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Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
81–90 of 218 posts
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#82I wonder if the designers of cold war soviet planes read the same color theory because their cockpits are always a very particular indescribable shade of green. There were also very specific colors for subsystems, yellow for fuel, purple for hydraulics etc. Much more than the contemporary US designs.
My father was a mechanic and crew chief working on F-14's during his time in the air force. His two takeaways from his service were: 1. No one should ever join the military for any reason ever forever, and 2. Somebody needs to color code literally anything. He talked about how the wiring schematics were a maze, made worse by using only non-labeled gray and black wires with connections and mounts that were the same co…
I worked on military avionics in a previous life and all of the planes I worked on had miles of white wires. The reasons given to us were:
1. Cost savings when buying.
2. There are hundreds to thousands of wires in an aircraft, but there are NOT hundreds to thousands of different colors of wires (even if we allow for stripes, etc) that are readily distinguishable to an overworked airman hunched over in a dim, cramped avionics bay trying to fix a plane that needs to take off for a mission in an hour.
If you are lucky, the wires are numbered. But even if they are, you typically identify a wire by its connector pin and PRAY that the fault isn't a break somewhere back in the wiring harness.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#83[deleted]
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#84I got through this entire article before I realized it was written by someone I worked with back in my agency days. Beth is an awesome designer with a great eye. Nice to see her on the front page here. Now, to the content: I often wonder how much we have lost with our endless quest for minimalism. We can't even make buttons look like buttons anymore. Affordances have become anemic at times. Designers who think and ca…
This could do with a little better colour design, but let me just give you this to look at:
https://gjcp.net/plugins/peacock/
Yeah. Skeuomorphism isn't dead. Buttons need to look like buttons. Sliders need to look like sliders.
You just know looking at it that when you click on the little buttons, they pop in slightly as the LEDs go on and off, right? Does it look cheesy and 80s and dated? Yeah it sounds cheesy and 80s and dated too.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#85Funny - one of those things you don't really wonder about until someone points it out, but which proves pretty interesting once you're aware of it.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#86I got through this entire article before I realized it was written by someone I worked with back in my agency days. Beth is an awesome designer with a great eye. Nice to see her on the front page here. Now, to the content: I often wonder how much we have lost with our endless quest for minimalism. We can't even make buttons look like buttons anymore. Affordances have become anemic at times. Designers who think and ca…
I'm reminded of an article a while back talking about how the change from sodium streetlights to LED streetlights had a whole lot of unforeseen effects on animals, people's sleep patterns, driver awareness and visibility, etc. due to color changes. There was a comment on the article from an old civil engineer saying "no, these were not unforeseen, we actually did the research back in the day to figure out what color…
I miss the aesthetics of the support for the street light themselves too. In Spain they used to be curved with a 'crown' shaped top, looking 'classical' and less hard for the brain as straight lines make the brain really tired. We are used to fractal and curved designs from nature, not to fake perspective points in every city full of straight lines.
These could just reuse the current LED lamps by just redesigning the socket. Altough the materials should be changed as the old ones (I think they were ceramic and/or concrete?) could cause serious harms if they felt over random people walking around. And, yes, they can even break concrete pavement like nothing.
I remember hearing a falling lamp+case near my home and upon falling to the sidewalk it sounded like a bomb, I am no kidding, even the floor vibrated and the windows nearly crashed. These things were really sturdy, either concrete or cement. I would love the same design but in magnesium, which can be lighter and maybe as durable, altough I know ceramic/concrete can withstand anything.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#87Earlier quoted context omitted.
> that's why they were the color they were That doesn't seem right to me. Sodium (and mercury) vapor lamps are the color they are due to physics, and were chosen because they're very efficient (and long lasting). Low-pressure sodium is the best and worst of these; essentially monochromatic but fantastic efficiency. Their only advantage, color-wise, is that the light can be filtered out easily (they used to be widely…
...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically implemented and scaled. Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
Modern street lighting provides a way clearer view of the scene imo than the old sodium lighting. Maybe it's just brighter now.
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#88TL;DR: because mid-20th-century designers believed soft green reduced eye strain and improved focus. Basically the same nonsensical belief as in regard the dark mode nowadays. I don't even believe it's true. Green is just an army colour, that's pretty much it. Army uses army colours. Mystery solved.
I think the reason that I like dark mode is that I have had floaters in my eyes since at least age 14. They stand out against a bright white window background, but I don't notice them at all on a dark window with light text.
Or maybe it's just because that's how IBM PC DOS, BASICA, etc., as well as the VT100, VT220, VT300s that I used did it.
(Also, I think displays should paint with light, and having a white background is painting darkness on a computer screen. It's particularly bad for presentation slides. A light background just screams "PowerPoint presentation".)
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#89Earlier quoted context omitted.
I feel that too. My house had significant chunks painted a vivid aquamarine when I moved in 2018, and my now-ex insisted that we paint over it all in grey. After she moved out, I put up greens, yellows, brown, and blue all over the house. It's not quite as "public pool" feeling as that original aquamarine, but it's certainly more lively than grey/white. Funny enough though, when I had a designer come in to take measu…
It's common for homes especially when prepped for sale because neutral colors won't clash with whatever the potential buyer might want to bring in e.g. furniture, artwork, or other decor. Most of the rooms in my house are painted in colors and I mostly like it but it can sometimeds feel fatiguing. I've thought about repainting in a neutral gray or green.
I get that argument, but as a counterpoint of one: Our last house we got so tired of the drabness, we used rich reds, golds, greens, and an even a bright orange in one room. It made the whole house feel so much more vibrant, it's hard to explain but it was just... pleasant to look at.
Anyways, the new owners tracked down my wife over some old mail, and during the conversation they thanked us for having painted it so vividly and said it was part of why they were drawn to it. They shared pics and they've done a -ton- of work, but the paint colors remain :)
Re: Why so many control rooms were seafoam green (2025)
#90Earlier quoted context omitted.
...And the old Engineer was just saying that that was the area on the spectrum they aimed for, so they found a light that emitted in that wavelength that could be technically implemented and scaled. Way better work than whoever it is handling this LED nonsense. Why we can't find a diode that we can use to simulate the old spectra would be a fun research project.
Modern street lighting provides a way clearer view of the scene imo than the old sodium lighting. Maybe it's just brighter now.
It's about 100000x brighter and if your bedroom is next to a street lamp, good luck getting some sleep.