yellow
Ultramarine
Indigo
sulphurgold
Hazel
amber
porphyry
scarlet
maroon
olive
brown
mauve
Ash ash
ash
pistachio
indigo
Chartreuse
ultramarine amber
Gold
verdigris
red
Black
amber
porphyry
red tawny
verdigris
black
maroon
brown
brown
gray
beige
pink
ash sulphur ultramarine mauve
goldivory
black
drab
orange
amber
porphyry
orange
red
Brown
mauve
Whiteash
brown
yellow
Brown
Mauve
sepia
Purple
drab
Gold
orange
white
scarlet
white
white
white brownwhite
white
Sepia
ivory opal
indigo
beige
silversepia
pink scarlet
purple
ivory
brown
Yellow
scarlet
Mauve
Yellow
brown ivory olive
white gray white
white
white
white
pink
silver
indigo
pink
ivory
porphyry
amber
gold
Amber
Yellow
Brown
white
scarlet
whiteolivekhakiwhite Yellowwhite
white
yellow Pink
Sepiabeige
ivory
porphyry
orange
verdigris
porphyry
Mauve
Prussian
yellow
indigo
beige
pinkbrown
indigo
pistachio
gray
rust
amber
orange
blue White
mauve
yellow
Prussian blue ivory
Yellow
Yellow
sulphur
khaki
sulphur
beige
indigosulphur porphyry sulphur
Pistachio
sulphur
bice
gray
amber
mauve
scarlet
Prussian blue
Pink
rustIndigoyellow
ivory pink
khaki Brown
gray amber
indigo
beige
Pink
verdigris
Porphyry
gold white
red
Amber yellowsilver
White
puce.
Rustyellow mauve
Pistachio
Beige
gray pink
Chartreuse
orange
goldivory
Porphyry
puce
Prussian
olive
Blue
Sepia indigo
beige
silver
indigoverdigris
orange
Red
amber
Cyan
White mauve
Puce
olive
silver
safety orange Pink
sepiamagenta brown
gray
beige
rust
Magenta
orange
mauve Prussian
yellow Blue
Cyan
Cyan
maroon
white
white
Cyan white
Ivory
beige
Chartreuse
ivory
orange
Porphyry
amber
orange
red
Magenta
maroon
mauve
brown
mauve
mauve
pistachio
Pink
pistachio
ivory
pink
Magenta
drab
green
green
White
Prussian Blue green
scarlet
sulphur
pistachio
sulphur
Sulphur rust
pistachioIvory
orangeindigo
orange
red
Cyan
mauve sepia
mauve
brown
sulphur
pistachio
gray
chartreuse
white
white white
mauve
brown
mauve
maroon white
pink
Sulphur Mauvewhite
silver
pistachio
pistachio
magenta
Cyan
white
Prussian Blue
Chartreuse
gray
Pistachio
pink
sepia
ivory
pistachio
orange cyan pistachio
orange
sepia
silver
Ivory
gray
magenta
White
Prussian Blue
pucechartreuse
cyan
cyan
pink
Sepia
white
white
scarlet
Pink pink
pink
gray
cyan
cyan
puce
cyan
ivory
pink chartreuse
pink
drab
green
white
puce
Cyan
cyan
sepia
Porphyry
White
White cyan
White
White
Cyan
White
pink
pink
orange maroon
scarlet
Cyan sulphur
ivory
ultramarine
pink
sepia
red
Cyan
ivory
ivory
Red
White
White
scarlet
white
ultramarine
whiteSulphur
maroon
orange
puce
orange
orange
White
puce
sulphur
ultramarine
puce
maroon
white
white
white
White
sulphur
orange
porphyry
orange
orange orange
White
cyan
ultramarine
ultramarine
ultramarine
orange
White
white
white
white
white
white
cyan
white
sulphur
Sulphur
orange
cyan orange
Cyan
green
cyan
cyan
green
cyan

white

ultramarine

white
White
white
White
white

White

White

White
White

ultramarine
White
white
White

White

ultramarine

white

white

white

white

White
white
white
white
White
white

white

white

white

White

green White
White

white

White

White

white

White

White

White
White

White
White

white

white

Essays on Colour Analysis

For every issue the editors of Cabinet Magazine, an American quarterly arts and culture journal, ask one of their regular
contributors to write about a specific colour. The essays are printed as Cabinets regular Colours column. This poster
illustrates all of the occurrences of each designated colour term, following the sequence within the text, for every column.

Essays on Colour Analysis

For every issue the editors of Cabinet Magazine, an American quarterly arts and culture journal, ask one of their
regular contributors to write about a specific colour. The essays are printed as Cabinets regular Colours column.
This poster illustrates every occurrence of each designated colour term, in the sequence it appears in the text,
represented as a block of that particular colour.

5.1.2

STROOPING THE COLOUR

As a separate method of examining both the

relationship between colour and language and our
understanding of colour naming I also researched a
phenomenon known as the Stroop Effect. The Stroop
Effect is an effect virtually unique to the way our brains
process the relationship between colour and language.
It was first published in England in 1935 by John Ridley
Stroop and has since been replicated hundreds of times
in controlled conditions. It is one of the most recognised
occurrences in experimental psychology and refers to
a delaying in naming the colour a word is printed in,
when the word refers to a different colour. So it is easier
to name the colour of a word printed in red, if the word
itself also says red.
I created different groupings of words in order to
examine this and the reverse Stroop Effect, where
colours are easier to name if presented differently. The
first group of words were essentially a control group,
where the eleven basic colour terms were presented in
colours that were easily identified as matching the name.
They were then shown in colours that were very different
to the meaning of the word, so the term white was
shown in the colour brown. The second group of words
presented colour terms that were well known but less
commonly used, in colours that were less easy to name.
This was to determine if changing the complexity of the
colours and colour terms influenced the Stroop Effect.
The third group of colour names were deliberately
obscure colours and were presented in easy to name
colours. However the colour the word was depicted in
did not correlate with the meaning of the word. This
was to test if the Stroop Effect would be stronger or
weaker if the colour term is not known and therefore not
identified with a colour.

The final group of word were not colour terms and

comprised of basic nouns, unrelated to any of the
colours that they were depicted in. Following the logic
of the Stroop Effect this group of terms should not
produce any evidence of the phenomenon.
In addition to the different types of terms the eleven
basic colour terms were also presented in two
alternative ways: in white with a coloured surround
and reversed out of a page of full bleed colour. In both
instances the colour surrounding the word did not
correspond to its meaning. This was to demonstrate the
potential occurrence of the Reverse Stroop Effect, when
the colour is easier to name than the word. Spreads from
the book can be seen in Figures 1720.
In other circumstances it may have been possible to
test the strength of the Stroop Effect in relation to the
different categories of words in an experimental setting
with groups of participants. However that would have
required precision timing equipment and controlled,
laboratory conditions in order to measure the Effect,
both of which were beyond the constraints of the
project and the scope of the research question.
As an extension of the words presented in the book, a
number of poster iterations were produced (shown in
Figures 2124). Exchanging the colours of terms from
the additive and subtractive colour models (red, green,
blue and cyan, magenta yellow) demonstrated the quirk
of the Stroop Effect with simplicity and a hint of humour.
As a result of feedback from the mid-way crit the posters
were not presented as an output as it was felt they did
not address the research question sufficiently.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 17 20, STROOPING THE COLOUR BOOK SPREADS

TYPES OF TERMS

BASIC TERMS CORRECT COLOURS

TYPES OF TERMS

BASIC TERMS CORRECT COLOURS

orange yellow

TYPES OF TERMS

OBSCURE COLOUR TERMS

bice

TYPES OF TERMS

OBSCURE COLOUR TERMS

adobe

TYPES OF TERMS

BASIC COLOUR TERMS

grey

TYPES OF TERMS

OBSCURE COLOUR TERMS

cerulean

TYPES OF TERMS

BASIC COLOUR TERMS

white

TYPES OF TERMS

OBSCURE COLOUR TERMS

porphyry

FIGURES 21 24, STROOPING THE COLOUR POSTERS

STROOPING
THE COLOUR

STROOPING
THE COLOUR

red
Virtually unique to the relationship between
colour and language, the Stroop Effect is
a psychological phenomenon that is remarkably simple to demonstrate. First published in England by John Ridley Stroop in
1935, the effect has since been replicated
hundreds of times under controlled conditions, reinforcing its validity as a recognised
occurrence and making the original paper
one of the most cited in the history of experimental psychology. In simple terms the
Stroop Effect refers to the identification of a
delay in naming the colour a word is printed
in if the word itself denotes a different colour. This is in comparison to the speed of
naming if the colour of the word is the same

as its meaning. So it is easier to name the

red ink of a word printed in red if the word
itself also says red. Research has since allowed the development of the effect into
a test, and has expanded to explore The
Reverse Stroop Effect, which can be demonstrated through colour matching rather than
verbalising the word. Although a relatively
easy concept to grasp, the true explanation
of the Stroop Effect remains contentious.
It occurs because we are required to override interference from the colour the word
denotes in our brains, in order to correctly
identify the colour the word is printed in.
The standard explanation put forward for
this was the words are read automatically

and can be read faster than colours can be

named. However experiments demonstrating the Reverse Stroop Effect have brought
these two theories into question. The aim
of this projectis not only to demonstrate
the Stroop Effect, but to explore how the
use of more or less complex colour terms
and the presentation of those terms might
influence the effect. If a colour term is obscure and unfamiliar does that interfere with
the processing of the colour of the word
in the same way as a basic colour term? At
the heart of the Stropp Effect and central to
this project lies a unique phenomenon that
encapsulates the complex relationship we
have with colour and language.

green
Virtually unique to the relationship between
colour and language, the Stroop Effect is
a psychological phenomenon that is remarkably simple to demonstrate. First published in England by John Ridley Stroop in
1935, the effect has since been replicated
hundreds of times under controlled conditions, reinforcing its validity as a recognised
occurrence and making the original paper
one of the most cited in the history of experimental psychology. In simple terms the
Stroop Effect refers to the identification of a
delay in naming the colour a word is printed
in if the word itself denotes a different colour. This is in comparison to the speed of
naming if the colour of the word is the same

as its meaning. So it is easier to name the

red ink of a word printed in red if the word
itself also says red. Research has since allowed the development of the effect into
a test, and has expanded to explore The
Reverse Stroop Effect, which can be demonstrated through colour matching rather than
verbalising the word. Although a relatively
easy concept to grasp, the true explanation
of the Stroop Effect remains contentious.
It occurs because we are required to override interference from the colour the word
denotes in our brains, in order to correctly
identify the colour the word is printed in.
The standard explanation put forward for
this was the words are read automatically

and can be read faster than colours can be

named. However experiments demonstrating the Reverse Stroop Effect have brought
these two theories into question. The aim
of this projectis not only to demonstrate
the Stroop Effect, but to explore how the
use of more or less complex colour terms
and the presentation of those terms might
influence the effect. If a colour term is obscure and unfamiliar does that interfere with
the processing of the colour of the word
in the same way as a basic colour term? At
the heart of the Stropp Effect and central to
this project lies a unique phenomenon that
encapsulates the complex relationship we
have with colour and language.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

STROOPING
THE COLOUR

STROOPING
THE COLOUR

red
green
blue

cyan
magenta
yellow

Virtually unique to the relationship between

colour and language, the Stroop Effect is
a psychological phenomenon that is remarkably simple to demonstrate. First published in England by John Ridley Stroop in
1935, the effect has since been replicated
hundreds of times under controlled conditions, reinforcing its validity as a recognised
occurrence and making the original paper
one of the most cited in the history of experimental psychology. In simple terms the
Stroop Effect refers to the identification of a
delay in naming the colour a word is printed
in if the word itself denotes a different colour. This is in comparison to the speed of
naming if the colour of the word is the same

as its meaning. So it is easier to name the

red ink of a word printed in red if the word
itself also says red. Research has since allowed the development of the effect into
a test, and has expanded to explore The
Reverse Stroop Effect, which can be demonstrated through colour matching rather than
verbalising the word. Although a relatively
easy concept to grasp, the true explanation
of the Stroop Effect remains contentious.
It occurs because we are required to override interference from the colour the word
denotes in our brains, in order to correctly
identify the colour the word is printed in.
The standard explanation put forward for
this was the words are read automatically

and can be read faster than colours can be

named. However experiments demonstrating the Reverse Stroop Effect have brought
these two theories into question. The aim
of this projectis not only to demonstrate
the Stroop Effect, but to explore how the
use of more or less complex colour terms
and the presentation of those terms might
influence the effect. If a colour term is obscure and unfamiliar does that interfere with
the processing of the colour of the word
in the same way as a basic colour term? At
the heart of the Stropp Effect and central to
this project lies a unique phenomenon that
encapsulates the complex relationship we
have with colour and language.

Virtually unique to the relationship between

colour and language, the Stroop Effect is
a psychological phenomenon that is remarkably simple to demonstrate. First published in England by John Ridley Stroop in
1935, the effect has since been replicated
hundreds of times under controlled conditions, reinforcing its validity as a recognised
occurrence and making the original paper
one of the most cited in the history of experimental psychology. In simple terms the
Stroop Effect refers to the identification of a
delay in naming the colour a word is printed
in if the word itself denotes a different colour. This is in comparison to the speed of
naming if the colour of the word is the same

as its meaning. So it is easier to name the

red ink of a word printed in red if the word
itself also says red. Research has since allowed the development of the effect into
a test, and has expanded to explore The
Reverse Stroop Effect, which can be demonstrated through colour matching rather than
verbalising the word. Although a relatively
easy concept to grasp, the true explanation
of the Stroop Effect remains contentious.
It occurs because we are required to override interference from the colour the word
denotes in our brains, in order to correctly
identify the colour the word is printed in.
The standard explanation put forward for
this was the words are read automatically

and can be read faster than colours can be

named. However experiments demonstrating the Reverse Stroop Effect have brought
these two theories into question. The aim
of this projectis not only to demonstrate
the Stroop Effect, but to explore how the
use of more or less complex colour terms
and the presentation of those terms might
influence the effect. If a colour term is obscure and unfamiliar does that interfere with
the processing of the colour of the word
in the same way as a basic colour term? At
the heart of the Stropp Effect and central to
this project lies a unique phenomenon that
encapsulates the complex relationship we
have with colour and language.

FIGURES 25 30, COLOUR MY WORDS BOOK SPREADS

Associated with sweetness, pink is a favoured colour for

packaging confectionery. It is also associated with the
innocence of young girls and thus a favourite colour for
little girls bedrooms and clothing. Pink is known to have
short-term calming effects and is often the colour of walls
in prison holding cells, particularly in America. Shocking
hot pinks offer a feeling of youth, fun, excitement, and
wild abandon. Vibrant, voluptuous pinks, however, offer a
more sophisticated appeal, and magenta and fuchsia are
perceived as sensual and theatrical. Lighter pinks offer a
sense of romanticism and healthy optimism. The colour also
used in the phrases seeing pink elephants, being tickled
pink and being in the pink.

Pink

5.1.3

IN THE PINK

This phrase originally came from the English fox hunting tradition
where a rider was not granted the right to don the scarlet
coloured jackets, called pinks, until he demonstrated superior
horsemanship and service to the hunt. Being in the pink meant
the rider had reached the pinnacle of achievement in the hunt.
The use of the phrase in the pink evolved to be used more
broadly to mean the very pinnacle of something, but not
necessarily the hunt during the 18th century. This meaning of
the phrase is seen in literature beginning in the mid-1700s and
continuing throughout the 19th century. It isnt until the early
20th century that we see the phrase being used with its current
associations.
It is unclear how it translated into a phrase that is now specifically
health-related, but possibly, as it came into use among those not
familiar with the hunt, it was thought that pink referred to the
rosy glow of the complexion that is indicative of good health.

COLOUR MY WORDS

It was suggested in the proposal for this project that

examining the semiotics of colour names would be a
valid research exercise and would contribute towards
the understanding of how we use colour terms. As one
method of exploring this I began to collect phrases and
idioms that contained colour terms. Many of the phrases
are very well known and ingrained in our language. As a
result they are indelibly associated with the colour term
in question, for example red carpet and black death.
From a number of different sources, including online
references, A Dictionary of Colour by Ian Paterson and
Seeing Red or Tickled Pink by Christine Amner, I was
able to collate a large body of phrases and sayings. I
grouped these based on the relevant colour category,
so phrases including the word gold and phrases
including the word yellow were arranged together.
From this I analysed the distribution of the phrases
across the colour terms.
Black, white and red were the colours that were included
in the greatest number of phrases. Interestingly, these

colour terms were also identified by Berlin & Kay as

being primary colours in the evolution of colour terms
within a language. In fact, with the exception of blue,
the distribution of phrases across the other colour terms
also follows the order observed by Berlin & Kay. So that
orange (or the equivalent) appears in few phrases and
is also one of the last basic colour terms to appear as a
language evolves
The phrases were presented in a book structured in
a similar manner to a dictionary, with a definition or
explanation accompanying each phrase. The sayings
were also indexed alphabetically at the back of the
book, as a reference but appear in the colour that
features in the phrase. The beginning of each section
opens with an explanation of the meanings and
associations of each colour term and describes the
origin of a particularly well know idiom. Figures 2530
show spreads from the layout of the book.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Pink
Hunting pinks

Pink Fairies

Pink pound

Receive a pink slip, to

In the pink, to be

Pink Floyd

Pink ribbon

Rose tinted glasses, to see the world through

Little pink pill

Pink for a girl, blue for a boy

Pink slip, a

Ros wine

Moss pink

Pink gin

Pink slip, to

Rose-cheeked

Paint the town pink, to

Pink in the face, to turn

Pink Spiders

Rose-lipped

Pink tea

Rosy

Traditional jackets worn for fox hunting

In perfect health

A slang name for a placebo, commonly a sugar pill used in medical trials
A type of flower also known as creeping Phlox
See also to paint the town red, a lively and usually drunken night out

Parlour pink

Associated with Communism or a left wing leaning

Pink

An American pop singer

Pink, a

A type of flower from the genus Dianthus

Pink, a

Someone with left wing sympathies

Pink, to

To pierce or to perforate

An English psychedelic rock band

An English progressive rock band
A saying indicating gender colour associations
An alcoholic drink of gin mixed with grenadine
To turn pink in the face from exertion or emotion

Pink lady

A type of apple

Pink lady, a

A cocktail made with gin, grenadine, egg white, lemon juice and cream

Pink lady

The purchasing power of gay men

A symbol of the fight against breast cancer
Obsolete, a female undergarment
An American expression meaning to sack someone
An American pop punk band
Obsolete, an American term for a formal tea party

Pink toothbrush

A 1930s advertising slogan for a toothpaste claimed to prevent bleeding gums

Pink-collar worker

During the 1960s it referred to a barbiturate

Job roles that are typically fulfilled by women

Pink lady

Pinked

Pink Ladies, The

Pinkeye

Volunteer hospital aides

The female companions of the T-Birds in the film and musical Grease

When the edges of something are notched or perforated

Common term for conjunctivitis

An American expression meaning to be sacked from your job

Having an optimistic view of the world

A type of pink-coloured wine produced using a number of different methods

Blushing or in good health
Young and healthy
Optimistic

Rosy outlook, to have a

Having a positive view on a situation

Rosy-fingered dawn, a
A sunrise

Strike me pink!

Expression of astonishment or indignation

Very pink of, The

The very best of

To cut fabric with pinking shears so that the edges do not fray

Embodying the very best

Pink of perfection, the

Pinkeye

A type of potato with pink buds

Very pleased

Pink champagne

Pink Panther, The

Pinkie

Turn pink, to

Pink coat

Pink Panther, The

Pinking shears

Pink out, to

Champagne produced from rose wine or Champagne mixed with red wine
Traditional jackets worn for fox hunting

Pink elephants, to see

A comedy film series from the 1960s

A detective cartoon character that appears in the title sequence to The Pink Panther film
series

Beaten like a red-headed stepchild, to be

To be badly beaten

Better a red face than a black heart

A proverb meaning it is better to be embarrassed than to be a cruel person

Better dead than Red

It is better to be dead than be a Communist

Better red than dead

Anti-nuclear slogan referring to the American-Soviet arms race, meaning it would be better
to let the Soviets win than there to be nuclear war

Bleed red ink, to

When a company is losing a lot of money

Blood red

Red like the colour of blood

Bloody Red Shoes

An English punk duo

Captain Scarlet

A popular childrens television series from the 1960s created by Gerry Anderson

Catch someone red-handed, to

To catch someone doing something wrong

Crimson tide

A womans period

Crimson Tide

A 1995 submarine film directed by Tony Scott

Crimson tide

A cocktail of vodka and pomegranate juice

To co-operate with law enforcement authorities and provide information about

accomplices in order to reduce ones sentence

Scissors that are used to cut a zigzag edge in fabric to prevent it from fraying

Pinko

Orange

Red
Another redskin bit the dust

Tickled pink, to be

Communist sympathiser

Hallucinations brought on by heavy drinking

A phrase which used to be used when a cowboy shot a Native American Indian

The fifth and smallest finger on a human hand

Curse you, Red Baron

A line used by Snoopy in the cartoon strip by Charles M Schultz

Dago red

Cheap or poor quality red wine

Agent Orange

A powerful herbicide that was used by the American military in the Vietnam War against
the South Vietnamese

One of the provinces of South Africa

Clockwork Orange

An English metal band

Futures bright, the futures orange, the

The juice of the orange fruit

House of Orange, The

A type of black tea

Dyeing scarlet

A person lacking individuality because of institutional conditioning

Ears are red

The 1971 film by Stanley Kubrick

Eric the Red

The advertising slogan for UK mobile phone service provider Orange

Get the red light, to

The Dutch Royal Family

Go red, to

Everything is great

Harvard Crimson, the

An organisation set up in Northern Ireland to defend Protestantism

Harvard Crimson, the

A UK mobile phone and broadband service provider

In the red, to be

A flower of the orange tree, often used for weddings

Infrared light

A cocktail made with orange juice, gin and ice

Lady in Red

An American college football game held in Florida

Left red-faced, to be

The shell used as a shade for an opium lamp

Obsolete, heavy drinking

When someone is talking about you
A Norse explorer who colonised Greenland
To be prevented from doing something
To blush

The daily student newspaper of Harvard University

The athletics teams for Harvard University
To have financial accounts that are in debt, or to be in debt
Light waves in the electromagnetic spectrum that are longer than visible red light
A well know song by Chris de Burgh
To blush from embarrassment from a mistake

Orange Crush
A song by REM

Clockwork orange, a

Down the little red lane

An American punk band from Orange County

Down someones throat

Orange County

A county in the state of California, USA

Agent Orange

Just peachy

Loyal Orange Institution

Orange

Orange blossom
Orange blossom
Orange bowl
Orange bowl

Orange Free State

Orange Goblin
Orange juice

Orange pekoe tea

Orange River

A river in South Africa the runs along the boundary of Orange Free State

Orange stick

A tool used in manicures to push back the nail cuticle

Orange tree, an

The tree that produces the orange fruit

Orangeade

A juice made from orange juice, water and sugar

Orangemen

The name given to members of the Loyal Orange Institution in Northern Ireland

Orangery, an

A greenhouse used for growing oranges in colder climates

Peaches and cream complexion

Describes woman with a fair complexion, often with freckles and red hair

Pretty as a peach

A phrase use to describe an attractive young woman or child

FIGURES 31 34, WHEN GREEN ISNT GREEN BOOK SPREADS

30

31

PMS 3275

37

5.1.4

PMS 361

35

PMS 3405

PMS 3278

36

PMS 354

34

PMS 347

38

39

PMS 368

PMS 389

WHEN GREEN IS NOT GREEN

The term green is often used interchangeably with

ideas of sustainability, while the colour is frequently
used in design schemes to represent environmental
awareness. This was discussed by Sara De Bondt in a
lecture given at LCC, where she presented information
on sustainable design as part of professional practise.
This also covered guidance on colour printing and
included a list of Pantone Matching System colours
that are particularly toxic to the environment. Featured

on the list were a number of shades of green, so it

seemed appropriate to use this as a basis to illustrate
the relationship between green the colour, green the
colour name and green the concept.
As an extension of the investigation in to the semiotics
of colours and colour terms I presented the colours from
the list of toxic inks as a book to serve as a reminder
of the relationship between colour green and what it

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 35 36, WHEN GREEN ISNT GREEN POSTER ITERATIONS

PMS 123

PMS 137

PMS 1375

PMS 151 PMS 1585 PMS 165

PMS 1655

PMS 172

Warm Red

PMS 1788 PMS 185

PMS 192

PMS 213

PMS 259

PMS 3735

PMS 286

PMS 293

PMS 300

PMS 3135 PMS 320

PMS 327

PMS 3005 Process Blue PMS 313

When Green isnt Green

Printed material comprises a large

proportion of the man-made colour we
encounter in our modern world. Offset lithography, four colour process and
Pantones Matching System have enabled
us to paint the world in glorious technicolor
ever more cheaply, over the last few
decades. However, this has come at a price.
In recent years the design industry has been
gradually waking up to the environmental
damage caused by our rainbow of printing
inks. Through increases in recycling we
now know that red-based colours are more
difficult to remove from paper, using more
chemicals and energy before it can be made
into new. Petroleum based inks release
volatile organic compounds, polluting the air
and water supply, while damaging the health
of those who work with them. In their book,

Green Graphic Design, Brian Dougherty and

Celery Design have compiled a list of all of
the Pantone Matching System colours that
contain high levels of barium and copper,
hazardous metals, which can accumulate in
the environment, contaminating water, soil,
poisoning wildlife and threatening the health
of communities. This poster presents the
colours from that list, in all their toxic glory,
as a reminder to designers of the impact of
specifying certain colours in design schemes.
Among them are a number of green hues
that contain Copper-phthalocyanine and are
particularly harmful to the environment. Not
all greens are created equal and some are
little more than greenwash.

is often used to stand for. Spreads from this book are

presented in Figures 3134. Poster iterations (Figures
3536) were also originally produced to accompany the
book. However, these have not been included in the
final output as they are not significant enough to the
investigation as a whole.

PMS 3272

PMS 3275 PMS 3278

PMS 347

PMS 354

PMS 361

PMS 368

PMS 438

PMS 445

PMS 450

PMS 457 PMS 464 PMS 4625

PMS 471

PMS 492

PMS 499

PMS 4975 PMS 506

PMS 5115

PMS 520

PMS 5185

PMS 527 PMS 5255 PMS 534

PMS 5463 PMS 5535

PMS 562

PMS 569 PMS 5747

When Green isnt Green

Green

PMS 340 PMS 3405

PMS 389

Printed material comprises a large

proportion of the man-made colour we
encounter in our modern world. Offset lithography, four colour process and
Pantones Matching System have enabled
us to paint the world in glorious technicolor
ever more cheaply, over the last few
decades. However, this has come at a price.
In recent years the design industry has been
gradually waking up to the environmental
damage caused by our rainbow of printing
inks. Through increases in recycling we
now know that red-based colours are more
difficult to remove from paper, using more
chemicals and energy before it can be made
into new. Petroleum based inks release
volatile organic compounds, polluting the air
and water supply, while damaging the health
of those who work with them. In their book,

PMS 419

PMS 513

Green Graphic Design, Brian Dougherty and

Celery Design have compiled a list of all of
the Pantone Matching System colours that
contain high levels of barium and copper,
hazardous metals, which can accumulate in
the environment, contaminating water, soil,
poisoning wildlife and threatening the health
of communities. This poster presents the
colours from that list, in all their toxic glory,
as a reminder to designers of the impact of
specifying certain colours in design schemes.
Among them are a number of green hues
that contain Copper-phthalocyanine and are
particularly harmful to the environment. Not
all greens are created equal and some are
little more than greenwash.

5.1.5

As a final approach for examining the body of words

we used to describe colour I used Wordcount.org to
analyse how frequently colour terms are used in English.
Wordcount is an online experiment that tracks the way
we use language and ranks words in the order of how
often they are used. The application contains 88,600
words and can be used to search for terms or rankings.
I inputted non-compound colours terms, from the list
collated early in the investigation, into Wordcount to
Wine
Grey

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FIGURES 37 44, COLOUR BY NUMBERS BOOK LAYOUT ITERATIONS

COLOUR BY NUMBERS

Wine

Coffee

Grey
Grey

COLOUR BY NUMBERS

Brown

Stone

Gold

Coffee
Wine
Grey

COLOUR BY NUMBERS

document the distribution of colour terms within the

body of words. Some of the more obscure colour terms
did not feature on the list at all, indicating how rarely
they feature in our language. However a collection of
over 200 individual colour names were ranked.

This sequence was presented as a book with a numerical

scale running along the bottom of the page. The ranking
of each colour term was marked in the correct position

without any adjustments made to average out the

distribution of the terms. This meant that some spreads
of the book featured numerous terms while others were
blank. However, this served to demonstrate how the
different terms were dispersed throughout Wordcount.
In order to highlight the changes in frequency indicated
by the rankings to a greater degree, the position in the
was also marked by a coloured circle which decreased
in size, in proportion to how often the word was used.
Coffee
Wine

1770

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MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

COLOUR BY NUMBERS

Grey

COLOUR BY NUMBERS

Grey

This feature of the design was developed after a number

of iterations, which are shown above in Figures 3744.
Pages from the final design are shown in Figures 4552.

8731

Coral

Garnet

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FIGURES 45 52, COLOUR BY NUMBERS BOOK SPREADS

Tomato

Magenta

73653

Loden
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MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Malachite
Cyan

Heliotrope

5.2

FOCUS 2

The Names of Colours: How they visually relate to each

other.
To explore this aspect of the research question, I have
employed a variety of strategies, including generative
methods, photography and digital image manipulation.

5.2.1

SEARCHING FOR THE RAINBOW

The main activity carried out in response to this aspect

of the research question was using Google Image search
as a research tool. This approach was not previously
planned and it was not included in the original proposal
for the project, beginning as no more than an exercise
in understanding. Initially I began using Google Image
Search to provide a visual reference for colour names
that I was unfamiliar with, which had been collected
throughout the course of the research. While it proved
to be a very useful process, through repeated attempts
it became apparent that the search results themselves
generated a fascinating body of images, providing an
insight into the changing nature of the internet and the
relationships between the colours in the images and the
search terms.
Acknowledging this observation, I devised a structured
methodology for using Google Image Search as a
generative research activity. Initially I began by inputting
the eleven basic colour terms in English: red, orange,
yellow, green, blue, purple, pink, brown, black, grey and
white into Google Image Search with the addition of
the word colour. This concession was an undesirable
but a necessary consequence of the number of high
profile celebrities with colour terms in their names, such
as the rapper Chris Brown and the singer Pink, which
created massive distortions in the results of the initial
trials. In addition to this, before beginning the process
I cleared my browser history and cookies, so that the
results would not be influenced by my search history. I
then took, without exception, the first thirty images from
the search results, as a basis for analysis using image

manipulation processes. Thirty was a suitable number

for this exercise, as it would generate a reasonably
sized body of images without creating an excessive
time burden. As trialled in Unit 2, (as preparation for the
Major Project), I applied different digital manipulation
techniques as a way of analysing the colour content of
each image.
The images were indexed by Colourphon.co.uk,
resulting in 9x9 grid of colours. They were blurred with
a specific and constant amount of Gaussian blur in
Photoshop and finally, also using Photoshop, the colour
values for the pixels in the image were averaged to give
a solid block of colour. Each of these processes altered
the coherence of the image to a different degree.
They moved from defined forms, into indistinguishable
shapes, allowing dominant areas of colour to appear
more clearly and others subside, until finally, through
averaging, a consolidated block of colour could emerge.
The images were grouped by process, beginning
with the original results and were presented in the
sequence they ranked in the search. This allowed the
images to be compared by hue and process and it was
possible to observe how each effect altered the colour
composition of the images. Spreads from the resulting
book of images are presented in Figures 5356. A series
of accompanying posters was also created, shown in
Figures 5760. However these were not included in the
output for the project as the exercise was not intended
as a final outcome of the research.
As a body of work, the images represent a visual
interpretation of each colour term, mediated by Google,
and function as a snapshot of the Internet, that due
to its constantly shifting nature, can never be exactly
repeated. They show not only the variety in responses
to the colours, but also the level of consensus across
the range of images. Despite the differences within the
results, from the collection of images produced it is
possible to discern a level collective appreciation of the
eleven basic colour terms.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 53 56, SEARCHING FOR THE RAINBOW BOOK SPREADS

RED

SEARCH RESULTS

RED

SEARCH RESULTS

RED

PIXELATED

RED

PIXELATED

RED

BLURRED

RED

BLURRED

RED

COLOUR AVERAGED

RED

COLOUR AVERAGED

FIGURES 57 60, SEARCHING FOR THE RAINBOW POSTER SERIES

Searching For The Rainbow

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously

asked How do I know that this color is
red? It would be an answer to say:
I have learnt English. But how do we
know what is red? In todays digital age
perhaps a more pertinent response
would be: Google it. The use of Google
image search as a tool to provide a visual
interpretation of colour terms began as no
more than an exercise in understanding,
However, repetition of the process began
to reveal both the changing nature of
the internet and the similarities and
differences between the colours in the

images retrieved by each search. Although

translated through Googles algorithms,
collectively, the images represent the
level of understanding of colour and
colour terms by those posting them. The
methodology for this exercise involved
inputting each of the eleven basic colour
terms into Google Image Search with the
addition of the word colour. I then took
the first thirty images from the search
results as a foundation to work with and
analyse. This poster displays the original
images from the search, without any
image manipulation and functions as a

snapshot of colour on the Internet that

due to its constantly shifting nature, can
never be replicated exactly. It shows not
only the variety of responses to the names
of colours but also the level of consensus
across the range of images. This method
is but one of the many possible ways of
exploring the relationship between colour
and language but it one that is truly a
reflection of our digital age.

Searching For The Rainbow

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously

asked How do I know that this color is
red? It would be an answer to say:
I have learnt English. But how do we
know what is red? In todays digital age
perhaps a more pertinent response
would be: Google it. The use of Google
image search as a tool to provide a visual
interpretation of colour terms began as no
more than an exercise in understanding,
However, repetition of the process began
to reveal both the changing nature of
the internet and the similarities and
differences between the colours in the

images retrieved by each search. Although

translated through Googles algorithms,
collectively, the images represent the
level of understanding of colour and
colour terms by those posting them. The
methodology for this exercise involved
inputting each of the eleven basic colour
terms into Google Image Search with the
addition of the word colour. I then took
the first thirty images from the search
results as a foundation to work with and
analyse. The images presented on this
poster have been processed using the
online colour analysis tool Colourphon,

breaking each one down into its dominant

blocks of colour. As a body of work this
is a visual representation of each colour
term, mediated by Google and functions
as a snapshot of colour on the Internet that
due to its constantly shifting nature, can
never be replicated exactly. It shows not
only the variety of responses to the names
of colours but also the level of consensus
across the range of images. This method
is but one of the many possible ways of
exploring the relationship between colour
and language but it one that is truly a
reflection of our digital age.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Searching For The Rainbow

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously

asked How do I know that this color is
red? It would be an answer to say:
I have learnt English. But how do we
know what is red? In todays digital age
perhaps a more pertinent response
would be: Google it. The use of Google
image search as a tool to provide a visual
interpretation of colour terms began as no
more than an exercise in understanding,
However, repetition of the process began
to reveal both the changing nature of
the internet and the similarities and
differences between the colours in the

images retrieved by each search. Although

translated through Googles algorithms,
collectively, the images represent the
level of understanding of colour and
colour terms by those posting them. The
methodology for this exercise involved
inputting each of the eleven basic colour
terms into Google Image Search with the
addition of the word colour. I then took
the first thirty images from the search
results as a foundation to work with and
analyse. The images presented on this
poster have been processed using a
specific amount of the Gaussian Blur tool

in Photoshop, creating colour fields from

each one. As a body of work this is a
visual representation of each colour term,
mediated by Google and functions as a
snapshot of colour on the Internet that
due to its constantly shifting nature, can
never be replicated exactly. It shows not
only the variety of responses to the names
of colours but also the level of consensus
across the range of images. This method
is but one of the many possible ways of
exploring the relationship between colour
and language but it one that is truly a
reflection of our digital age.

Searching For The Rainbow

The philosopher Wittgenstein famously

asked How do I know that this color is
red? It would be an answer to say:
I have learnt English. But how do we
know what is red? In todays digital age
perhaps a more pertinent response
would be: Google it. The use of Google
image search as a tool to provide a visual
interpretation of colour terms began as no
more than an exercise in understanding,
However, repetition of the process began
to reveal both the changing nature of
the internet and the similarities and
differences between the colours in the

images retrieved by each search. Although

translated through Googles algorithms,
collectively, the images represent the
level of understanding of colour and
colour terms by those posting them. The
methodology for this exercise involved
inputting each of the eleven basic colour
terms into Google Image Search with the
addition of the word colour. I then took
the first thirty images from the search
results as a foundation to work with and
analyse. The blocks of colour presented
on this poster represent an average
colour value of all the pixels in each

image, created using the Average tool

in Photoshop. As a body of work this is a
visual representation of each colour term,
mediated by Google and functions as a
snapshot of colour on the Internet that
due to its constantly shifting nature, can
never be replicated exactly. It shows not
only the variety of responses to the names
of colours but also the level of consensus
across the range of images. This method
is but one of the many possible ways of
exploring the relationship between colour
and language but it one that is truly a
reflection of our digital age.

FIGURES 61 62, TRANSFORMING THE RAINBOW BOOK SPREADS

RED

5.2.2

ORIGINAL IMAGES LAYERED

RED

VERTICAL SLICE STRETCHED

TRANSFORMING THE RAINBOW

In addition to the processes described above, I

extended this line of enquiry by using a combination
of the search results and the processed images of the
basic colour terms. Again, using digital manipulation I
applied other processes to the images in an attempt to
gain further insight into the relationships between the
colours in the images.
All of the processed images for each term were layered
with transparency to give an impression of all the
colours as a whole. It allowed the areas saturated with
the colour used as the search term to be seen more
clearly, see Figures 61 and 6366. A sample of the
centre area of the averaged images (Figure 65) was
taken and enlarged (Figure 66). This was one method for
producing a culmination of the averages in the sample.

It acted as a representation of that particular colour

term, mediated both by Google and Photoshop.
In addition to this, images have been created for each
of the colour terms by taking a vertical, one pixel wide
section through the layered original images. This was
then stretched across a wider area to give a greater
impression of the layering and to portray the colour
composition of the image in a different way. (Figure 62)
Collectively, the experiments represent the conclusion
of this particular area of investigation. While they
created some striking and appealing imagery, the
method of applying additional digital processes to the
images presented little opportunity for further insight or
knowledge.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 63 66, TRANSFORMING THE RAINBOW BOOK SPREADS

RED

COLOURPHON IMAGES LAYERED

RED

BLURRED IMAGES LAYERED

RED

AVERAGED IMAGES LAYERED

RED

AVERAGED IMAGES CUMULATIVE COLOUR

FIGURES 67 74, LOOKING FOR HUE BOOK SPREADS

RUST

SCARLET

TERRACOTTA

SIENNA

WATERMELON

CORAL

CERISE

MAGENTA

5.2.3

LOOKING FOR HUE

To examine the process of using Google Image Search

in another way, I broadened the search to commonly
known, but less widely used terms. As before, the colour
names were used as search terms in Google Image
search. The first thirty images were presented in the
order in which they were retrieved and the groups of
results were then arranged by hue over a sequence
of pages so it was possible to appreciate the colours
resulting from different searches.

Unlike the previous exercises, the images were not

subject to any additional processes. This study focussed
purely on the comparison of results from Google
Image searches, using colour terms beyond the basic
eleven. This method allowed for subtle distinctions to
be observed between colours that are often regarded
as interchangeable, for example wine, claret, maroon

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

INDIGO

PERIWINKLE

COBALT

ULTRAMARINE

CYAN

AQUA

AQUAMARINE

TURQUOISE

and burgundy. It also allowed for similarities to be seen

between colours that are generally thought of as more
disparate. Example pages from the book are shown
above in Figures 6774.
The outcome of the Google image searches may not
provide a conclusive answer to what a colour looks
like, however it is a reflection of the fact that colour is

rarely, if ever, definitive. As with the basic colour terms,

it was possible to see that, despite many different
interpretations, there was in all but a few cases (notably
puce), a degree of consistency across the image search
results.

5.2.4

SAY WHAT YOU SEE

To explore the visual relationships between colour terms

using a different approach, I referred back to the list of
descriptive terms that had been collected in the early
stages of the project.
Since the beginnings of language we have borrowed
the words for things in the world around us to describe
the colours we see. Even what we now know as abstract
colour terms in English, like red and black, originally
referred to something else like blood or night. To reflect
this I analysed the list for colour terms that were also
familiar objects or materials and that you might expect
to see in everyday life. The exercise proved to be an
enlightening process, as it is easy to forget how many
of our colour terms are derived from things in the real
world.
To develop this approach I began to collect examples of
the colour terms I had identified, such as raspberry and
fuchsia. It was clear that the colours of the objects were
key to creating a visually appealing presentation and
could be used as a reminder of the connection between
the colours we see and the words we use. To focus on
this relationship I photographed each of the objects
in isolation, against a white background as a way of
creating emphasis. These images were arranged by hue,
one per page and collated as a book. To engage the
viewer I included objects that could be identified with
relative ease and titled the book Say What You See
as an invitation for people to guess the colour name/

object depicted. Although the list contained many

terms, I deliberately discounted particularly obscure
names like cinnabar and porphyry because it is unlikely
that the majority of viewers would have identified the
link between the object and the colour. While it is
impossible to gage whether everyone would recognise
sage it is not unreasonable to assume that most
people would be relatively familiar with the objects that
have been presented, and therefore should be able
to determine most of colour names depicted in the
images.
To test this, different versions of some images were
presented to ascertain which ones communicated the
colour/object most successfully. As part of the editing
process for the book, spreads was shown to a number
of people unconnected with the course and the project
to make sure that all of the colours/objects could be
recognised. Finally, to alleviate any uncertainty, an index
of all of the colour names/objects was provided at the
back of the book, with a corresponding number on
each page. This element of the design was the subject
of a number of iterations in order to strike a balance
between providing a reference without distracting
from the image on the page. Some examples of these
iterations can be seen in Figures 7578. Spreads of the
final layout are shown in Figures 7986.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 75 78, SAY WHAT YOU SEE BOOK LAYOUT ITERATIONS

TOMATO

26

MELON

27

30

31

26

30

TOMATO

30

27

31

26

31

MELON

30

27

31

FIGURES 79 86, SAY WHAT YOU SEE BOOK SPREADS

08

09

14

15

30

31

34

35

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

42

43

44

45

48

49

62

63

5.2.5

DECONSTRUCTING THE RAINBOW

As a final approach to exploring this aspect of the

research question I considered how we divide the
spectrum into colour categories using language. Many
of this inconsistencies and disagreements that arise
when describing or labelling colours occur when the hue
in question is close to the boundary between two colour
names. For example bluey-green or greeny blue.
Examining the transitions that occur in colour gradients
was a useful method for exploring this concept. By
deconstructing the gradients into varying numbers
of equidistant steps the change from one colour to
another was more apparent. As we all see colour slightly
differently the point at which we perceive green to
become yellow will always vary. This study was not
designed to provide a definitive answer. However, by
presenting the transitions as defined stages the viewer
is able to observe and question where the boundaries
between colour categories lie.
Presented in the book (Figures 8790) are a number of
different gradient studies that demonstrate different
methods of dividing gradients into steps in order
to understand how the colours change throughout
the process. These are accompanied by referenced
quotations and statements that discuss the nature of
our colour spectrum and the way we categorise it with
language.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 87 90, DECONSTRUCTING THE RAINBOW BOOK SPREADS

SPECTRUM STUDIES

FOURTEEN DIVISIONS

SPECTRUM STUDIES

TWENTY-ONE DIVISIONS

GRADIENT STUDIES

GRADIENT STUDIES

WHEN DOES RED BECOME ORANGE?

GRADIENT STUDIES

WHEN DOES ORANGE BECOME YELLOW?

GRADIENT STUDIES

HOW DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?

GRADIENT STUDIES

IS THIS GREEN OR BLUE?

HOW DOES MAGENTA BECOME RED?

5.3

FOCUS 3

The Names of Colours: The consistency of

their application, interpretation, definition and
understanding.

of questions rather than having different groups of

participants. This would allow for a more reliable and
accurate comparison of results.

For this aspect of the project I adopted both

quantitative and qualitative data collection methods.
This was particularly appropriate because of the focus
on how colour names are used (or misused) by real
people. This has been addressed with a quantitative
approach, to gain a broad-based response to a set
of inquiries in to this subject. In contrast, in depth,
one-to-one interviews with a select group of experts,
provides a qualitative contribution to this investigation.
For the design and execution of both research activities
I have referred to guidance on best practises in data
collection, to ensure that not only the most appropriate
methods are employed, but that methods ensure
responses that have a relevant relationship to the
research question. Research Methods Knowledge Base
(http://www.socialresearchmethods.net/kb/index.php)
has proved a valuable resource in this process, as has
reference to Orlagh OBriens project Emotionally Vague
(Fig. 134, Appendix A).

After reviewing my proposal and the original research

activities for the project I decided to discard the
investigation of how people colour their mental images.
For example when prompted by the word grass what
percentage of people have a mental image of grass that
is green? I felt that this aspect of the original proposal
strayed too far, focussing on associations rather than
colour names.

5.3.1 QUANTITATIVE RESEARCH

As outlined in the Action Plan of the proposal for
this project, surveys initially comprised a large part
of my research activities. Originally I had planned to
divide the various concepts under investigation into
separate surveys. However on reflection, I concluded
that this method was impractical, time-consuming
and unnecessary. By editing, carefully structuring
the questions and only seeking information that was
genuinely relevant to the project I was able to reduce
the questionnaire into a format that was condensed
enough to be issued as one survey. This was a far more
satisfactory arrangement as it was likely to encourage
a greater level of participation and meant that the
respondents would be consistent across the series

After much reflection and evaluation on how others

had surveyed colour, including Nathan Moroney for
The Colour Thesaurus, Dimitris Mylonas for his Online
Colour Naming Model, Rob and Nick Carter for their
Perception of Colour Project, CrowdFlowers Interactive
Colour Label Explorer, and Orlagh OBriens colour work
for Emotionally Vague my survey took on two purposes.
The first was to gather views concerning general ideas
about colour naming. These included straight-forward
questions designed to assess colour vocabulary and
attitudes towards communicating colour. To examine
colour vocabulary example questions involved asking
people to name as many colours as they could. This
was the first research question in the survey and also
acted as a primer for later questions, to encourage
participants to think broadly about the colour names
they knew. Attitudes towards talking about colour
were addressed by asking questions, similar to some
posed for my qualitative research interviews, including
Do you ever struggle to describe exactly what colour
something is?, Do you think it is important to be able
to describe a colour accurately? and Have you ever
had a disagreement with someone about what colour
something was?. Responses to these questions allowed
me to ascertain how much people thought about how
they communicate colour generally and provided further
validation for this research project.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

The second function of the survey was to gather

data that could be converted into visual structures.
Collectively, these would form the output for the major
project and could be used to make a statement on how
we communicate colour using language, specifically
our use (or misuse) of colour names. As several pieces
of research, mentioned earlier, had already surveyed
colour naming, I wanted to somehow differentiate
this research and avoid replicating their methods and
results too closely. All of the existing research I had
looked at examined only one half of the relationship
between colours and colour names. Either presenting
participants with a colour and asking them to name it,
or presented participants with a colour name and asked
them to select a colour they thought best represented
it. As a result I decided to structure my survey so that it
examined both of these aspects.
To add a further dimension to the study I wanted to
examine if the relationship between colours and colour
names changed as the names and colours became more
unusual. Rather than survey a large quantity of colour
names or colours, as others have, I chose to base this
aspect of the survey on three sets of eleven colours and
three sets of eleven colour names, totalling sixty-six
stimuli.
The foundation for this approach were the eleven basic
colour terms in English. These terms served as the
simplest level of colour and colour name identification.
To build on this I devised two additional sets of eleven
colours that were progressively further away from the
focai of the eleven basic colour categories. These sets,
combined with the eleven basic colours, provided the
thirty-three colour stimuli for participants to name.
All of the colours for the swatches were selected
from Pantones Solid to Process colour book, so that
corresponding CMYK and RGB values were available for
my own reference.

For the following section of the survey, participants were

asked the reverse: to select a colour that they thought
best represented a given name. As well as the eleven
basic colour terms, I selected eleven terms that are
still relatively well known but less commonly used and
eleven colour terms that are obscure and rarely used in
English.
These two lists of colour names were taken from
the body of colour names that were collated at the
beginning of the project. The final lists included in the
survey were the result of numerous rounds of revision.
The initial shortlist was submitted to the course blog
for comment, to reduce the potential for personal bias
in the selection process and to ensure that the obscure
terms were genuinely obscure. The final lists were then
adjusted to represent a more balanced range of colours,
in order to avoid the dominance of particular hues within
the set.
The charts created for participants to select colours
from for this section of the survey were also produced
using Pantones Solid to Process colour book. Initially,
devising a suitable method for the inclusion of a colour
palette proved to be a hurdle, delaying the launch of the
survey. I lacked the technical knowledge to create an
interactive colour picker, as used in Rob & Nick Carters
Perception of Colour Project. Acquiring the necessary
skills to construct such a device would take up a
disproportionate amount of time, relative to the project
as a whole and the effectiveness of the result. The
eventual solution was to number the colours in the chart
(I chose to disregard Pantones numbering conventions
as it could have proved confusing and was likely to be
meaningless to many participants), providing a reference
for both participants completing the survey, and for
myself to interpret the results. The chart is composed of
just over half of the colours, arranged in the sequence
that they appear in the Pantone book. Originally, the
intention was to include the complete range. However,
after an initial pilot of the survey, the feedback indicated

that there were too many colours to choose from. As

a result the colour book was reduced to an abridged
version. This still featured an ample range for spectral
and non-spectral colours but lessened the sense of
overwhelming choice.
As well as the main body of questions about
communicating colour, the start of the survey included
two additional sections. The first was designed to
gather key demographic information, such as age,
gender, level of English and involvement in creative
industries, in order to enable the comparison of results
across different categories and to look for evidence of
patterns. The second set of questions aims to ascertain
the viewing conditions for each participant. As the
appearance of colour can vary, both across devices
and types of screen and with levels and sources of
luminescence or ambient light, I found it necessary
to take these factors into account. In a survey of this
nature, it would be impossible to control all these
variables, without administering it under laboratory
conditions. This was beyond the time and resources
available, so acknowledging the potential for variability
was an appropriate compromise. Notably, the two other
online colour naming projects that I referred to for this
project, An Online Colour Naming Experiment and the
Unconstrained Web-based Color Naming Experiment
by Dimitris Mylonas and Nathan Moroney respectively,
take two opposing approaches to the issue of viewing
consistency. The Online Colour Naming Experiment
gives both instructions for basic screen calibration,
asks for details of display and viewing conditions
and includes a colour vision test. In contrast, the
Unconstrained Web-based Color Naming Experiment,
requires no such information from participants. In the
methodology for the experiment Nathan Moroney
acknowledges that uncontrolled hardware, software and
viewing conditions (Moroney, 2003) are a disadvantage
of the web-based method. However, he goes on to
mention that the advent of sRGB has provided some
degree of convergence in color encoding and display

for the world wide web. Further more, colorimetric

display models and color appearance models allow
some estimation of likely areas of maximum variability.
It is also unclear when and if all of these issues can, or
even should be, addressed such that the real world is in
better agreement with laboratory conditions. (Moroney,
2003).
In response to these two different approaches, I opted
for a solution somewhere between the two. I do not
have the knowledge to use colourmetric models to take
into account the influence of hardware and viewing
conditions on responses, unlike Nathan Moroney. As
a result I felt it necessary to include questions in the
survey that address the issue instead. However, my own
questions were far less detailed than those of the Online
Colour Naming Experiment. As I also do not have the
required skills to produce a statistical analysis on the
influence of different conditions, therefore it would be
superfluous to collect data to this effect.
The survey was piloted to a small sample of people, of
mixed gender and age, who were unconnected to the
project and the creative industries. This was to ensure
that all of the questions could be easily understood and
answered by those not involved or unfamiliar with the
subject of this research. The final version of the survey,
which was launched to the public, can be see in full in
Appendix B of this report.
To launch the survey live to the wider public I used
online survey generator Surveymonkey. Although there
are many online survey hosts available, after reviewing
a range of potential options Surveymonkey presented
itself as the most comprehensive and straightforward to
use. It produced a professional and simple to complete
survey, with a wide range of available question and
answer formats. The in-built analytical tools also allowed
me to track the number of completed surveys and gave
a summary break down of the distribution of answers for
multiple-choice questions.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

5.3.2
The survey distribution followed a random sample
approach, as no one specific demographic group
was targeted and a demographically representative
sample of the general population was not actively sort.
Although there are pros and cons to both random
and stratified sampling, random sampling is generally
considered as a valid approach.
The target sample size for the survey was set at
two hundred responses. After reviewing other
methodologies for similar research projects, Nathan
Moroneys research, for instance received 670 unique
responses, but over a far longer period, two hundred
responses was judged to be an adequate sample size
for research of this nature and level. I felt it necessary to
specify an aim for the number of responses, to ensure
that this aspect of the research was viable. This involved
careful consideration, to strike a balance between a
sample size that would create a valid conclusion and one
that could be processed within the time constraints of
the project. Of course, it would always be preferable to
have a greater level of participation, but it was necessary
to constrain the sample size to a degree, in order to
contain the scope of the research.
The survey was distributed through posting the
automatically generated link on Facebook, the course
blog, my own research blog and through email,
as outlined in the proposal. To increase the pool
of potential respondents the survey link was also
posted on several online forums and blogs including
Colourlovers and The Mostly Colour Channel.

QUALITATIVE RESEARCH

To compliment the quantitative element of primary

data collection for this project I have supported it
with a qualitative research method. This activity was
not written into the proposal as it was not originally
anticipated.
During the course of the project I have encountered
a number of people who work with colour and are
specialists or experts in their respective field, from
colour perception, dying, working with pigments to
colour management. To exploit the potential of this
collective resource I devised a set of questions to use
as the basis for in depth interviews. The questions
were structured around themes and concepts that I
had identified in the course of my research as being
fundamental to the project. Some of these are outlined
in Key Concepts and the full list of questions can be
seen in Appendix C.
I was able to arrange a series of interviews with people
from a number of different industries, including printing,
design, fine art and research through a number of
methods and contacts, all who work with and have to
communicate colour in some capacity as part of what
they do. The interviewees were identified in one of two
ways. Three were personal recommendations by other
people who were familiar with my project. The rest
were experts that I had become aware of through the
course of my research, who appeared to be particularly
expert or specialist in their field or whose work was
particularly relevant to my investigation. Collectively
they represent range of diverse professions. There was
the potential to extend this research activity to a larger
group of people such as architects and eye specialists.
However, by confining it to a select group it ensured
that the responses retained a relevance to the project. It
also helped to maintain the diversity and quality of the
different views, avoiding repetition and overlap.

FIGURES 91 94, CONVERSATIONS ON COLOUR BOOK LAYOUT ITERATIONS

The
Dyer

Karen Skorski works as a Colour Index and

Training Officer for the Society of Dyers
and Colourists, based in Bradford, West
Yorkshire, but has had a long career in the
textiles and the dye industry. Over the years
she has been involved in textile testing,
dying and also specialises in colour fastness.
Previously working for ICI and Zeneca and
as it was taken over by BASF and finally
became Dystar, Karen became involved with
the SDC in the late 1980s through joining
as a member of a technical committee. She
has since become an employee and now
manages the Societys Colour Index and
facilitates their training courses. I was able to
speck to Karen about her work with colour
during my visit to the SDC.

Can you describe your background and current position? Ok, background was, Ill go though it.

Can you describe your background and current position? Ok, background was, Ill go though it.

I originally started in physical testing of textiles, so nothing to do with colour but to do with textiles. I
worked for a company called English Sewing, which became Coats Sewing Threads, so in sewing
thread. And then from there I moved on to work for ICI, which was, quite a, obviously a large
company at the time. And I worked in dying, in the laboratory dying then, so, some celluloses;
cotton. After about five years I moved to specialise in colour fastness testing. So, and I sort of stayed
in that side of my career for many, many years. The company changed from ICI to Zeneca. We
became BASF, bought out by. And then we were sold. Well, BASF put its dyestuff business together
to become Dystar. So I worked for four companies but never actually left. So that was my
background really, in the dyestuff industry. I took a few years out and worked in a college, an FE
college for a while. And now I work for the Society [of Dyers and Colourists]. I look after two areas
really. The Colour Index, which is a database, if you like, of colour with some structures and things on
there. And I also get involved with the training side of things. So if company X needs some training I
help arrange it, find the correct trainer and run the course for them. How did you get involved with
the Society? I originally got involved as, because I came on, for a committee, for a colour fastness
committee. Because many years ago, the fastness committee as it is now, which is the BSI [British
Standards Institute] Committee used to be a textiles committee run by the Society. And my
predecessor at work was retiring and I was asked to come on. And at the time you had to be,
needed to be a member. I became a member in 1988. I joined the committees and I have been there
ever since really. So even though I didnt work for the society I was involved. So are you involved
with communicating colour in your current role? Not actually communicating colour, as such. I
deal with colour, from the colour index side. And I will do some with the training side, so I will get
involved with explaining about what kinds of things the trainers are going to talk about. But I dont
actually do it in my day-to-day job. And do you have to make judgements about or describe
colour as a part of that? Not so much now but I have done over the years. Because I have to
describe whether its a bluish red or a yellowish red. Because from a dyestuff manufacturers point of
view its very important to be able to describe the colour. Do you think you are good at talking
about colours then? Do I think I am good? Its one of those things you just do as a natural thing, its
a bit like, its a bit like having a language, I suppose. Its just a different language that you learn to
speak and communicate. And do you ever struggle to describe colours or to articulate
precisely what colour something is? I wouldnt struggle with somebody who had the same
expertise as me. So I could say to somebody, its a bluish red, if Im using that as an example. But
somebody who has no experience of that, then you have to try and describe it in another way. And
thats when it becomes a bit more difficult. So do you think in general other people are good at
describing colour or have a good vocabulary of colour names? No, I think theres so many. I
mean, we were in one of the training courses the other week and I forget how many thousand
colours that she said there were. Think most people wouldnt be able to describe those kind of
colours. Most people, if you said to them red they would think, maybe of a pillar-box red. Thats
probably what they would visualise in their mind, I guess. Something bright... red. But they wouldnt
think of that red being different shades of red, different depths, going down to a pink. And do you
ever have difficulty trying to imagine a colour that someone else is describing? Again, if
theyre not trained yes, it can be difficult because what they think, if somebody said to you, I dont
know, like a salmon pink, it might sound like oh yeah I can imagine a salmon pink. But what they
think is a salmon pink and what you think... Has working with colour changed the way you talk
about it and express it? Definitely. I think it changes your whole perspective on colour because,
even things like at home. If youre matching something or doing something it will annoy me if it
doesnt, because its just something that you do automatically. Do you think that there are enough
names for colours or words to describe colour, or do think that there are too many? I dont
know about too many, I dont think we could ever have too many but its just, its a difficult one to
answer, I think that we need to have good descriptors for colour. But I think people have to
understand what those descriptors are. And I think the more you have, the more complicated it
would become for somebody to understand the differences. Do you ever use other systems or

I originally started in physical testing of textiles, so nothing to do with colour but to do with textiles. I
worked for a company called English Sewing, which became Coats Sewing Threads, so in sewing
thread. And then from there I moved on to work for ICI, which was, quite a, obviously a large
company at the time. And I worked in dying, in the laboratory dying then, so, some celluloses;
cotton. After about five years I moved to specialise in colour fastness testing. So, and I sort of stayed
in that side of my career for many, many years. The company changed from ICI to Zeneca. We
became BASF, bought out by. And then we were sold. Well, BASF put its dyestuff business together
to become Dystar. So I worked for four companies but never actually left. So that was my
background really, in the dyestuff industry. I took a few years out and worked in a college, an FE
college for a while. And now I work for the Society [of Dyers and Colourists]. I look after two areas
really. The Colour Index, which is a database, if you like, of colour with some structures and things on
there. And I also get involved with the training side of things. So if company X needs some training I 13
help arrange it, find the correct trainer and run the course for them. How did you get involved with
the Society? I originally got involved as, because I came on, for a committee, for a colour fastness
committee. Because many years ago, the fastness committee as it is now, which is the BSI [British
Standards Institute] Committee used to be a textiles committee run by the Society. And my
predecessor at work was retiring and I was asked to come on. And at the time you had to be,
needed to be a member. I became a member in 1988. I joined the committees and I have been there
ever since really. So even though I didnt work for the society I was involved. So are you involved
with communicating colour in your current role? Not actually communicating colour, as such. I
deal with colour, from the colour index side. And I will do some with the training side, so I will get
involved with explaining about what kinds of things the trainers are going to talk about. But I dont
actually do it in my day-to-day job. And do you have to make judgements about or describe
colour as a part of that? Not so much now but I have done over the years. Because I have to
describe whether its a bluish red or a yellowish red. Because from a dyestuff manufacturers point of
view its very important to be able to describe the colour. Do you think you are good at talking
about colours then? Do I think I am good? Its one of those things you just do as a natural thing, its
a bit like, its a bit like having a language, I suppose. Its just a different language that you learn to
speak and communicate. And do you ever struggle to describe colours or to articulate
precisely what colour something is? I wouldnt struggle with somebody who had the same
expertise as me. So I could say to somebody, its a bluish red, if Im using that as an example. But
somebody who has no experience of that, then you have to try and describe it in another way. And
thats when it becomes a bit more difficult. So do you think in general other people are good at
describing colour or have a good vocabulary of colour names? No, I think theres so many. I
mean, we were in one of the training courses the other week and I forget how many thousand
colours that she said there were. Think most people wouldnt be able to describe those kind of
colours. Most people, if you said to them red they would think, maybe of a pillar-box red. Thats
probably what they would visualise in their mind, I guess. Something bright... red. But they wouldnt
think of that red being different shades of red, different depths, going down to a pink. And do you
ever have difficulty trying to imagine a colour that someone else is describing? Again, if
theyre not trained yes, it can be difficult because what they think, if somebody said to you, I dont
know, like a salmon pink, it might sound like oh yeah I can imagine a salmon pink. But what they
think is a salmon pink and what you think... Has working with colour changed the way you talk
about it and express it? Definitely. I think it changes your whole perspective on colour because,
even things like at home. If youre matching something or doing something it will annoy me if it
doesnt, because its just something that you do automatically. Do you think that there are enough
names for colours or words to describe colour, or do think that there are too many? I dont
know about too many, I dont think we could ever have too many but its just, its a difficult one to
answer, I think that we need to have good descriptors for colour. But I think people have to
understand what those descriptors are. And I think the more you have, the more complicated it
would become for somebody to understand the differences. Do you ever use other systems or

12

The
Dyer

Karen Skorski works as a Colour Index and Training Officer for the
Society of Dyers and Colourists, based in Bradford, West Yorkshire,
but has had a long career in the textiles and the dye industry. Over
the years she has been involved in textile testing, dying and also
specialises in colour fastness. Previously working for ICI and Zeneca
and as it was taken over by BASF and finally became Dystar, Karen
became involved with the SDC in the late 1980s through joining
as a member of a technical committee. She has since become
an employee and now manages the Societys Colour Index and
facilitates their training courses. I was able to speck to Karen about
her work with colour during my visit to the SDC.

Can you describe your background and current position?

The
Dyer

Ok, background was, Ill go though it. I originally started in physical testing of
textiles, so nothing to do with colour but to do with textiles. I worked for a company
called English Sewing, which became Coats Sewing Threads, so in sewing thread.
And then from there I moved on to work for ICI, which was, quite a, obviously a
large company at the time. And I worked in dying, in the laboratory dying then,
so, some celluloses; cotton. After about five years I moved to specialise in colour
fastness testing. So, and I sort of stayed in that side of my career for many, many
years. The company changed from ICI to Zeneca. We became BASF, bought out by.
And then we were sold. Well, BASF put its dyestuff business together to become
Dystar. So I worked for four companies but never actually left. So that was my
background really, in the dyestuff industry. I took a few years out and worked in
a college, an FE college for a while. And now I work for the Society [of Dyers and
Colourists]. I look after two areas really. The Colour Index, which is a database, if
you like, of colour with some structures and things on there. And I also get involved
with the training side of things. So if company X needs some training I help arrange
it, find the correct trainer and run the course for them.

How did you get involved with the Society?

I originally got involved as, because I came on, for a committee, for a colour
fastness committee. Because many years ago, the fastness committee as it is
now, which is the BSI [British Standards Institute] Committee used to be a textiles
committee run by the Society. And my predecessor at work was retiring and I
was asked to come on. And at the time you had to be, needed to be a member.
I became a member in 1988. I joined the committees and I have been there ever
since really. So even though I didnt work for the society I was involved.

Karen Skorski works as a Colour Index and Training Officer for the
Society of Dyers and Colourists, based in Bradford, West Yorkshire,
but has had a long career in the textiles and the dye industry. Over
the years she has been involved in textile testing, dying and also
specialises in colour fastness. Previously working for ICI and Zeneca
and as it was taken over by BASF and finally became Dystar, Karen
became involved with the SDC in the late 1980s through joining
as a member of a technical committee. She has since become
an employee and now manages the Societys Colour Index and
facilitates their training courses. I was able to speck to Karen about
her work with colour during my visit to the SDC.

So are you involved with communicating colour in your current role?

Not actually communicating colour, as such. I deal with colour, from the colour
index side. And I will do some with the training side, so I will get involved with
explaining about what kinds of things the trainers are going to talk about. But I
dont actually do it in my day-to-day job.

And do you have to make judgements about or describe colour as a part of that?
Not so much now but I have done over the years. Because I have to describe
whether its a bluish red or a yellowish red. Because from a dyestuff manufacturers
point of view its very important to be able to describe the colour.

Do you think you are good at talking about colours then?

Do I think I am good? Its one of those things you just do as a natural thing, its a
bit like, its a bit like having a language, I suppose. Its just a different language that
you learn to speak and communicate.

As an extension of this activity I was also able to speak

to several visually impaired people through a connection
to the charity Blind in Greenwich (BIG), including
their chief executive Colin Jones. Although this was
not directly related to my initial research question it
provided a valuable insight into the experience and
perception of colour for people with a visual impairment

Can you describe your background and current position?

The
Dyer

Karen Skorski works as a Colour

Index and Training Officer for the
Society of Dyers and Colourists, based
in Bradford, West Yorkshire, but has
had a long career in the textiles and
the dye industry. Over the years she
has been involved in textile testing,
dying and also specialises in colour
fastness. Previously working for ICI
and Zeneca and as it was taken over
by BASF and finally became Dystar,
Karen became involved with the SDC
in the late 1980s through joining as a
member of a technical committee. She
has since become an employee and
now manages the Societys Colour
Index and facilitates their training
courses. I was able to speck to Karen
about her work with colour during my
visit to the SDC.

Ok, background was, Ill go though it. I originally started in physical testing of
textiles, so nothing to do with colour but to do with textiles. I worked for a company
called English Sewing, which became Coats Sewing Threads, so in sewing thread.
And then from there I moved on to work for ICI, which was, quite a, obviously a
large company at the time. And I worked in dying, in the laboratory dying then,
so, some celluloses; cotton. After about five years I moved to specialise in colour
fastness testing. So, and I sort of stayed in that side of my career for many, many
years. The company changed from ICI to Zeneca. We became BASF, bought out by.
And then we were sold. Well, BASF put its dyestuff business together to become
Dystar. So I worked for four companies but never actually left. So that was my
background really, in the dyestuff industry. I took a few years out and worked in
a college, an FE college for a while. And now I work for the Society [of Dyers and
Colourists]. I look after two areas really. The Colour Index, which is a database, if
you like, of colour with some structures and things on there. And I also get involved
with the training side of things. So if company X needs some training I help arrange
it, find the correct trainer and run the course for them.

How did you get involved with the Society?

I originally got involved as, because I came on, for a committee, for a colour
fastness committee. Because many years ago, the fastness committee as it is
now, which is the BSI [British Standards Institute] Committee used to be a textiles
committee run by the Society. And my predecessor at work was retiring and I
was asked to come on. And at the time you had to be, needed to be a member.
I became a member in 1988. I joined the committees and I have been there ever
since really. So even though I didnt work for the society I was involved.

So are you involved with communicating colour in your current role?

Not actually communicating colour, as such. I deal with colour, from the colour
index side. And I will do some with the training side, so I will get involved with
explaining about what kinds of things the trainers are going to talk about. But I
dont actually do it in my day-to-day job.

And do you have to make judgements about or describe colour as a part of that?
Not so much now but I have done over the years. Because I have to describe
whether its a bluish red or a yellowish red. Because from a dyestuff manufacturers
point of view its very important to be able to describe the colour.

Do you think you are good at talking about colours then?

Do I think I am good? Its one of those things you just do as a natural thing, its a
bit like, its a bit like having a language, I suppose. Its just a different language that
you learn to speak and communicate.

and how that affects both their use of language to

describe colour and how the language used to describe
colour affects their understanding of the world.
The interviews largely followed the same basic sequence
but with a degree of flexibility so that questioning
could be tailored and adapted to the responses given.
In all of the cases I was able to record the interview by

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

FIGURES 95 98, CONVERSATIONS ON COLOUR BOOK SPREADS

Can you describe your background and what you do now,

professionally?

Can you describe your background and current position?

The
Dyer

Ok, background was, Ill go though it. I originally started in physical testing
of textiles, so nothing to do with colour but to do with textiles. I worked for a
company called English Sewing, which became Coats Sewing Threads, so in
sewing thread. And then from there I moved on to work for ICI, which was, quite
a, obviously a large company at the time. And I worked in dying, in the laboratory
dying then, so, some celluloses; cotton. After about five years I moved to specialise
in colour fastness testing. So, and I sort of stayed in that side of my career for many,
many years. The company changed from ICI to Zeneca. We became BASF, bought
out by. And then we were sold. Well, BASF put its dyestuff business together to
become Dystar. So I worked for four companies but never actually left. So that was
my background really, in the dyestuff industry. I took a few years out and worked
in a college, an FE college for a while. And now I work for the Society [of Dyers and
Colourists]. I look after two areas really. The Colour Index, which is a database, if
you like, of colour with some structures and things on there. And I also get involved
with the training side of things. So if company X needs some training I help arrange
it, find the correct trainer and run the course for them.

The
Historical
Analyst

How did you get involved with the Society?

Karen Skorski works as a Colour Index and Training

Officer for the Society of Dyers and Colourists, based
in Bradford, West Yorkshire, but has had a long career
in the textiles and the dye industry. Over the years she
has been involved in textile testing, dying and also
specialises in colour fastness. Previously working for ICI
and Zeneca and as it was taken over by BASF and finally
became Dystar, Karen became involved with the SDC in
the late 1980s through joining as a member of a technical
committee. She has since become an employee and now
manages the Societys Colour Index and facilitates their
training courses. I was able to speck to Karen about her
work with colour during my visit to the SDC.

I originally got involved as, because I came on, for a committee, for a colour
fastness committee. Because many years ago, the fastness committee as it is
now, which is the BSI [British Standards Institute] Committee used to be a textiles
committee run by the Society. And my predecessor at work was retiring and I
was asked to come on. And at the time you had to be, needed to be a member.
I became a member in 1988. I joined the committees and I have been there ever
since really. So even though I didnt work for the society I was involved.

So are you involved with communicating colour in your current role?

Not actually communicating colour, as such. I deal with colour, from the colour
index side. And I will do some with the training side, so I will get involved with
explaining about what kinds of things the trainers are going to talk about. But I
dont actually do it in my day-to-day job.

And do you have to make judgements about or describe

colour as a part of that?
Not so much now but I have done over the years. Because I
have to describe whether its a bluish red or a yellowish red.
Because from a dyestuff manufacturers point of view its very
important to be able to describe the colour.

Patrick Baty has been the owner of Papers and Paints, a

well respected specialist paint shop in Chelsea, London,
for twenty-five years. Having built on the experience of
his father, Robert Baty, who founded the business and
completed a research degree on the paints and materials
used by seventeenth and eighteenth century house
builders, Patrick now specialises in colour matching paint
and colour for historic buildings, and has been involved
in creating heritage ranges for a number of consumer
brands. The business was also awarded a Royal Warrant
by the Queen in 2007. I was able to meet with Patrick at
Chelsea Arts Club to discuss his experiences with colour
and how this has shaped how he talks about it.

Do you think you are good at talking about colours then?

Do I think I am good? Its one of those things you just do as a natural
thing, its a bit like, its a bit like having a language, I suppose. Its just a
different language that you learn to speak and communicate.

David Batchelor has used colour as a prominent

feature of his work for many years. He has exhibited
his brightly coloured trademark sculptures and light
installations all over the world. Recent works include
Big Rock Candy Fountain, commissioned by Islington
Council as a temporary site specific commission which
resided above Archway tube station. His work also
featured in the contemporary sculpture group show,
The Shape of Things to Come at the Saatchi Gallery.
As well as sculpture he has written and edited a handful
of books, most notably Chromaphobia, an analysis and
commentary about the marginalisation
and suspicion of colour in the history
of Western fine art and culture. I
visited David at his studio in East
London to speak to him about his
views on colour and the pitfalls of
using language to communicate it,
something he discusses in his own book.

So can you describe your background and your current professional

practise?
Yes, well Im an artist and I studied, I mean I knew when I was at school I was going
to do art. Not, necessarily because I was the very best of the lot but because it
definitely was the cooler activity than the other ones. I didnt go, become an artist
when I left school. I went to college, I actually then taught for quite a long time and
began to write about art, criticism and kind of, art historical kind of stuff. And, but,
for the last ten, ten-fifteen years Ive been working as an artist, and, pretty much to
the exclusion of everything else apart from writing.

system on it. As to using colour terms, I try to avoid that, and I never, never title my works
with colour names. I never call it blue this or red that. And the reason I try to avoid colour,
using colour names, I mean even just talking with my assistant about it is that, as Ive said
many times, the range of colours that are at my disposal in the studio is several thousand,
just from paint pots and plexiglass strips, then we have really a very limited range of colour
names. And theres the basic eleven, the eleven basic colour terms, that Berlin and Kay
talked about back in the early sixties. So theres always, for me that huge gap between what
we can experience in terms of colour and what we can say about it. And I want the work to
be about the experience of colour rather than about the name, the colour names. Yes. Is
one of your questions whats your favourite colour?

It is, its at the end.

Well, [laughs] it was, it was to my astonishment its now twenty years ago that I
first made a piece of work with colour. And if you saw my talk at Byam Shaw [part
of Central Saint Martins College of Art and Design] you know that before that I
wasnt using it. And I started using it almost by accident, just as a way of trying to
figure out a different problem, which wasnt a colour problem. But the minute I did
start using it, which was in three-dimensional work rather than painting, it kind of
dawned on me very quickly that there was sort of, there was a general absence of
colour in contemporary art, in London at the time. You have to be quite specific
and I just thought that was strange. I said why? Why is that? I kind of thought that
it might give me something to think about for a little bit, and yeah, give me a bit of
space to work in, that other people werent working in. And whats really surprising,
is that, you know, twenty years later Im still, still working on it.

Ok I knew it would be, it always is [laughs].

Almost everything I do has a basis in colour. And its not the only
thing its about, its also about, the city, the street, about found
materials, about modernity and stuff. Its about the relationship
between painting and sculpture, so its about a lot of stuff. And
because Ive done so much stuff with colour and on colour, even
when I do something, which is just white, its still seen as colourful.
Which it is, because its about the colour white, which is one of
the great, as great, as, complex a colour as any other. Im sort of
stuck with it now I think.

Do you have to communicate or talk about colour to other people in

what you do?
Yes, quite a lot. I mean, mostly in terms of, there would be two different
ways. One will be, if you like, doing talks at colleges and so forth and
talking with you now. But thats, in a way, thats not quite talking about
colour, thats talking about ideas about colour. So its, and Ive always said
that the book Chromaphobia, that I published now ten, eleven years ago.
Thats not a book about colour, its a book about ideas about colour so...
But I do often have to, you know, practically in the studio, communicate
things about colour. And what I usually do is take a swatch, is to use a
sample. And you can match samples, in a way that words, fail you. Words
simply cant do that detail of, work at that level of specificity.

How good are you at talking about colour? And do you ever struggle
to describe colours precisely?
Im brilliant at talking about colour, or talking about the ideas about colour.
Im as bad as everyone else at finding descriptive terms for particular
colours, no Im rubbish at it. And I think that most people write very badly
about colour, colours. When they are trying to evoke a particular colour.
People tend to write very badly. It gets all syrupy and poetic and, so no,
Im really bad at that, so I find ways of avoiding it.

So do you have to make judgements about or describe colours in what you do now?
Well I make judgements about colours all the time. In the studio, does this work? Is the
best, theres a stack of boxes here, [gestures to a part finishes sculpture to his left] which
is a work I am making for a collector and Ive got to, Ive got to colour it in basically. So
Im constantly asking myself, does this Perspex work here or not? And you try it and if it
holds you attention you go yeah and if not you try something else. So its always done
empirically, I dont have any kind of system or theory for how colours should go next to each
other. And I dont believe that it is possible. I think, I think you loose a lot if you impose a

dictaphone and then transcribe the dialogue, for which

I consulted guidelines on interview transcription, to
compile the eventual document.
These lengthier interviews with colour experts and
specialists were designed to contrast with the shorter,
more structured questioning and wider public
participation, used for the survey.

But I joined him and within a very short time, I discovered that
actually, not all of it, but a major part of what he did was really
very interesting. And that was in particular, matching colours,
talking to people about colour, choosing colours and that, that
kind of thing. And within a short time of starting working with
him, this was about 1980-81, I became aware of a, sort of, trend
almost, that people would come in and they would ask me for
advice about the sort of colours that might have been used in an
eighteenth century house. And I realised that I had no more idea
than they did. But I thought, well, its actually quite an interesting
subject, or potentially an interesting subject, so Ill set out to find
out. And I started to do some fairly basic research. I used to go
along, at the weekends, Saturday at least, to the National Art
library at the V&A and then in the evenings Id go to either the
old British Museum, the reading room, the round reading room,
or otherwise to the RIBA library. And I started to hoover up all
the early works to do with colour and paint and house painting,
in particular. And that went on and on and then I thought, well,
in those days, joining the army was a bit different and you didnt
normally go to university as well, I went to Sandhurst. So I thought
well, I really need to, sort of, test my level of knowledge and I
want to be directed.
And about the same time, about 82. No, I supposed this would
have been much later, the end of the eighties, having slowly been
learning the business from my father and learning about tubes of
artists oil colour, hearing and reading about things like Prussian
Blue and French Ultramarine, that kind of thing. I was reading the
Sunday papers and I saw that the, as it was then, the Polytechnic
of East London had a new course. And you could write your own
degree course. If you could find somebody who could supervise
you, and if they felt that it was a subject worthy of academic
research then theyd support you. So I went along and there were
about seven of us, all looking at completely different subjects,
absolutely different. And most of us were mature students,
people who had been doing other things and wanted to retrain.
And I set out to look at The House Painter: his methods and
materials from the 1650s to 1850, and was allocated a very nice

And how are you involved with colour in what you do?

So youre still doing pieces that are focussed on colour then?

Yep. My background, its actually quite unusual. I trained as a

soldier and spent many years in the army. And then, for various
reasons decided to leave. And I discovered, or I knew that I really
wasnt equipped for anything outside of the army. I worked briefly
for an art dealer in Bond Street, because I know quite a bit about
early twentieth century British art. And then, having just married
and needing to earn some money I asked my father. I mean I knew
my father ran the shop. He started a shop; I didnt really know
what he did because I had no interest in it.

So you think that the level of colour vocabulary is quite poor?

Yeah, it is. But its not just poor that we are bad at it. Its poor because I think its a
limit of language. Or everyones poor at it. I really. And theres, obviously, theres
been a lot of work about the relationship between language and colour which
I think is deeply fascinating because it, because it reminds us how limited our
vocabularies can be sometimes.

Do you ever have difficulty trying to imagine what colour

someone else is talking about?
Well yeah, at least in some effect its very easy, because if
someone said well you know, that I had a nice red apple or, you
know, you think you... I dont know what you actually have in your
mind, I mean, theres always a sort of schematic image that will do
but of course you have no way of knowing the real character of
that red, none at all.

Has working with colour changed the way you talk about it then?
Yeah, I mean totally. Its probably encouraged me to talk about it a bit less
and to work with it. Its certainly, I mean, working with it now for, as I said
twenty years, its taught me how extraordinarily complex colour is. But at
the same time, its a completely common, everyday, human experience.
And I like that relationship between the ordinariness of colour experience
and the extraordinary complexity of it at the same time. And I love
the idea that everyone, everyone has the idea, has views about colour,
everyone does and they always want to tell you them as well. And yet no
one really understands, not even scientists, really understand where it is in
the world.

Are you more aware of colours and how you describe them since you
have worked with them a lot?
Absolutely. You kind of hope, when you are doing art of any kind that that
enables you to really focus in on one or other aspect of, you know, the
visual world or at least that which you are involved with. And I think with
any kind of practise, the more you focus and the more you attend to it the
more it opens up.

So how good do you think other people are at talking about colour? Theyre
as bad as me [laughs]. I cant think of anyone, I wish I could say, oh yeah I know
someone who just has a way of pinpointing it. My favourite novel which uses colour
descriptions is Thomas Pynchons, Gravitys Rainbow, where he invents these colour
terms like, I think Drowned Man Green as one of the really great colour terms.
Thats, good, but... Roland Barthes was quite good at colour terms, at least, what
he called Warhols colour, a very particular, kind of chemical colour, which I thought
was good. But again, thats fairly general rather than specific.

So do you think there are enough names for colours?

No! [Laughs] Well, I mean yes and no. I mean yes because I dont think if you had any more
names it would actually help very much. No, in that theyll never be enough names to
match, the amount, the quantity of colours that we can perceive.

As a body of work the interviews act as both a piece of

research in their own right and as valuable supporting
material for this report and the rest of the project. The
transcripts were presented as a book, iterations of the
layout can be seen in Figures 9194, while examples of
the final design are shown above in Figures 9598.

Development
of
Outputs

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Development
of Outputs
This section of the report describes key stages in the
development of the final outcome. It explains how research
for and feedback about the project continued to inform the
creation of an output and how the structure of the body of
work presented relates to the research question.

From the outset, I had specified in the proposal for the

project that the outcomes of the research would be
print based. This was established this early on because
although I felt that certain aspects of the research
might lend themselves to a multimedia format quite
successfully, I lacked the technical skill to execute an
outcome of that nature to any desirable level of quality. I
had speculated in the proposal that the outcome would
likely take the form of a book or posters and could
potentially be a dictionary or a series of explorations
that came together to form a collection.
As the initial background research progressed it became
apparent that a dictionary was not the most suitable
medium for an output. As part of the investigation I had
discovered a number of existing hard copy dictionaries
such as Maerz & Paul A Dictionary of Colour, first
published in 1930 and Ian Patersons more recent, A
Dictionary of Colour from 2003. During my meeting with
them, the artists Rob and Nick Carter also revealed they
were in the process of creating their own dictionary of
colour as an attempt to update the Maerz & Paul 1930
version with modern printing techniques. I had also
come across a number of online colour dictionaries,
many of which were technical colour reference libraries
that gave samples as HEX codes or RGB values. From
this research it was clear that there was little in terms

of content that would distinguish a dictionary of colour

produced as an output for this project, from those that
already existed.
To have created a dictionary of colour names would
have also required definitive decisions on matching
colour names with colour swatches. It was apparent from
the background research for the project that it would
have been impossible to be completely objective in this
decision making process, as we all see colour slightly
differently. Colour perception and therefore naming
is, by its very nature, highly subjective. In addition to
this, to produce a dictionary that was a viable reference
tool would have required greater control and accuracy
over colour reproduction than was possible within the
constraints of the project. As a result of these factors it
was obvious that a dictionary of colour would not have
been a satisfactory outcome for the project.
However, the research conducted in preparation for
the Major Project and in the initial stages had shown
that there were a number of ways that the relationship
between colour and language could be examined. As
described in the previous section these investigations
allowed me to explore a number of research
methodologies and proved to be useful exercises in
themselves.

FIGURES 99 102, DEVELOPMENT OF OUTCOMES SURVEY RESULTS

Nationality

Language

What is your Nationality?

36

Different nationalities
took part in the survey.

1.
2.
3.
4
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

British/English
American
French
Portuguese
Australian
Brazilian
Scottish
German
Greek
Japanese

65%
ENGLISH/BRITISH
OTHER
AMERICAN

45

Is English your first language?

Top 10 Nationalities Represented

of respondents
identified themselves
as British or English.

respondents did not have

English as a first language.

Top 10 Languages Represented

YES
NO

26

Different languages were

represented in the survey.

1.
2.
3.
4
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Portuguese
French
German
Greek
Spanish
Welsh
Arabic
Chinese/Cantonese
Japanese
Polish

At the stage of the mid-way crit there was no clear

strategy for directing the body of work already
produced towards a considered output. The feedback
received indicated that none of the individual
investigations has sufficient potential to generate a
strong outcome. After reflecting on the comments
and the development of the project, it was evident
that gathering input from other people to create a
body of contributions would demonstrate the diversity
of our individual approaches to colour naming. This
could provide an interesting and engaging output and
response to the research question.
The strategies used to gather data and information for
this aspect of the project included the interviews and
survey described in more detail in the previous section.
As the research developed, I felt it necessary to develop
a means of maintaining continuity and familiarity
throughout the different aspects of the project and to
present a visual coherent body of work for submission.
It became clear that the different investigations would
be best presented as supporting material in the form of
a series of books, with the main outcome being a book
and series of posters that collated and presented the
results of the survey.

Viewing Conditions

Light Sources

Sources and quantity of ambient light, type of

computer and screen can all affect how we perceive
colours in the digital realm. Participants were all
asked a series of straightforward questions about
how they viewed the survey in order to allow for
these factors.

Type of Light Source

NATURAL DAYLIGHT
FLUORESCENT BULBS
INCANDESCENT BULBS
OTHER

The way we see colour is largely dependent on the

quality of light that we view it in. The brightness and
temperature of different light sources can vary widely,
colours viewed in natural daylight will often look
different under energy saving or compact fluorescent
lights, for example. This phenomenon is known as
metamerism. In order to allow for this discrepancy I
asked participants some multiple-choice questions
about the lighting conditions they viewed the survey in.
Just over half of respondents viewed the survey in
artificial light, with an almost equal number split
between fluorescent and incandescent sources. The
remaining participants viewed the survey in natural
daylight, with just under two thirds reporting the light
as having medium brightness. 19% of participants said
that they had taken the survey in dim light, while 17%
said described their light source as bright. This variation
is but one of the factors that could have affected how
respondents perceived the colour samples in the final
sections of the survey. Although it was impossible to
control these variables in the process of conducting the
survey, it is a greater reflection of how we experience
colour in everyday life, where there is potentially even
greater variability in the sources and quality of the light
that surrounds us.

In addition to the quantity and sources of light,

participants were also asked what type of computer
and screen they viewed the survey on. This was to take
into account the fact that different types of screens
have slightly different colour gamuts, affecting the way
colours are rendered. It would have been possible to
extend this line of questioning to ask participants about
the brightness and colour calibration of their monitors,
however for the purposes of this project that level of
detail seemed unnecessary.

DONT KNOW

Quantity of Light

BRIGHT
MEDIUM
DIM

In order to create a consistently visual identity I chose

to use a combination of two different typefaces across
the project. Avenir, the sans serif and more geometric
of the two was a reflection of the scientific and rational
side of colour. Whereas Archer, the serif typeface, was
used to identify with the personal and sometimes poetic
way language is used to describe colour. A circle was
also included as a graphic device to unify the different
components, due to its close association with the colour
wheel, organisation of the spectrum and representations
of additive and subtractive colour models.
The data collected through the responses to the survey
provided ample content for an outcome to the project.
The analysis and results are discussed in detail in the
book created for the output. Through this document
I was able to present visual, written and statistical
analysis of the data. The survey produced some
unexpected results, including several significant biases
in the demographic composition of the sample. Due
to this, the decision was made to disregard the original
plans to compare the responses by gender, age and
language. Despite this change there was a great deal of
information to present.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Colour Disagreements
The types of objects disagreed
about:

Was the disagreement resolved

in any way?

Colour Vocabulary

Comments
It was obviously not black. It just
wasnt. Blacks not hard to identify.
It wasnt black.
There were several people in that argument,
split about half for green and half for brown.
I had a similar discussion about that same
colour a few years later with someone else.

We then discovered my friend was colour blind

Sometimes it is difficult to know when
one colour ends and another begins - at
what point does red become orange? etc
CLOTHING COLOUR

YES

PAINT COLOUR

NO

CAR COLOUR

AGREED TO DISAGREE

SOFT FURNISHINGS

MEASURED IT/LOOKED IT UP

BOUNDARIES BETWEEN COLOURS

OTHER

Blue/green colours often lead to

disagreement between people.
There was a large group of us over 10, perhaps 20 in this
argument at one point. Both names refer to the same hex code
in the html specification.

Perception is in the eye of the beholder...

The circle used as a graphic device throughout the

project was modified into a chart and used consistently
throughout the document it allows a straightforward
comparison of the results. This presentation technique
was most successful visually, when used to present the
final section of the results, where participants were
asked to choose swatches from a chart in response to a
colour name. As this method was both visually appealing
and easy to understand the charts were combined into
a set of three posters (Figures 119121), in accordance
with the groups of terms used in the survey questions.
The book produced from the survey results was
designed to be presented as a set with the visual
summary and this report, but could also be viewed
independently or in conjunction with the posters.
Spreads from the final outcome are shown on this
and the following pages in Figures 99118. The set of
separate colour and language investigations was then
presented as supporting material, to demonstrate other
methods of exploring the research question.

Anthracite, Asphalt, Bitter blue, China red, Daytona yellow,

Dun, Eating room red, Elephant grey, Emeraldine, Emperor
purple, Glaucous, Green eyes colour, Greige, Heliotrope, Henna,
Hessian, Lamppost black, Limoncello, Macchiato, Mimosa,
National Trust green, Pantone 035 C, Pantone 877 C, Phosphoric
green, Railings, River gold, Rope, Rubine, Sanguine, Shrimp,
Thalo blue, Thalo green, Tourmaline, Tulip, Woad, Yoke.

In order to appreciate the size of participants colour

vocabulary, and to encourage them to think about
colour terms, respondents were asked to spend a few
minutes naming as many colours as they could think of.
The amount of colour terms listed varied considerably,
ranging from 7 to 100. As well as the extent of a
participants colour vocabulary, a number of factors
could have contributed to this disparity including, the
total amount of time spent on the task, the amount of
effort applied, whether participants had any prompts
or assistance and the ability to recall colour names from
memory. Overall, the average number of colours named
was 26, at the lower end of the scale, representing a
colour vocabulary of just over twice the number of basic
colour terms in English. In comparison, a combined total
of 542 unique colour terms were listed by respondents,
creating an incredibly rich and diverse body of colour
names. The most unusual colour terms have been
highlighted above, however the full list can be found
overleaf. All of the top ten most frequently listed names
were basic colour terms; the only one not included was
white. Nearly two-thirds of participants began their list
with the term red, this may have been due to the colour
being a prominent primary or that it was used as an
example in the survey question.

Spelling was an issue in some cases, with the word

fuchsia being misspelled more frequently than it was
spelled correctly. Consequently, for the purposes of
analysis and consistency all obvious mistakes have been
corrected and grey/gray variations were standardised
to grey.
Participants were also asked to name colour terms that
they did not understand, meaning they were unclear
as to what particular shade or hue a word referred
to. A total of 48 different colour terms were listed by
respondents including tawny, mauve, taupe and ecru.
Unsurprisingly the most commonly misunderstood term
was puce, a result that was also reflected in the colour
term interpretation section of the survey.
To examine how we often improvise descriptions of
colours, respondents were asked to give examples of
informal colour terms they might use in conversation
or everyday situations. The most descriptive are
listed overleaf to represent the diversity of how we
communicate colours.

How many colours

can you name?

542

individual colours
were named by
respondents to the
survey.

26

was the average number

of colours named by
participants, the lowest
amount being 7 and the
highest was 100.

Top 10 Colours Listed

1.
=
3.
4
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.

Orange
Yellow
Red
Green
Blue
Purple
Pink
Black
Brown
Grey

61%

of participants
began their list with the
colour red.

Fuchsia, turquoise and burgundy

were the colour names most
commonly misspelled in the survey.

As colour management, consistency and reproduction

can be an issue in any design scheme, regardless of the
content, it was evident from the outset that this was an
especially important consideration for the execution of
any design outcomes for this project. However, in the
proposal for this project I stated that it was something
that it was not something I would concentrate on at the
expense of research on colour naming. To address the
issue from the outset, all images, photographs, scanned
documents and files were immediately assigned the
same ICC colour profile and colour management
was synchronised across all Adobe CS programmes
using Adobe Bridge. All of the books were printed
using the same Konica Minolta CPP 650 machine at
Blissetts in West London on coated matt stock, creating
consistency across all of the documents. Printing tests
on three different papers stocks were carried out with
both the covers and several text pages prior to the main
print run to obtain the best result.

FIGURES 103 110, DEVELOPMENT OF OUTCOMES SURVEY RESULTS

A lighter shade of pale, Acid green, Acid yellow, Aha, Air Force blue, Alabaster, Alizarin crimson, Almond white, Almond,
Alpine, Amethyst, Anthracite, Apple, Apple green, Apple red, Apple white, Apricot, Aqua, Aqua blue, Aqua-green, Aquamarine,
Aquamarine blue, Arctic white, Army green, Ash, Asha, Asphalt, Aubergine, Auburn, Azure, Azure blue, Baby blue, Baby green,
Baby pink, Banana, Banana yellow, Barbie pink, Barn red, Battleship grey, Beech, Beetroot, Beige, Berry red, Berry, Bitter blue,
Black, Black brownish, Blonde, Blood orange, Blood red, Blossom pink, Blue, Blue azure, Blue black, Blue green, Blue grey, Blueviolet, Bluebell, Blueberry, Blur colour, Blush, Bone White, Bone, Bordeaux, Bottle green, Brass, Brick red, Brick, Bricky, Bright blue,
Bright green, Bright grey, Bright orange, Bright pink, Bright purple, Bright red, Bright yellow, Brilliant-white, British racing green,
Bronze, Brown, Brunette, Bubblegum pink, Buff, Burgundy, Burgundy red, Burnt Ash, Burnt orange, Burnt sienna, Burnt Umber,
Butter yellow, Butterscotch, Cadmium, Cadmium red, Cadmium red light, Cadmium Yellow, Camel, Canary yellow, Candy, Candy
floss pink, Cappuccino, Caramel, Carmine, Carmine red, Carnation pink, Carrot, Cayenne, Celadon, Cerise, Cerulean, Cerulean
blue, Champagne, Charcoal, Charcoal grey, Chartreuse, Cherry, Cherry red, Chestnut, China red, Chocolate, Chocolate brown,
Christmas green, Chrome yellow, Cinnamon, Citrine, Citron yellow, Citrus, Citrus orange, Citrus yellow, Claret, Clear, Cobalt,
Cobalt blue, Coffee, Coffee brown, Cool grey, Copper, Copper brown, Coral, Corn, Cornflower blue, Cotton candy pink, Cranberry,
Cream, Creamy, Crimson, Custard, Cyan, Daffodil, Damson, Dandelion, Dark blue, Dark brown, Dark Chocolate, Dark green,
Dark grey, Dark orange, Dark pink, Dark purple, Dark red, Dark tulip, Dark yellow, Day-Glo pink, Daytona yellow, Deep blue,
Deep purple, Denim blue, Diamond white, Dove grey, Duck egg blue, Duck egg, Dun, Dusk blue, Dusk grey, Dusky pink, Dust grey,
Dusty pink, Earth brown, Eating room red, Eau de nil, Ebony, Ebony black, Ecru, Egg-shell blue, Eggshell, Electric blue, Elephant
grey, Emerald, Emerald green, Emeraldine, Emperor purple, Fawn, Fern green, Fir green, Fire engine red, Fire orange, Flamered, Flesh, Flesh pink, Flesh tone, Fluorescent blue, Fluorescent green, Fluorescent orange, Fluorescent pink, Fluorescent yellow,
Foliage green, Forest, Forest green, French blue, Fuchsia, Fuchsia pink, Garnet, Ginger, Glaucous, Gold, Golden, Gorgeous grape,
Granite, Grape, Graphite grey, Graphite, Grass green, Green, Green blue, Green eyes colour, Green leafy, Green-grey, Greenish
blue, Greenish grey, Greenish yellow, Greige, Grey, Gunmetal grey, Gunmetal, Hazel, Heather, Heliotrope, Henna, Hessian, Honey,
Honey yellow, Honeysuckle, Hookers Green, Hot pink, Hunters green, Ice blue, Ice white, Indian red, Indian yellow, Indigo, Ink
blue, International Klein Blue, Iron red, Ivory, Jade, Jasmine, Jet black, Jute, Kelly green, Khaki, Khaki green, Lamppost black,
Latte, Lavender, Lead-colour, Lead, Leaf green, Lemon, Lemon yellow, Light black, Light blue, Light brown, Light green, Light grey,
Light orange, Light pink, Light purple, Light red, Light yellow, Lilac, Lime, Lime Green, Limoncello, Lincoln green, Lipstick red,
London grey, Macchiato, Magenta, Magnolia, Mahogany, Mahogany brown, Mandarin, Maple yellow, Marigold, Marine, Marine
blue, Maroon, Mauve, Medium green, Medium grey, Medium orange, Medium pink, Medium purple, Medium red, Medium yellow,
Melon, Merlot red, Midnight, Midnight blue, Military red, Military-green, Milk white, Mimosa, Mink, Mint, Mint Green, Mistletoe
green, Mocha, Moss, Moss green, Mud, Muddy brown, Mulberry, Murky brown, Mushroom, Mustard, Mustard yellow, Muted blue,
National Trust green, Natural, Navy, Navy blue, Neon blue, Neon green, Neon pink, Neon red, Neon yellow, Neutral grey, Night
blue, Noir, Nude, Nude-pink, Oak brown, Ocean blue, Ocean green, Ochre, Ochre tan, Off white, Olive, Olive green, Onyx, Opal,
Orange, Orange red, Orange yellow, Orange-fire-red, Orangey red, Orangey yellow, Oyster, Pale blue, Pale green, Pale grey, Pale
lemon, Pale orange, Pale pink, Pale red, Pale Yellow, Pantone 035 C, Pantone 877 C, Pastel blue, Pastel pink, Paynes grey, Pea
green, Peach, Peacock blue, Pearl, Pearly, Pebble grey, Pepper red, Peppermint green, Peridot green, Periwinkle, Periwinkle blue,
Persian blue, Petrol blue, Petrol, Pewter, Phosphoric green, Pillar box red, Pine, Pink, Pink champagne, Pink fuchsia, Pink Raspberry,
Pistachio, Pistachio green, Platinum, Plum, Poppy red, Post box red, Powder blue, Primrose, Primrose yellow, Prussian blue,Puce,
Pumpkin orange, Purple, Purple-brown, Putty, Racing car green, Racing green, Railings, Raspberry, Raspberry pink, Raw sienna,
Raw umber, Red, Red orange, Red violet, Red wine, Red-brown, Reddish orange, Reflex blue, Regal blue, River gold, Roan, Robins
egg blue, Rope, Rose, Rose pink, Rouge, Royal blue, Rubine, Ruby, Ruby red, Russet, Russet orange, Rust, Rust brown, Saffron, Sage,
Sage green, Salmon, Salmon pink, Sand, Sand brown, Sand yellow, Sandy brown, Sanguine, Sapphire, Sapphire blue, Scarlet, Sea
blue, Sea green, Sea waves green, Sepia, Shell pink, Shocking Pink, Shrimp, Sienna, Silver, Skin, Skin colour, Skin coloured, Sky, Sky
blue, Slate, Slate grey, Sliver, Sludge green, Smoke, Smokey, Snot green, Snow white, Snow, Soft pink, Steel, Steel blue, Steel grey,
Stone, Stone grey, Straw, Strawberry blonde, Strawberry pink, Strawberry red, Sugary, Sunflower yellow, Sunflower, Sunset yellow,
Sunshine yellow, Swamp green, Tan, Tangerine, Taupe, Tawny, Teak, Teal, Terracotta, Terracotta red, Thalo blue, Thalo green,
Thistle, Titanium, Toffee, Tomato, Topaz, Tourmaline, Tropical blue, Tulip, Turquoise, Ultramarine, Umber, Vanilla, Venetian red,
Verdigris, Vermillion, Vermillion red, Violet, Violet red, Viridian, Walnut brown, Walnut, Warm Grey, Warm red, Warm yellow,
Water green, White, White newspaper colour, Wine, Wine red, Woad, Wood, Yellow, Yellow green, Yellow ochre, Yellow orange,
Yellowish green, Yellowish orange, Yellowy green, Yellowy-orange, Yoke.

Ox blood red, Liver pink, Bubblegum Pink, Pepto Bismol, Hello

Kitty pink, Germoline pink, Dead skin pink, Flesh coloured,
Macaroon coloured, Pink champagne, Shrimp-pink, Sunset
coloured, Bloodshot, Candy apple red, Lipstick red, Ketchup
red, Red bus, Ferrari red, Fire-engine red, Pillar box red,
Flaming red, Indian-red, Dawn orange, Orange as an autumn
maple leaf, Toxic orange, B&Q orange, Popcorn, Beer colour,
Corn coloured, School bus, Selfridges yellow, Sunshine yellow,
Banana skin yellow, Butter yellow, Custard-yellow, Sherbet,
Post it note yellow, Limoncello, Dirty blonde, Baby sick yellow,
Bogey green, Beech leaf in May, Light green as a young
spring leaf, Harrods green, Ecto plasma green, Cheese and
onion green, John Deere green, Christmas green, Invisiblegreen, Fortnum and Mason coloured, Crystal blue water
colour, Tropical blue, Commode water blue, Salt and vinegar
blue, Ikea blue, Chelsea blue, Denim, Jeans blue, Colour of
the night sky, Midnight purple, Black as coal, Black as night,
Winter sea, Asphalt grey coloured, Dolphin grey, Smokey grey,
Dashboard grey, London grey, Concrete coloured, Pavement
coloured, Pebble grey, Diamond white, Timber wolf grey, Dishwater, Dirty dish water, Mucky sea browns, Donkey-coloured,
Mousy brown, Mud-coloured, Muddy brown, Brown as mud,
Macchiato, Tobacco, Poo brown, Shit coloured, Sludgy, Puke.

Dark red, Dark red, Dark red, Darkish purple/red, Reddish brown, Sexy deep red, Dark
red purple, Intense purple red, Rich red, Rich purpley red with bit of brown, Purplebrown, Rich dark magenta and deep red, Brown, Dark red-brown, Purple, Dark red, Deep
red, purple tone, Red-purple, Dark red, Close to brown, Red, Purpley brown, Brown red
purple, Dark red, Dark reddy brown, Dark brown/red, Brown, Red, Dark purple/brown,
Red, Dark red/brown, Dark red, Brown, Purple, Deep purple-red, Purple, Dark red, Dark
reddish-brown, Dark red, Rouge, Burn red, Close to green, Red, Deep red/brown, Red/
purple/black, Dark red brown, Purple-red, Red-brown, Dark red/purple, Red, Dark red,
Dark purple, Chestnut, Dark brown, Dark purple red, Deep red, Red-brown, Brown, Dark
red-brown, Red/dark/wine, Brown yellowishy, Deep red/burgundy, Burgundy, Light brown,
sweet chestnut like, Deep red, Dark red brown, Brown, Purple/red, Dark reddy purple,
Brown, Deep red, Dark purple red, Deep brownish red, Brown-red, Brown, Purple/red,
Dark red, Rich beep red, Brown, Dark pink, Dark red, Purple and brown, Deep red with
purple, Purple, Dark browny red (like dried blood), Dark reddish purple, Chestnut colour,
Deep brownish red-violet, Dark, Burgundy red, Bright red, Dark purpley red, Brownish,
Burgundy-purple, Dark red-brown, Dark browny red, Deep blue-red, Dark dirty red,
Brownish red, Brownie purple, Dark brown/red, Browner than claret, Brownish red, Dark
red, Dark red with blue tones, Towards purpley brown, Dark red, Browny purple, Purple/
blue mix, Dark bluish-red, Dark brown-red, Purple/yellow, Brownish red, Dark bluish red,
Dark browny-purple, Deep dark red, Dark brown, Deep red colour, Blue and green, Deep
red, Red blue, Dark red, Dark red, Dark red, Burgundy-purple, Reddish brown, Dark red
purple, Brown, Deep red, Red, black dark, rich, Purple, Brownish purple red, Dark red,
nearly purple, Red, Bluish dark red, Dark red, Reddy brown, Reddy brown, Red, Deep
purpley red, Red, Deep red/brown, Dark red, Red white a hint of dark brown/purple, Dull
slightly purplish red, White-cream-brown, Deep purple, Strong red, Red, Dark red, Red,
Dark red, Dark red, Reddy purple, Dark red, Browny, Purplish red, Red, Intense dark red,
Dark red purple, Maroon, Muddy reddy purple, Reddy brown, Dark pink purple, Deep
red, Deep red, Reddy brown, Deep purpley red, Pinky purple, Dark purple, Brownish dark
red, Purple base with a little red and blue thrown in, Reddy brown, Magenta, Purplish
brown, Purple, Deep purple-red, Purplish, Blue, Red, Purple, Red, Reddy brown, Brown,
Dark red/purple, Dark red, Very similar to burgundy, Very dark red, Yellow, Purple-black,
Deep dark red, Deep purpley-red.

Bright pinkish orange, Red-pink, Pinky peach, Orange/peach, Light blue, Bright orangey
peachy, Deep green blue, Fresh scarlet white yellow mix, Bright pick-peach, Pale pink with
hint of orange similar to puce but softer, Light blue, Soft pale pink with a little soft orange,
Orangey yellow, Light bright orange-red, Pink, Orangey red, Bright green and blue, Pale
apricot/pink, Between pink and orange, Something in between red and orange, Bright, In
between orange and pink, Blue green kind of, Light red/orange, Bright pinky red, Bright
pink/orange, White - cream mix, Blue, Orange/yellow, Pink/orange, Bright pink/orange/
red, Whiteish, Orangey-pink, Pink/peach, Orange-pink, White, Shinny white, with shadows
of really light blue, Orangey-pink, Peachy orange, Blue, Vivid red-orange, Red, Bright pink/
orange, Red/orange, Orangey pink, Orange-red, Red, Bright orange, Red, Reddish pink,
Light whitey yellow, Pinkish, Deep blue, Bright orange pink, Dark green/blue, Pink-orange,
Bright blue, Tangerine-orange, Orange-pink/bright/warm, Dark orange red, Light pinky/
orange, Orange red, Warm red, orange, Off white, Shade of red, Red/orange, Salmon
orange/pink, White, Bright orange red, Bold peach red orange, Pale pink, Red shimmering
orange, Blue, Orange/pink, Dull pinky red, Pinky blue, Red, white, and yellow, Light pink,
Bright orange-pink, Pink, Reddy pink with hint of yellow, Orange, Warm/light pink, Pale
pink, Bright orange with a mix of pink, Medium orange-red, Yellow/red/bright, Deep peach,
Pale yellow, Bright orangey pink, Orange meets red - sunset coloured, Almost white cream,
Bright red-orange, Peachy coloured pink, Warm red-yellow-orange, Warm carrot & orange
mix, Light pink, Orangery pink, Red/orange, Pinky orange, Reddish-pinkish orange, Pale
peachy pink, Clear pinky light orange, Pink, Deep orange/pink, Pinks, Light blue/turquoise,
Dull orangey-red, Bright pink-red, Yellow/pink, Bright peachy orange, Pinky red, Light
bright orange+red, Off-white, Rich bright pinky red, Light orange-red, Orange-red, Sand
colour, Pink peach orange, White yellow, Orange pink, Orange, Orange red, Light pinkish
red, Pinkish orange, Light orange red, Pearl, Cream, Pink, red, bright, White, Orange pink,
Red, Orange, Yellow red, Bright red-orange, Red and orange, Milky cyan, Yellow/orange,
Pale pinky orange, Blue, Yellow-brown, Orangey pink, Pinky orangey, Quite bright orangey
pink, Orange-pink, Orangey pink, Pinky red, Blue, Peach, Light blue, Pale pink, Light blue,
Orange pale, Bright red-orange, Red, Blue, Pink, Bright light blue with hint of green, Blue
green, Cream, Bright pink, Orangey red, Bright orange pink, Blue green, Light orangey/
pink, Pale pinky orange, Orangey pink, Sea green, Reddish orange, Off white with a hint of
beige, Pinky orange, Red, Light vivid blue, Red, Pink-orange, Pinky, Blue, Pink, Pink, White
cream, Orangey red, Blue, Orange, Dark pink, A red/peach colour - quite strong, Pinky red,
Purple-pink, Cyan-orange-yellow, Orangey-pink, Rich pinky orange.

COLOURS NAMED BY RESPONDENTS

INFORMAL COLOUR DESCRIPTIONS

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLOUR TERM MAROON

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLOUR TERM CORAL

Olive green, Army green, Khaki, Paynes Grey, Olive green, Swamp green,
Khaki, Olive, Khaki, Foliage green, Dark green, Dark leaf green, Moss green,
Khaki- green, Olive, Khaki, Khaki, Forest-green, Khaki, Khaki, Khaki, Moss
green, Khaki, Moss green, Black, Khaki, Faded green, Khaki, Leaf green,
Swamp, Khaki, Forest green, Grass/jungle green, Olive, Dark olive green
and also dirt green, Dark green, Khaki, Leaf green, Dry green, Khaki, Khaki,
Khaki, Khaki, Forest green, Khaki, Army green, Olive green, Permanent
green, Camo green, Khaki, Maroon, Military green, Swamp, Forest green,
Dark green, Army green, Khaki, Dark green, Dark green, Khaki, Khaki, Khaki
green, Khaki, Dark green, Olive green, Khaki green, Khaki, Olive green, Sap
green, Brown, Dark green, Khaki, Khaki, Racing green, Dark olive green,
Burnt umber, Khaki, Brown green, Olive green, Muddy green, Khaki, Black,
Forest green, Olive green, Olive, Dark green, Khaki green, Dark olive green,
Khaki, Really dark brown, Dark-olive-green, Olive, Brownish green, Dark
olive green, Dark grey, Dark green, Dark green, Olive green, Olive drab, Dark
green, Moss green, Khaki, Dark green, Olive green, Dark olive, Olive, Grass
green, Basil, Olive, Khaki, Forest green, Olive, Khaki, Khaki green, Olive,
Olive green, Olive, Khaki, Dark green, Olive green, Olive, Dark olive, Olive
green, Military green, Deep olive, Olive, Dark green, Sap green, Dark green,
Olive, Khaki, Pine green, Khaki, Moss green, Olive green, Khaki, Olive, Racing
green, Moss green, Khaki, Rush green, Bottle green, Dark grey, Olive green,
Olive, Green, Khaki, Dark green, Khaki, Olive, Olive, Olive, Olive green, Dark
green, Olive green, Khaki, Khaki, Emerald green, Olive green, Swamp green,
Sage green, Sage, Green/henna, Olive, Dark olive, Dark olive, Olive oil green,
Khaki, Green, Mushy pea green, Brown, Dark green, Brown, Dark green,
Khaki, Dark green, Olive green, Olive green, Black, Khaki-ish greeny brown,
Olive, Green-brown, Dark green, Olive, Dark green.

Dark aquamarine, Turquoise, Turquoise/teal, Turquoise, Teal, Mint,

Teal, Aqua, Turquoise, Aqua, Dark turquoise with a dab dark navy blue,
Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Teal, Turquoise, Turquoise, Colour of sea
waves, Turquoise, Teal, Turquoise, Sea blue, Teal, Green-blue, Turquoise,
Indigo, Teal, Teal, Dark turquoise, Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Turquoise,
Turquoise green, Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Turquoise, Sea green, Turquoise,
Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Sea blue, Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Dark turquoise,
Turquoise, Teal, Turquoise, Turquoise, Teal, Ocean blue, Teal, Turquoise,
Ocean blue, Sea green, Teal, Aqua, Turquoise, Green, Blue green, Turquoise,
Teal, Sea blue, Teal, Grey, Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Pale
greeny bluey purple, Blue and green (pacific blue), Aqua, Turquoise, Teal,
Teal, Teal, Teal, Turquoise, Turquoise, Mint, Grey, Turquoise, Turquoise,
Ocean green, Teal, Light-sea-green, Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Dark teal,
Turquoise, Bondi blue, Teal, Turquoise, Turquoise, Teal, Aquamarine, Light
blue, Sea green, Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Bahama breeze, Turquoise,
Turquoise blue, Turquoise, Teal, Teal, Teal, Green, Turquoise, Turquoise,
Teal, Green, Sea green, Teal, Teal, Teal, Marine blue, Peacock blue,
Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise, Turquoise
green, Turquoise, Sea green, Water green, Marine, Teal, Turquoise, Jade,
Turquoise, Turquoise-blue, Jade, Sage green, Ocean green, Green, Teal,
Turquoise, Green, Turquoise, Turquoise, Teal, Turquoise, Indigo, Dark
turquoise, Taupe, Turquoise, Teak, Teal, Teal, Aqua, Turquoise, Aquamarine,
Turquoise, Sea green, Turquoise, Dull turquoise, Jade/turquoise, Green
vermillion, Turquoise, Turquoise, Sea blue, Blue/green, Turquoise, Jasper
green, Dark cyan, Turquoise, Turquoise, Navy green, Teal, Teal, Turquoise,
Teal, Blue-green, Industrial green, Teal, Turquoise green.

Pale blue, Sky blue, Pale blue, Cerulean blue, Sky blue, Pastel blue, Pale blue,
Mid blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Pale cyan, Baby blue, Medium blue,
Sky blue, Azure blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Violet blue, Sky blue, Sky
blue, Pastel blue, Sky blue, Cobalt, Blue pyjamas, Blue, Robins egg blue,
Light blue, Sky blue, Sea blue, Light blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Blue
mixed with white, Sky blue, Blue, Cerulean, Sky blue, Light blue, Sky blue,
Sky blue, Light blue, China blue, Sky blue, Blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Cerulean
blue, Solid blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Blue, Sky blue, Sky
blue, Sky blue, Light indigo blue, Powder blue, Periwinkle, Pale deep blue,
Sky blue, Aqua, Aqua, Blue, Sky blue, Sky-blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Blue,
Light/baby blue, Baby blue, Sky blue, Turquoise, Powder blue, Wedgewood
blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Blue,
Cornflower, Light blue, Periwinkle, Grey blue, Tanzanite blue, Light blue,
Powder blue, Light blue, Purpley blue, Steel-blue, Light blue, Medium blue,
Cornflower blue, Greyish blue, Mid blue, Royal blue, Sky blue, Periwinkle,
Light blue, Sky blue, Heather, Very dark blue, Cornflower blue-ish, Bight
blue, Periwinkle blue, Sky blue, Clear skies, Powder blue, Baby blue, Aqua
blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Light blue, Light blue, Blue, Sky blue,
Blue, Lilac, Light blue, Sky blue, Cyan, Blue sky, Cobalt blue, Sky blue, Light
blue, Light blue, Blue, Sky blue, Light bright blue, Sky blue, Blue, Light blue,
Baby blue, Sky blue, Blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Sky blue, Light blue,
Blue, Sky blue, Blue, Blue, Blue, Turquoise, Sky blue, Periwinkle, Sky blue,
Wedgewood blue, Cyan, Royal blue, Light blue, Baby blue, Light blue, Sky
blue, Cobalt, Light blue, Light blue, Light blue, Sky blue, Cornflower blue,
Sky blue, Cornflower blue, Pale blue, Warm sky blue, Light blue cobalt/RAF,
Light blue, Air force blue, Midday blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Powder blue,
Blue, Blue, Cornflower blue, Pale blue, Dusky blue, Sky blue, Light blue, Blue,
Blue, Sunflower blue, Cornflower, Light blue.

Navy blue, Navy, Dark purple, Midnight blue, Navy blue, Indigo, Sea blue,
Navy, Navy, Navy blue, Deep blue, Dark purpley blue, Navy, Navy, Navy blue,
Navy blue, Navy, Midnight blue, Navy, Indigo, Navy blue, Royal blue, Dark
blue, Navy blue, Indigo, Blue dark intense, Royal blue, Ocean blue, Navy blue,
Navy, Darker grey, Navy, Navy blue, Marine blue, Blue black, Navy blue,
Dark blue, Navy blue, Navy, Navy blue, Navy, Navy blue, Dark purple, Navy,
Navy blue, Navy, Violet, Navy, Ultramarine blue, Dark navy, Navy, Deep
purple, Navy, Navy, Navy, Marine/dark blue, Navy blue, Navy, Navy blue,
Navy blue, Navy, Navy, Royal blue, Dark blue, Dark blue, Navy, Navy blue,
Navy, Navy blue, Midnight blue, Black, Dark/navy blue, Midnight blue, Navy
blue, Navy blue, Navy blue, Charcoal black, Night blue, Navy blue, Navy
blue, Navy blue, Navy blue, Dark blue, Black (a different tint from above),
Navy blue, Marine blue, Navy, Dark blue, Deep purple, Dark blue, Night blue,
Dark denim blue, Really dark purple, Dark-midnight-blue, Navy, Navy, Navy,
Very dark violet, Dark blue, Midnight blue, Navy blue, Navy, Navy, French
navy, Violet, Violet, Navy, Royal blue, Navy, Navy blue, Cadet, Dark blue,
Navy blue, Dark purpley-grey, Navy blue, Navy blue, Navy blue, Beige, Dark
blue, Navy, Navy, Black, Dark blue, Navy, Navy blue, Indigo, Dark blue, Navy
blue, Aquamarine blue, Dark blue, Indigo, Dark blue, Dark navy blue, Dark
navy, Navy blue, Blue, Dark (navy) blue, Navy blue, Navy, Navy, Navy blue,
Navy blue, Dark blue, Navy blue, Navy blue, Dark blue, Teal, Purple, Dark
blue, Navy, Dark blue, Dark blue, Navy, Navy, Navy blue, Navy blue, Royal
blue, Navy blue, Dark blue, Navy blue, Dark blue, Blue, Navy blue, Navy,
Navy, Navy blue, Navy blue, Navy, Navy, Navy blue, Dark blue, Navy, Black,
Navy blue, Navy blue, Navy blue, Purple, Navy blue, Black, Navy, Navy,
Indigo, Dark blue, Navy, Navy blue, Royal blue, Black, Deep purple, Pen ink
blue, French blue, Black.

WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THIS COLOUR?

WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THIS COLOUR?

WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THIS COLOUR?

WHAT WOULD YOU CALL THIS COLOUR?

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Chartreuse

Celadon

Cerulean

Periwinkle

Have you heard of the

colour term chartreuse?

Have you heard of the

colour term celadon?

Have you heard of the

colour term cerulean?

Have you heard of the

colour term periwinkle?

YES

YES

YES

YES

NO

NO

NO

NO

DIDNT SAY

DIDNT SAY

DIDNT SAY

DIDNT SAY

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLOUR TERM CHARTREUSE

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLOUR TERM CELADON

A green, A red of some sort, A slutty red scarlet colour, Acid green, Beige, Black, Blood
red, Blue, Blue-green, Bold clear yellow green, Bright blue, Bright green, Bright greeny
yellow, Bright lemon yellow green, Bright light green, Bright lime green, Bright orange,
Bright red, Bright yellow, Bright yellow green, Bright/light yellow-green, Brown, Burgundy,
Cream, Dark pink, Dark red, Dark red purple, Deep green, Deep purple, Grass flowery
green, Green, Greenish, Greenish yellow, Greenish yellowish brown, Greeny yellow, Grey,
Grey black, Herbally yellow colour, Intense deep bright green, Light blue, Light red, Lime
green-yellow, Maroon, Mid yellow green, Near white colour, Neon-yellow ish, Orange,
Orange brown, Pale green, Pale grey, Pale purple-blue, Pink, Pink and reds, Pink purple,
Pink-red, Pink/grey/yellow, Pinky red, Purple, Purpley red, Purplish, Red, Red a bit of
white, Red orange, Reddish, Reddy Brown, Reddy pink colour, Rose, Ruby red, Something
red, Very light brown, white, Vivid green, Warm-toned medium green, Yellow, Yellow
bright, Yellow green, Yellow tinged green, Yellowy green.

What would you call

this colour?

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLOUR TERM CERULEAN

A bright red, A shade of blue or green, A sort of blue/yellow, Black and gold, Blue, Blue
bright, Blue red, Blue/green, Blue/grey, Bold tealish colour, Bright blue, Brown, Brownish,
Brownish green, Ceramic coloured, Chinese jade green, Cream, Dark blues, Dark brown,
Dark green, Dark orange, Dark pink, Dark red, Dark tan, Deep purple blue, Green, Green
light creamy beige, Greeny blue, Grey green, Greyish blue, High mid vibrant green, Light
blue, Light bluish green, Light bright blue, Light green, Neutral colour, Orange, Orangish,
Pale blue, Pale green blue, Pale greyish green, Pink, Pinky purple, Purple, Purpley white,
Red, Reddish, See through, translucent colour, Shiny white, Smoky greeny grey, Some kind
of blue, Sunny orange yellow, Terracotta red, Yellow, Yellowish.

What would you call

this colour?

DESCRIPTIONS OF THE COLOUR TERM PERIWINKLE

A bright sky blue, A light brown with green tones, A sort of blue, A type of blue, An
aqua-esque blue, Aqua blue, Black, Blue, Blue-based colour, Blue-purple, Blue, relatively
bright close to royal blue with hint of green, Blue/green, Bluey green, Bluish, Bright blue,
Bright medium blue, Bright pink, Bright slightly-greenish blue, Bright warm blue, Brown,
Brown and orange, Cool blue, Dark blue, Dark blue-green, Deep blue, Deep sky blue,
Deep turquoise-purple blue, Electric blue, Goldish beige, Green, Green/grey, Greeny
Blue, Grey green, Grey mixed with blue, Indigo-ish, Light blue, Light bright blue, Light
green, Midrange blue with yellow tone, Ocean blue, Orange, Pale bluish, Pale, slightly
turquoise blue, Pastel light blue, Pink, Pinkish red, Pinkish, bright, Plum-purple, Purple,
Red, Red-brown, Red-purple, Reddy brown, Reddy pink colour, Saturated sky blue, Sky
blue, Some other mid blue, Strong sky blue, Turquoise, Turquoise/green, Turquoisey
blue, Vivid blue, Yellow.

What would you call

this colour?

A mix of lavender and light blue, A pale blue, A type of green, Black, Blue, Blue Grey,
Blue orange purple, Blue violet, Blue-greenish, Blue-mauve, Blue-purple, Blue-violet,
Blue/purple, Blue/Purple blend, Bright blue, Bright blue purple, Bright light blue, Bright
purple, Brown, Cornflower blue, Dark blue, Dark earthy bluey grey, Dark green a bit of
blue, Dark, navy blue, Green, Green, light, Greeny brown, Grey, Grey purple, Grey-blue,
Grey-cream, Grey/blue, Grey/green, Greyish, Lavender, Leafy green, Light blue, Light
blue purple, Light blue/lilac, Light bluey purple, Light cobalt blue, Light orange, Light
pink, Light purple, Light shade mix of blue-purple, Lilac/blue, Medium blue-purple, Minty
green, Pale blue green, Pale blue-purple, Pale purple, Pale to medium blue violet, Palemedium blue, Pastel blue, Peach, Pink, Pink and white pastels, Pink or purple, Pink purple
colour, Pink-purple, Powder soft blue flower, Purple, Purple-blue, Purple-red, Purpley blue,
Purplish blue, Red, Red-pink, Reddy pink, Royal blue, Silver, Soft blue, Stony purple, Very
dark blue, Violet blue, White pearl, Yellow.

What would you call

this colour?

PINK

RED

ORANGE

YELLOW

OTHER

OTHER

OTHER

OTHER

MAGENTA

SCARLET

BURNT ORANGE

LEMON YELLOW

FUCHSIA

BRICK RED

DARK ORANGE

SUNFLOWER YELLOW

HOT PINK

CRIMSON

TERRACOTTA

BRIGHT YELLOW

DARK PINK

DARK RED

TANGERINE

VIOLET

VERMILLION

CERISE
BRIGHT PINK
MAUVE

THE VARIETY OF COLOUR NAMES GIVEN IN RESPONSE

Pink, Magenta, Fuchsia, Hot pink, Dark pink, Violet,

Cerise, Bright pink, Mauve, Coral red, Dark Magenta,
Fuchsia pink, Light purple, Lip smacker, Pale maroon,
Pink/magenta, Pink-purple, Princess pink, Puce,
Purple, Raspberry, Rose pink, Scarlet, Shocking pink.

THE VARIETY OF COLOUR NAMES GIVEN IN RESPONSE

Red, Scarlet, Brick red, Crimson, Dark red,

Vermillion, Brick, Cherry on top, Cherry red, Chrome
red, Cinnabar, Dull red, Orangey red, Pillar box red,
Scarlet red, Terracotta, Tomato red.

THE VARIETY OF COLOUR NAMES GIVEN IN RESPONSE

Orange, Burnt orange, Dark orange, Terracotta,

Tangerine, Brick, Caution, Cinnamon, Orange red,
orange-red, Rust, Rust coloured, Tan, Vermillion.

THE VARIETY OF COLOUR NAMES GIVEN IN RESPONSE

Yellow, Lemon yellow, Sunflower yellow, Bright yellow,

Chrome, yellow, Deep yellow, Pucker up, Pure yellow,
Sun yellow, Sunflower, Yellow primary.

FIGURES 111 118, DEVELOPMENT OF OUTCOMES SURVEY RESULTS

RESPONSES TO THE TERM GREEN

Most frequently chosen colours

RESPONSES TO THE TERM BLUE

Most frequently chosen colours

PANTONE 369 EC

PROCESS CYAN

PANTONE 362 EC

PANTONE 2935 EC

PANTONE 355 EC

PANTONE 3005 EC

PANTONE 363 EC

PANTONE 300 EC

PANTONE 356 EC

PANTONE 2995 EC

RESPONSES TO THE TERM CORAL

Most frequently chosen colours

RESPONSES TO THE TERM MAUVE

Most frequently chosen colours

PANTONE 171 EC

PANTONE 252 EC

PANTONE WARM RED EC

PANTONE 2572 EC

PANTONE 173 EC

PANTONE 245 EC

PANTONE 178 EC

PANTONE 2375 EC

PANTONE 179 EC

PANTONE 246 EC

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

RESPONSES TO THE TERM PERIWINKLE

RESPONSES TO THE TERM CERULEAN

Most frequently chosen colours

Most frequently chosen colours

PANTONE 2727 EC

PANTONE 2995 EC

PANTONE 270 EC

PANTONE 3005 EC

PANTONE 2716 EC

PANTONE 299 EC

PANTONE 278 EC

PANTONE 300 EC

PANTONE 2718 EC

PANTONE 306 EC

WHAT IS YOUR FAVOURITE COLOUR?

Favourite Colour

What is your
favourite colour?

50

Colour is an evocative medium and many of us develop a

personal connection or emotional response to particular
hues over the course of our lives. While it would be an
exaggeration to say that everyone has a favourite colour,
many respondents to this survey, and indeed people
worldwide, have strong preferences towards particular
colours or groups of colours.

As an additional facet to this research participants

were asked what their favourite colour was. Although
this question was not central to the main aim of
the investigation, the results show the personal
connections respondents have with certain colours
and the distribution of colour preferences across the
sample. Whether respondents favourite colour had a
bearing on how they describe or perceive that colour
or other colours couldnt be established from the data
collected from the survey. Nonetheless, it would not
be implausible to suggest that participants might be
more conscious of or better at describing, for example,
shades of green, if their favourite colour was green.
A small proportion of participants did not have a
favourite colour, or had a preference for several colours.
However, among the majority of those who did name
a favourite colour, 50 different terms were listed. The

most common favourite colour was blue, which has been

shown to be the most popular favourite colour in the
world. And in accordance with the results of research
into this subject by Joe Hallock, other colours favoured
by participants included red, green and purple. All of
the colours most frequently named as favourites were
basic colour terms, apart from emerald green and
turquoise. Of the eleven basic colour terms only brown
was not named as a favourite, this was to be expected
as other research has shown that brown is often cited
as one of the colours least favoured by both men and
women.

THE RANGE OF FAVOURITE COLOURS

different colours were

named as favourites
by participants in the
survey
HAVE A FAVOURITE
DONT HAVE A FAVOURITE
HAVE MULTIPLE PREFERENCES

Blue was the most popular

favourite colour of the
survey respondents. It is
also the most preferred
colour worldwide

14%
of respondents did not
have one particular
favourite colour

PINK

TURQUOISE

RED

BLUE

ORANGE

PURPLE

YELLOW

BLACK

GREEN

GREY

EMERALD GREEN

WHITE

Pinky purple, Baby pink, Pink, Fuchsia,

Fuchsia pink, Magenta, Raspberry, Coral,
Crimson red, Blood red, Venetian red, Deep
scarlet red, Red, Garnet, Scarlet, Orange,
Terracotta, Deep bright yellow, Yellow,
Mustard Yellow, Lime green, Forest green,
Green, Emerald green, Mint green, Sea
green, Turquoise, Tropical blue, Teal, Duck
egg blue, Electric blue, Azure, Navy blue,
Baby blue, Light blue, Blue, Light indigo blue,
Blue grey, Midnight blue, Lilac, Purple, Deep
purple, Aubergine, Burgundy, Brown, Dark
brown, Black, Grey, White, Beige.

FIGURES 119 121, DEVELOPMENT OF OUTCOMES POSTERS

Colourful Language

Colourful Language

How does the complexity

of colour terms affect our
understanding and interpretation
of them? How consistent are our
responses to colour terms when
they are basic as opposed to
sophisticated or obscure? Which
colour terms are inadequately
understood? This set of posters
presents a selection of the results
from the survey conducted
as part of my Major Project,
Colourful Language. They
seek to demonstrate how our

understanding, and therefore

interpretation of colour terms
breaks down as they become
more complex. This is significant
because of the hundreds, if not
thousands of colour names at our
disposal we predominantly resort
to the eleven basic colour terms
in English, defined by Brent Berlin
and Paul Kay in 1969. This poster
presents the colours chosen by
participants in response to those
eleven basic colour terms, as a
basis for comparison.

Clockwise from the top, the terms

used in the survey were:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Pink
Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple
Brown
Black
Grey
White

How does the complexity

of colour terms affect our
understanding and interpretation
of them? How consistent are our
responses to colour terms when
they are basic as opposed to
sophisticated or obscure? Which
colour terms are inadequately
understood? This set of posters
presents a selection of the results
from the survey conducted
as part of my Major Project,
Colourful Language. They
seek to demonstrate how our

understanding, and therefore

interpretation of colour terms
breaks down as they become
more complex. This is significant
because of the hundreds, if not
thousands of colour names at
our disposal we predominantly
resort to the eleven basic colour
terms in English, defined by
Brent Berlin and Paul Kay in
1969. This poster presents the
colours chosen by participants
in response to a set of eleven
sophisticated colour terms.

Clockwise from the top, the terms

used in the survey were:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Nude
Coral
Maroon
Puce
Mauve
Teal
Pistachio
Khaki
Fawn
Tawny
Taupe

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Colourful Language

How does the complexity

of colour terms affect our
understanding and interpretation
of them? How consistent are our
responses to colour terms when
they are basic as opposed to
sophisticated or obscure? Which
colour terms are inadequately
understood? This set of posters
presents a selection of the results
from the survey conducted
as part of my Major Project,
Colourful Language. They
seek to demonstrate how our

understanding, and therefore

interpretation of colour terms
breaks down as they become
more complex. This is significant
because of the hundreds, if not
thousands of colour names at our
disposal we predominantly resort
to the eleven basic colour terms
in English, defined by Brent Berlin
and Paul Kay in 1969. This poster
presents the colours chosen by
participants in response to a set
of specifically selected; obscure
colour terms.

Clockwise from the top, the terms

used in the survey were:
1.
2.
3.
4.
5.
6.
7.
8.
9.
10.
11.

Alizarin
Porphyry
Ianthine
Periwinkle
Cerulean
Celadon
Citrine
Chartreuse
Gamboge
Cinnabar
Greige

Evaluation

I now realise I have no clue how

to describe colour, my colour
knowledge relies on describing
colours by using the core red, green
blue etc descriptors and words such
as pale, deep etc. I feel a little more
stupid now, thank you!
(Comment from anonymous survey participant, 2011)

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Evaluation
The evaluation of the project has been broken down into
four key areas: methodology, output, critical reflection
and personal reflection. These categories represent an
evaluation of that which came to be most important
throughout the course of the investigation.

7.1

EVALUATION OF METHODOLOGY

The decision to structure the project into a number of

separate exercises to investigate different aspects of
the research question was a deliberate one, initially
suggested in the project proposal. This approach has
allowed me to employ a number of different research
methodologies within a single project. Inspired by
Wayne Daleys Love Project (Fig. 135 & 136, Appendix
A), it has created the opportunity for me to explore a
wide range of techniques, sources of information and
data, increasing my opportunities for learning, building
specialist knowledge and helping to sustain interest in a
lengthy and in depth study.
This approach also presented me with the opportunity
to work with a variety of different types of content,
ranging from text based interview transcripts and
essays to photographs, vector graphics and numerical
data from survey questions. This allowed me to create
a varied body of visual responses while addressing the
challenge of developing a coherent visual identity for
the project.
The relationship between colour and language has a
number of different facets and structuring the project
into a series of explorations is not only a reflection of
this but of the varied way we perceive and interpret
colours.

Central to the research question was gathering and

comparing contributions from other people, whether
this was indirectly, through the results of Google Image
Search and Wordcount, in depth through interviews or
quantitatively through the Colourful Language survey.
This input has proved to be the most valuable research
conducted as part of the project as it demonstrates the
complexity of our descriptions of colours and the variety
of our understanding of colour terms.
Relying on survey participation to provide the content
for the output was a risk, however it proved to be the
most appropriate method for gathering the type of
contributions required. This was demonstrated by the
responses and feedback received from the survey, which
were generally very positive and have greatly enriched
the project.
Although it is always preferable to have a larger sample,
it was felt that the response count achieved in reaction
to the survey was sufficient for an investigation of this
nature. The results from a total 194 participants were
analysed, six fewer than the original number aimed for.
While the total number of participants was higher, a
number of responses were discounted because they
were incomplete. Further discussion and full analysis of
the survey results can be found throughout the Major
Project book.

Of the negative comments made about the survey,

most were complaints that it took too long. This was
something that was apparent when the survey was
designed. Despite this, the issue was not raised during
the pilot study and if the questions had been split into
two surveys as originally considered, it would not have
been possible to compare the results across the groups
of respondents. On reflection, completion rates may
have been higher had the survey been shorter. However,
as the quality and quantity of responses was more than
acceptable, the design and wording of the survey still
achieved the desired result.
The in depth interviews with colour specialists were
also especially successful. Everyone I spoke to
had a different perspective on colour and how to
communicate it. Most were very passionate about the
subject and thoroughly enjoyed talking about it. This
has resulted in a compilation of different views and
approaches to colour, not only reflected by their varying
backgrounds and professions but by the subjectivity of
colour itself, in that there is no one right answer. It has
provided a direct contrast to the short and structured,
but numerous responses to the survey, creating
a body of texts that reflects the rich and complex
nature of colour. It has proved to be a highly valuable
research activity and has greatly influenced my own
understanding of the subject.

In the proposal for the project I suggested that part of

the aim of the project was to contribute to the existing
body of research on colour naming and to invite
comments and evaluation from the wider public and
research community, primarily through my blog. This
aspect of the project has been relatively successful.
Although it was difficult to keep posting work
consistently throughout the project, there was regular
traffic to my blog and although most visitors did not
comment, those that did were also researching different
aspects of colour and I was able to share resources with
them and contribute my knowledge and opinions to
their research.
Ultimately, describing colour is more about language
than it is about colour (Batchelor, 2000). This
notion perfectly encapsulates how this investigation
has progressed. Describing colours represents a
communication problem, and to explore it using graphic
design methods has been an enlightening process.

It was interesting to find out how difficult it is to pick

the right colour by its name.
(Comment from anonymous survey participant, 2011)

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

7.2

EVALUATION OF OUTCOME

The outcome of the project exists as a book and set

of three A2 posters presenting the results and analysis
of the Colourful Language survey. It is accompanied
by a smaller set of twelve books, which are supporting
material, and address different aspects of the research
question but are not directly connected to the survey.
The results of the survey are central to the premise
of the project as they present a snapshot of the ways
we identify and interpret colours using language. It is
hoped that by examining other examples of how colour
has been presented, both as the subject and a feature
of information design, that a visually successful outcome
has been achieved, enhancing but not overshadowing
the value of the content.
As the survey was designed to explore a number of
different aspects of our understanding of colour names
it would have been possible to produce a larger series
of posters. This appeared unnecessary and it seemed
more appropriate to use the posters to present the
results, which best captured the essence of the project.
By using a report-style document to present the results
of the survey it was possible to accommodate all of the
information and analysis, such as the visual, graphical,
statistical and written elements and to support the
presentation of the other research activities. The output
book was also designed to compliment this report and
the visual summary for the project, to create set of key
documents that encapsulate the main written, visual and
analytical aspects of the research.

There was potential to produce an interactive outcome.

However, as stated in the proposal for this project that
would have required a greater emphasis on technical
skills and knowledge at an earlier stage in the project
and would have diverted considerably more time and
effort away from the production of content. To have
created a three-dimensional outcome or to have used
a more unconventional information design approach,
as can be seen in Data Flow and Data Flow 2 (edited
by Robert Klanten), would have shifted the emphasis
away from the content of the project towards the pure
aesthetics of the presentation. This was felt to be
inappropriate for the subject matter and was not the
intension of the project.
However, the potential of digital and interactive design
has been demonstrated by projects like the Interactive
Colour Label Explorer (Fig 131-133, Appendix A), and
the possibility exists to extend the project in the future,
by developing a website which could showcase the
results of the survey in a more dynamic way, if technical
issues could be addressed.

7.3

CRITICAL REFLECTION

In some respects the research for this project has not

strayed far from the course outlined in the original
proposal. At the time of writing the proposal I was
fortunate enough to have a clear idea of my focus and
research question. Having this foundation allowed me to
concentrate on the investigation for the entire duration
of the Major Project without the need for an extended
period of continuing diagnosis and definition.
However, it was obvious at the mid-way crit that my
initial research activities for the Major Project were too
vague in relation to my research question. Although the
development of other, more pertinent work was already
underway at this point, it prompted me to clarify the
research question from something that was somewhat
expansive, to a structure that addressed the focus of the
project in three specific ways. In doing this I was able to
question how each of my research activities related to
the focus of the project in a far more defined way.
This exercise assisted the development of additional
research activities, not included in the original proposal
and helped refocus my efforts towards a relevant
output. In turn, the process of writing introductions
for the books of each research activity and drafting
this report also helped clarify a number of aspects of
the project, including my position in response to the
research I had done and what it represented as a body
of work.
In the proposal for this project I had speculated that the
output could be based on a number of things but would
most likely take the form of a printed book. At the stage
of the mid-way crit it was still unclear what element
of the research would be formulated into an output.
However, after reflecting on the feedback I received it
was apparent that the key ingredient to the success of
the project was the participation and inclusion of other
people. As a result of this development it was evident
that the output for the project should be formed from
the results of the survey, as a means of representing the
subjectivity in our use of language to describe colour.

With a relatively small sample size, it would be difficult

to claim that this project could ever present a universal
or definitive view of our understanding of colour
terms, if that is even possible. However, the results
presented by this project can be examined within the
context of the research that took place. It can still be
used to contribute to the understanding of how we
communicate colour and promote the notion that colour
is different for all of us.
As described in the previous section, colour
reproduction was a concern from the very beginning
of the project. All possible measures were taken to
ensure consistent colour management was maintained
throughout the research and design process. All of the
documents for the project were printed to the same
specification, so although the colours reproduced
cannot be accurately compared with, for instance
Pantone or Munsell swatches, they are consistent
and comparable across all of the books. While this
arrangement was far from the ideal of colour printing,
within the time and tight budget constraints of the
project it was the most satisfactory compromise.
On reflection there are aspects of the project that
could have been managed more effectively. The
commencement of the Major Project would have greatly
benefitted from a review of the research generated up
until that point, in order to proceed in the most logical
manner. Instead my development from Unit 2 into the
Major Project was less structured than it should have
been. This was evident at the mid-way crit and in the
research activities that did not address the focus of the
project directly enough. However, I feel that the work
completed subsequently redresses the balance of the
project and engages with the ideas outlined in the
research question.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

7.4

PERSONAL REFLECTION

I have gained far more from this investigation than I

ever expected when I embarked on writing my Major
Project proposal. It has in some sense, been a personal
journey through colour and language and has allowed
me to study a complex and fascinating subject, over
a sustained period, which I would have been unlikely
to have had the opportunity to investigate to such
an extent, in a professional context. As a result I have
discovered a subject that could provide a lifetimes
worth of engagement and interest. With areas ranging
from the highly technical to the captivatingly poetic, it
would be possible to dedicate a whole career to the in
depth study of just one aspect of colour.
The interviews I conducted as part of the project have
allowed me to meet a diverse, knowledgeable and
inspiring group of colour specialists. This has enabled
me to build a range of contacts, which may prove
invaluable in the future.

As new research is constantly contributing to our

understanding of colour naming I hope to continue
to research this and related subjects for some time
to come. I intend to document this extension of the
investigation through my research blog, with the aim
of building a comprehensive resource about colour
naming, with the possibility of collaborating with other
already established colour research blogs, colour
naming projects, or colour researchers. It is hoped that
this project and the continuation of my research into
colour may eventually create future research or career
opportunities.
This project has become more than just a vehicle to
develop and refine my research and design skills, it is
ultimately something that has changed the way I see the
world.

I have also been able to build my own body of specialist

knowledge about perception, colour and how we
describe it with language. This extended far beyond
what I initially estimated studying at the beginning of
the project. It is a reflection of the number of studies
that exists on colour, colour perception and colour
naming.

It has in some sense, been a personal journey through

colour and language.

Conclusion

...colour is a moment.
(Hicks, 2011)

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Conclusion

As can be seen from the outcomes of the different

research activities that comprise this project, when
it comes to naming colours there is no one decisive
answer or response. There is subjectivity at every
level: the subtle differences in the way we physically
experience colour, our interpretation of colour and
finally, the way we articulate it. To achieve a unified
and mainstream model for expressing colour would be
impossible and probably undesirable. The variety seen
in the responses to the survey, the images generated
through Google Image Search and the range of
perspectives gathered through the focussed interviews,
is a reflection of the nature of colour and our attempts
to describe it.
This project has sort to explore, capture and present a
variety of contributions and perspectives to celebrate
the diversity of how we use language to communicate
colour. That we express colour in such a varied way
is exactly what makes it so fascinating. Together,
these responses not only demonstrate our collective
understanding of colour terms, but also, just how much
of colour remains a mystery to us. It is a paradox that
we lack the capability to successfully articulate and
communicate something that is so embedded in our
culture, surroundings and even our biology.
By presenting a collection of different perspectives,
this investigation doesnt offer a direct solution to any
of the problems of using language to identify colours.
However, this project was never an attempt to solve
these issues in a practical sense. A more functional
outcome would have been to create a system for
communicating colour. This approach has already
been addressed in a number of instances by Munsell,

NCS, Pantone, l*a*b*, through the use of numerical

systems and standards. While they have proved
highly valuable for technical purposes they have never
offered a practical alternative to language for everyday
descriptions of colour. They fail to capture the true
extent of our experience of colour.
Although this research has only captured a fraction of
our responses to colour terms, rather than look on this
as a failing of the project I see it as a reflection of the
nature of language, and because even with this relatively
small scope, it has increased my own understanding of
the communication of colour immeasurably. I hope that
some of this knowledge can be shared with the different
groups that were identified as the audience for this
research, either through viewing the project in person or
on online by visiting my research blog.
The subject of this project provides a fascinating
insight into two of the qualities that lie at the very heart
of what makes us human: our ability to perceive and
interpret the world around us and then to articulate
it using language. Our descriptions of colour may
never be perfectly interpreted, but if somehow they
were, there would be no opportunities to observe and
acknowledge the diversity and richness of our language
and appreciate the subtlety and complexity of our
experience of colour. And that would make life very dull
indeed.

Bibliography

Bibliography
LIST OF FIGURES
Figures 1 4: Essays on Colour Layout Iterations
Figures 5 8: Essays on Colour Spreads of Final Design
Figures 9 12: Essays on Colour Analysis Book

Figures 13 16: Essays on Colour Analysis Posters
Figures 17 20: Strooping the Colour Book Spreads
Figures 21 24: Strooping the Colour Posters
Figures 25 30: Colour my Words Book Spreads
Figures 31 34: When Green isnt Green Book Spreads
Figures 35 36: When Green isnt Green Poster Iterations
Figures 37 44: Colour By Numbers Book Layout Iterations
Figures 45 52: Colour By Numbers Book Spreads
Figures 53 56: Searching for the Rainbow Book Spreads
Figures 57 60: Searching for the Rainbow Poster Series
Figures 61 66: Transforming the Rainbow Book Spreads
Figures 67 74: Looking for Hue Book Spreads
Figures 75 78: Say What You See Book Layout Iterations
Figures 79 86: Say What You See Book Spreads
Figures 87 90: Deconstructing the Rainbow Book Spreads
Figures 91 94: Conversations on Colour Book Layout Iterations
Figures 95 98: Conversations on Colour Book Spreads
Figures 99 118: Development of Outcomes Survey Results

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Figures 119 121: Development of Outcomes Posters

Figures 122 123: Optical Colour Effects. ALBERS, J., 2006. Interaction of colour. New Haven : Yale University
Press.
Figures 124 125: Colour Perception in the Himba Tribe. Horizon Episode 1. Do You See What I See?, 2011
[Television Programme], BBC, BBC 2, 8 August 21.00.
Figure 126: Colour Naming Experiment. Nathan Moroney, 2009. [online] Available at: <http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Nathan_Moroney/> [Accessed 28/11/10].
Figures 127 128: The Colour Thesaurus. MORONEY, N., 2008. The colour thesaurus. June ed. Hewlett-Packard
Laboratories: Magcloud.com.
Figures: 129 130: Public Perception of Colour Project, online. CARTER, R. & N, 2009. Public perception of colour,
make your choices. [online] Available at: <http://www.robandnick.com/ppc.php?stage=chooseorange&x=4&y=3&ch
oices=226,185,,,,,> [Accessed 20/07/11].
Figures 131 133: Interactive Colour Label Explorer. OCONNER, B., 2008. Where does Blue end and Red
begin?, The CrowdFlower Blog, [blog] 17 March, Available at: <http://blog.crowdflower.com/2008/03/where-doesblue-end-and-red-begin/> [Accessed 19/12/10].
Figure 134: Emotionally Vague project by Orlagh OBrien. Emotionally Vague, 2011. [online] Available at: <http://
www.emotionallyvague.com/results_04.php> [Accessed 11/03/11].
Figure 135 136: The Love Project by Wayne Daley. Noble, I. & BESTLEY, R., 2005. Visual Research. Lausanne :
AVA Publishing. pp.82 & 85.

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Appendices

Appendix A

Figures 122 & 123: Optical Colour Effects. ALBERS, J., 2006. Interaction of colour. New Haven : Yale University Press.

Figures 124 & 125: Colour Perception in the Himba Tribe. Horizon Episode 1. Do You See What I See?, 2011
[Television Programme], BBC, BBC 2, 8 August 21.00.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Figure 126: Colour Naming Experiment. Nathan Moroney, 2009. [online] Available at: <http://www.hpl.hp.com/personal/Nathan_Moroney/> [Accessed 28/11/10].

SUPPORTING ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 127 & 128: The Colour Thesaurus. MORONEY, N., 2008. The colour thesaurus. June ed. Hewlett-Packard
Laboratories: Magcloud.com.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Figures: 129 & 130: Public Perception of Colour Project, online. CARTER, R. & N, 2009. Public perception of colour,
make your choices. [online] Available at: <http://www.robandnick.com/ppc.php?stage=chooseorange&x=4&y=3&ch
oices=226,185,,,,,> [Accessed 20/07/11].

SUPPORTING ILLUSTRATIONS

Figures 131 133: Interactive Colour Label Explorer. OCONNER, B., 2008. Where does Blue end and Red
begin?, The CrowdFlower Blog, [blog] 17 March, Available at: <http://blog.crowdflower.com/2008/03/where-doesblue-end-and-red-begin/> [Accessed 19/12/10].

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

Figure 134: Emotionally Vague project by Orlagh OBrien. Emotionally Vague, 2011. [online] Available at: <http://
www.emotionallyvague.com/results_04.php> [Accessed 11/03/11].

SUPPORTING ILLUSTRATIONS

Figure 135 & 136: The Love Project by Wayne Daley. Noble, I. & BESTLEY, R., 2005. Visual Research. Lausanne : AVA
Publishing. pp.82 & 85.

Appendix B
SURVEY QUESTIONS
This survey has been designed to help me gather data
for my MA Graphic Design Major Project about how
people talk about colour. Your participation is voluntary
and you may withdraw from the survey at any time. All
of your answers will be kept completely anonymous and
confidential. You data will only be used for my research
and will not be passed on to anyone else.
The survey should only take a few minutes of your
time, your participation is highly valued and much
appreciated. I hope you find this survey interesting.

SECTION 1 BASIC DETAILS

Gender
M/F
Age
Under 20
20-39
40-59
60 +

SECTION 2 VIEWING CONDITIONS

Are you viewing this screen in:
Natural Daylight
Fluorescent/Strip lights/Energy Saving Light Bulbs
Conventional Light Bulbs/Incandescent/Halogen Bulbs
Is the light:
Bright
Medium
Dim
Is your computer a:
PC
Macintosh
Dont Know
Is you screen:
Flat Screen/TFT
LCD
CTR
Plasma
Laptop
Dont Know

Nationality:
Is English your first language?
Y/N
If no what is you first language?
Do you have any colour deficiency in your vision?
Y/N

SECTION 3 COLOUR VOCABULARY

Please name as many colours as you can think of.
For example red. You can also include names with two
words such as sky blue. If you are unsure if a word is a
colour, please write it in the second box below.
There is no time limit for this exercise but around 5
minutes is suggested.

If Yes, please indicate which colours are affected:

Do work in the creative industries or have you studied
in the arts or design beyond the age of 18?
Y/N

Please write as many informal words or phrases that

could describe a colour as you can think of.
For example ice-cream coloured.

MAJOR PROJECT REPORT

SECTION 4 MISUNDERSTOOD COLOURS

Please try to describe what you think the following
colours look like in basic terms such as: red/blue/
green/brown/light/dark/pale/bright
For example terracotta could be described as light
brown-orange. If you have no idea what colour it might
be, please try to make an educated guess.
Mauve
Puce
Taupe
Fawn
Nude
Khaki
Hazel
Tawny
Teal
Pistachio

Are there any other colour names that you know of but
are unsure of what the colour looks like?

SECTION 5 OBSCURE COLOURS

The following list of words are colour names that are
uncommon in English. Please indicate if you have heard
of this colour before and try to describe it using basic
terms as with the previous section.
If you have no idea what colour it might be, please try to
make an educated guess.
Porphyry
Gamboge
Alizarin
Celadon

Cerulean
Cinnabar
Eau-de-nil
Incarnadine
Bice
Madder

SECTION 6 TALKING ABOUT COLOUR

Do you ever struggle to describe exactly what colour
something is?
Yes
No
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Dont know
Have you ever had difficulty understanding what colour
someone else was describing?
Yes
No
Rarely
Sometimes
Often
Dont know
Do you think there are enough names for colours?
Yes
No
Dont know
Do you think it is important to be able to describe a
colour accurately?
Yes
No
Dont know
It depends on the situation

SECTION 7 COLOUR DISAGREEMENTS

Have you ever had a disagreement with someone
about what colour something was?
Y/N
If you can remember the details of the disagreement
please answer the questions below:
What was the object that you disagreed about?
What colour did you think it was?
What colour did the other person think it was?
Did you resolve the disagreement?

Pink
Brown
Black
Grey
White
Mauve
Puce
Taupe
Fawn
Nude
Khaki
Maroon
Tawny
Teal
Pistachio
Coral

Are there any other details you would like to add?

SECTION 8 NAME THAT COLOUR

Please name the following colours:

SECTION 9 BEST REPRESENTATION

For each of the following colour names, please pick
from the series of boxes which colour you think is the
best representation of that name. Please try not to
think about it too much, a gut reaction is best in this
case.

Porphyry
Gamboge
Alizarin
Celadon
Cerulean
Cinnabar
Citrine
Greige
Ianthine
Periwinkle
Chartreuse

SECTION 10 END
What is you favourite colour?

Red
Orange
Yellow
Green
Blue
Purple

Are there any other comments you would like to add to

this survey?

Thank you for you participation, it is greatly

appreciated.

Appendix C
INTERVIEW QUESTIONS
1. Can you describe your background and your
current professional practise?
2. How are you particularly involved with colour in
what you do?
3. Do you have to make judgements about or
describe colours as part of that?
4. Do you have to communicate or talk about colour
to other people in your work?

15. How would you describe the colour red to

someone who had never seen it or who couldnt
see?
16. Have you ever had a disagreement with anyone
about what colour something was?
17. Do you think it was a matter of different
perception or a difference in the way of expressing
that colour?
18. What is your favourite colour?

5. How good are you at talking about colours?

19. Is there anything else you would like to add?
6. Do you ever struggle to describe colours or
articulate precisely the colours you mean?
7. Do you think that people are good at talking about
colour in general? Is there a good level of colour
vocabulary among the general population?
8. Do you ever have difficulty trying to imagine a
colour that someone else is describing?
9. Has working with colour changed the way you talk
about it?
10. Are you more aware of colours and how you
describe them?
11. Do you think there are enough names or words to
describe colours? Should there be more or fewer?
12. Do you ever use other systems or colour standards
or systems for communicating colour to other
people?
13. Are number systems better than language or just
different?
14. How important do you think it is to be able to
describe colour accurately?