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Has the world become less colourful?

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Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#101

Post by hackernewds »

leereeves wrote: post #90
junga wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think most people aren’t highly motivated to do that. But they were in the past? I don't know but I wonder why this might have changed.

I think people in the past spent less time looking at a screen and had other hobbies (like interior decorating) instead.

Seems like a stretch that using screens has led to a decline in interior decorating. You could argue a whole generation including men are now devolved into desk setups, plants, terrariums, "earthy colors", hygge, woodworking, aesthetics, etc through Pinterest, Instagram, etc. The same revolution has happened for the glorification of cooks -> chefs and the proliferation of home bakers

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#102

Post by samsolomon »

To me there's something about the use of color that can become a bit overwhelming. I think it's less about color, but the amount of color and contrast that appears in a given area—perceived busyness. It's difficult to describe. I think it's less about trying to stand out and more about people picking things that they like individually, but may not work well together.

It's kind of like going to get ice cream and having them put every topping on it. Gummy bears and mint chocolate chips taste good on their own and in various combinations with other things. Not so much when they are together.

As a designer I'm probably more sensitive when it comes to color though.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#103

Post by Kye »

towaway15463 wrote: post #76
somebodythere wrote: post #71

Earlier quoted context omitted.

No, I think people in the past probably just had a weaker preference for designs that go together in color and style.

That seems unlikely. Look at fashion and decor magazines from the past and you see lots of lively colours that are coordinated. If you go house hunting and see a couple houses that haven’t been updated for decades they have a definite palette.

Magazines are a reflection of a narrow slice of reality, usually the slice that could afford to buy the stuff advertised in magazines. Anyone can buy a magazine and aspire to the lifestyles depicted, but most can only aspire.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#104

Post by Kiboneu »

Computer and phone interfaces tend to be very colorful. Sometimes a UI designer doesn’t know how to fit extra dimensions of information on screen, they encode that information in color, but it doesn’t always work. Colors are picked up by brands and coupled with unimportant information and identities, and we are forced to see this when when we go outside (in civilization).

All my displays are greyscale, and when I turn off the color filter I feel like I’m looking at a trash bin full of neon candy. My short term memory suffers (my theory is that I use color as a mnemonic for thinking, and in the mind: re-coloring is more demanding then coloring, and un-coloring seems impossible, given a complex virtual interface).

Maybe there’s a kind of color-based sensory exhaustion going on from an over-use of color for brand-related messaging and UI, which is subconsciously or unconsciously compensated by reducing the color of everyday objects.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#105

Post by Macha »

leereeves wrote: post #90
junga wrote: post #56

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> I think most people aren’t highly motivated to do that. But they were in the past? I don't know but I wonder why this might have changed.

I think people in the past spent less time looking at a screen and had other hobbies (like interior decorating) instead.

Alternatively, people in the past had fewer possesions (not out of virtuous minimialism as some people portray, but sheer economic reality), and so had more time to consider how each would fit in.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#106

Post by pessimizer »

avar wrote: post #53
maest wrote: post #48

Earlier quoted context omitted.

GP clearly meant the gray colour common for stainless steel objects: https://im01.itaiwantrade.com/f741c34e-0130-464b-a4d0-1607a2...

Stainless steel as darker than that, and typically "brushed". That's chrome. In any case, many people might have a vague idea that stainless steel is more durable, but not be able to tell the difference between stainless steel, chrome painted hard plastic, or galvanized steel. I wonder if the study accounted for that.

Somebody actually flag-killed you for saying stainless steel wasn't a color.

I think you're making a really good point. If there was an obvious durability difference between toasters (plastic vs. stainless steel), I'd take the steel one even if I liked the cherry red one better. If the red one I preferred were also steel, then that would be the question this experiment intends to examine (I'd be choosing on color.)

Colorful shit is often cheap shit.

edit: You can get plastic stuff "stainless steel color" by plating it with a thin foil, but then I'm definitely going for one of the colorful, dyed plastics, because that stuff is going to flake off.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#107

Post by Borrible »

“Therefore in 1909 I announced one morning, without any previous warning, that in the future we were going to build only one model, that the model was going to “Model T,” and that the chassis would be exactly the same for all cars, and I remarked:

‘Any customer can have a car painted any colour that he wants so long as it is black.’

I cannot say that any one agreed with me. The selling people could not of course see the advantages that a single model would bring about in production. More than that, they did not particularly care.”

Henry Ford in collaboration with Samuel Crowther in My Life and Work. 1922. Page 72

Beside, color is all in your mind. Out of it, it's just electromagnetic waves.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#108

Post by avar »

BrandoElFollito wrote: post #74
avar wrote: post #46

Earlier quoted context omitted.

Quoted post unavailable.

If you want to be pedantic, there is no such thing as a "color". There are light waves with a frequency that hit a highly non-linear detector (our eye) and what comes from that is analyzed by your brain to put a label such as "red". What you see is different from what I see (not to mention that I am a daltonist) - and none of these are standardized. We are used to colors and this is why we label them. So "chrome" is…

I'm referring to a "color" in the product customization sense of the word.

You could buy a red toaster or a blue toaster, and you'd have every reason to think that it's different paint or dyes, but an otherwise equivalent product made of the same underlying materials.

Whereas stainless steel partly refers to a small range of colors, but mainly to the properties of the material.

In the context of kitchen appliances stainless steel products are almost always of higher quality and durability.

As an example: You can find stainless steel fridges, and cheap fridges, but no cheap stainless steel fridges.

If you were offering me a red or stainless steel fridge sight unseen I'd always go for the stainless one, even if I much preferred red to stainless as a look.

I could always glue a red MDF panel to the door, but the advantages of "stainless" would extend to other premium aspects of the fridge.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#109

Post by pflenker »

I think that the conclusion this thread draws is wrong, because less overall colors make color accents stand out more. In other words: If everything pops out, nothing does.

Most of our furniture and walls are white, gray/stainless steel or black, and variations from it. Yet, we use color accents in most rooms, e.g. orange towels in the bathroom, or lilac bedclothes. So while our place confirms the overall trend, it does not support the conclusion, as it looks much more colorful than my parent's place, which resembles some of the pictures in that thread.

Another important aspect is that the color I like today is not the color I like tomorrow, so buying something with muted colors makes sense, especially for long-lived things like cars or kitchen interiors. It is much easier to change the color accents in a kitchen if you happen to fancy a redecoration that way.

And last but not least, it's easier to sell stuff like cars if it is not very colorful.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#110

Post by Waterluvian »

It feels like “colourful” is being flatly accepted as the superior outcome. I’m not sure it is. It’s just different. And it’s style so it’ll come and go. Remember the iMac? Computers were never colourful. Then they were. They’re not really again. I imagine it’ll keep evolving.
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