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Has the world become less colourful?

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Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#201

Post by ziml77 »

kansface wrote: post #156
ziml77 wrote: post #129

Earlier quoted context omitted.

> Another important aspect is that the color I like today is not the color I like tomorrow This is a pretty big one. Every time I look at buying something colored, I really need to think hard about it. I like the color now, but later I may not. And I'm not going to replace something that isn't broken just because I no longer like the color. There's also a matter of getting things to match. You're basically stuck with…

Presumably people weren’t wedded to colors in the past either.

There may have been a lot of novelty in being able to get things in such a wide variety of colors.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#202

Post by AmericanChopper »

nereye wrote: post #176
AmericanChopper wrote: post #38

Earlier quoted context omitted.

The reason for that seems obvious to me. Grey, steel, white and black will work in basically every kitchen. If you want a more colorful pallet in any room in your house, then you need to put a lot more thought into planning it. I think most people aren’t highly motivated to do that.

Would normally try to resist but, just as FYI, from https://brians.wsu.edu/2016/05/30/palate-palette-pallet/ : palate / palette / pallet Your “palate” is the roof of your mouth, and by extension, your sense of taste. A “palette” is the flat board an artist mixes paint on (or by extension, a range of colors). A “pallet” is either a bed (now rare) or a flat platform onto which goods are loaded.

Thanks. Good language correcting.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#203

Post by silisili »

wsc981 wrote: post #33
thoweriu34234 wrote: post #3

It's not just colours. The world rapidly turning into a real-life "borg-world": same kinds of buildings; same kinds of dresses; same kinds of "world models; same philosophies; and now the same language too. The world is for all real purposes has been gobbled up by the Anglosphere. It's all but dead; I'm sure many people realize how drab and low-entropy our world is today.

When I first moved to Thailand, it seemed to me the colors were much more vibrant here than in Northern Europe. And even after living here for 5 years now, I still appreciate this often. Greens are more green, blues are more blue, etc... I'm guessing it has to do with the position of the sun relative to the earth / how sunlight enters the earths atmosphere. Just seeing these more vibrant colors have the effect of lif…

I felt the same way when I moved to Florida from the midwest. It's really hard to describe to people who haven't experienced it.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#204

Post by x-complexity »

tsumnia wrote: post #135
donkeyd wrote: post #89

I'm a man and I like colors. I have a red car, red shoes and colorful jackets. None of them are especially remarkable, they just have colors on them. I get remarks from colleagues about my shoes, I get remarks from random people on the street about my jacket. These people don't tend to be very positive about it, yet they feel the need to say something about my appearance, because I wear colorful stuff. I feel like pa…

Jeff: "Is it me or are more people wearing gray? I feel like I'm in a commercial and someone's about to hand me a Starbust." Abed: "3's and 2's tend to wear neutral colors. Looking like you want to move up can get you moved down..." [Abed waves to people in the distance] "Those are other 3's. We talk about how we're glad we're not 2's." [Abed stands to leave] "Small talk guys... I make small talk now."

The "Nosedive" of Community, before Black Mirror did it :)

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#205

Post by lioeters »

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 am a daltonist

Interesting, I'd never heard this term before.

> Red–green color blindness: This form of colorblindness is sometimes referred to as daltonism after John Dalton, who had red-green dichromacy. In some languages, daltonism is still used to describe red-green color blindness.

From the search results that popped up, the word "daltonist" seems to be used in Romanian, Serbian, and Bosnian languages.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#206

Post by aussieshibe »

soco wrote: post #64
stuartleigh wrote: post #27

Earlier quoted context omitted.

As somebody who has recently renovated their kitchen and bathroom, it's not that I thought potential buyers would prefer white over a colour, it's just that I thought they were less likely to NOT like white over my preference of colour, and then either be put off, or feel like "this house is perfect but we'd have to redo the bathroom right away because I can't stand the pink" and then offer less.

So basically they renovate not for themselves, but for some fantasy future buyers. That's a bit sad...

What's the difference?

If I were to renovate in a style which doesn't appeal to me, but has broader market appeal, it's still for me. The only difference is that I value the long term potential future income more than I value the loss of short term adherence to my taste.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#207

Post by strogonoff »

drewcoo wrote: post #134
strogonoff wrote: post #118

The arrival of widely available colour film photography and subsequent pervasiveness of bland JPEG renders changed how humans perceive colour (and likely how they design with colour). Until colour photography, humans didn’t really have a fixed shared anchor as to what the world looks like in general—including colours. All we had was words and paintings. With consumer colour photography, suddenly it seems as if we hav…

> All we had was words and paintings. If by "painting" you also mean things like lithographs[1] and magic lantern[2] shows and glazed ceramics and dyes used in textiles and rugs, then sure, all we had were words and paintings. I don't think most people would think of those when they thinking "paintings," though. And those are only the human-produced color anchors. [1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Lithography [2] htt…

And drawings, and so on. I guess I should’ve written “visual art” instead of using painting as a catch-all term.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#208

Post by Cthulhu_ »

jkqwzsoo wrote: post #158
thematrixturtle wrote: post #34

There is a famous if possibly apocryphal study where random people were asked to rate various toaster colors, and everybody swooned over lime green and hot pink and whatnot. After they finished, they were told that as their prize they could take one of the toasters home -- and everybody chose white, stainless steel or black.

I remember reading a feature/native advertisement about Lenovo's ThinkPad focus groups a while back (I think on Ars or The Verge) that had a similar conclusion. People would go crazy over a red or white ThinkPad in focus groups, but would never buy one because they couldn't see themselves as "that person" with the red laptop at a meeting. Lenovo did make both a red and white x100e a long while ago, but those were mor…

That's really interesting to read about (and the comment above); I hope that the people running these things know this is a thing too.

It adds up too. Companies like Apple have long advertised with a diverse range of colors for their devices, but I think most people settle on black / white in the end because it's more neutral / doesn't stand out.

At some point people had trouble distinguishing their grey macbook pro from the hundred other macbook pros. First that was resolved with full size sticker and covers (which were cute in that they used the illuminated apple logo on the back as a feature), then with... a very wild and colorful range of stickers they save up from conferences and the like.

It was an interesting thing to witness, having big groups of people with bland, uniform, sleek and neutral, to a very nerdy form of self-expression and standing out from the crowd.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#209

Post by wink »

The wood examples are disingenuous I think.

I'm close to 40 and everyone I know in my age group, where I grew up... their parents all had the same type of furniture with the same wood types. We all had the same colors in our kids' bedrooms. It was three types of local wood, and the odd outlier.

Surprise! When we grew up we didn't want our apartments to look like our parents set them up in the 80s or 90s. My living room is (faux) dark cherry, my bedframe + nightstands are (painted) dark wood, my kitchen is light beige.

Re: Has the world become less colourful?

#210

Post by soco »

aussieshibe wrote: post #206
soco wrote: post #64

Earlier quoted context omitted.

So basically they renovate not for themselves, but for some fantasy future buyers. That's a bit sad...

What's the difference? If I were to renovate in a style which doesn't appeal to me, but has broader market appeal, it's still for me. The only difference is that I value the long term potential future income more than I value the loss of short term adherence to my taste.

If you plan to live short term in that house, why not.
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