Is Black a Color? Is White a Color?
What is the Symbolism of Grey?

 

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Is Black a Color? Is White a Color?

Question:
Black is the absence of color and white is the blending of all colors. Can you suggest a simple way to demonstrate or prove this to a young child ? I think you've got that backwards - white is the absence of color and black is the blending of all colors - here's a simple way to show how black is made - combine all three primary colors using a liquid paint or you could even combine food coloring in a glass. You won't get a jet black, but I think the point will be clear. J Hope

Fred
Black is the absence of color and white is the blending of all color when dealing with light. The opposite is true when dealing with paint. A prism will demonstrate the colors in white light.

Mac
Whew, such confusion! Black paint, white paint, black rooms, lighted rooms.... Subtractive and additive colors..ugh. It might be best to only thing of color as light...or as fractions of light. (Skip the paint for now). Add RBG (red, blue, green) lights and you get white light. (Aren't those little dots on your TV screen neat to look at with a magnifying lens?) Look at color as little photonies that hit your retina and excite your little retinal cells. White (light) is the presence of all colors...the emission of a wide bandwidth of visible light that hits your eye/retina. Black (light..ha ha) is when you're in a dark room and you can't see a thing...no light..no photons around. - - - Oh, the paint? You don't 'see' the paint. You don't 'see' the paint color...not really. You see the color that is being reflected from the paint. Example: Red Paint. White light applied to the Red Paint. Some of the light bounces off the "Red" paint. The "Red" is what is reflected into your eye onto your retina. The other portion of the white light was absorbed by the so-called "Red" paint. Care to guess what colors the Red Paint absorbed? "Color" in that sense...occurs when your eye is only receiving a 'fractional' part of portion of a full white light emission. Or the light source is only generating a partial or selected section of the visible light spectrum. Etc. Etc. Regards, Mac

Individuals with such a preference (black and white) tend to resolve issues thru crisis, thru unmeditated sudden actions. Individuals going thru puberty, hospitalized children, and head of corporations tend more toward such preferences (what a group!). Regards, Mac

Dennison:
It has to do with color theory, just think about outerspace, where there is no light, therefore no color!!!

Mel:
Can someone tell me black is considered a colour or not. I thought it's what you get when mixing Cyan, Yellow and Magenta (absence of colour)? If it is made with colours, why is it in itself not a colour? Please explain. Thanks

Christopher Willard
Yes, there was a question kicking around on the net for a while that said..."If black is the absence of color, then what is in a tube of black paint?" *S* It is humorous. (Get a book on color theory and look at the difference between additive mixture and subtractive mixture.)

Joe :
A tube of black paint is where the paint absorbs all the colors of the spectrum. There is no absences of light, it mearly means none of the colors in the spectrum of light are being reflected and so it appears black.


Mac
Mel, If you looked at additive and subtractive color mixing processes, you might understand where the logic in each is based. Mix a buncha colored paints together and you head towards a black ...more "mud" probably. Use colored lighting and provoke a power outage and you'll move towards black. But let's skip that for a moment.... Hey! Is Grey a color? Er...Gray? I suspect most people would look at colors like Blue and Yellow and Green and Red and might collectively agree that, yep, they are all "colors". Why? What do them thingies have in common? Probably that they all emit (directly or thru reflectance, etc.) an energy in the form of lightwaves somewhere in the visible (eye-detectable) portion of the spectrum. Well. Does Black (a really dark dark super fabo dark black) do that? Hmm. No. Black absorbs most all of the visible light energy. (Do you agree?) Can a 'color' that emits no color be a color? Is an empty box of cereal just filled with empty cereal? I'd guess - that Black isn't a color. But the visual void Black creates is a special case kinda thing. And we wanted a name for it - so someone named it Black. White is another sort of special case thing. Yeah, you can squeeze it out of a tube too. Add a few gallons of concentrated Clorox to your next load of laundry. When all of the colors fade from your clothes, how white drains the color from colors, will be obvious. If you try this at home, you may see the color drain from Mom's face too (but that's just a bio-side-effect). It's nice to know that Black and White exist - even though they are, what I'd term, special-case "colors". If we didn't have them, the paint companies wouldn't have as many shades and tints to sell. And Crayola would be unhappy too. Regards, Mac
 

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Grey

Question:
As the editor of a Swedish magazine on colour research, I am busy writing the next number, called "the grey number". It would be interesting to hear what people around the world think when they hear the word "grey" and if there are any special meanings in their countries. In Sweden, it is connected with bureaucracy and boredom. Inga-lill Cras

Patti Phare-Camp :
Grey makes me think of "conservative." Grey is sometimes boring, sometimes classy, sometimes cool, sometimes warm. Every car I have ever bought has been a shade of grey. Why? Because it doesn't clash with anything else around it. I love to use chromatic greys in painting. I think they are so much richer than greys from black and white.

Bryan Villados:
I'm geographically located in Hawaii. When I hear the word "grey", what comes to mind is "in the middle". For example, "grey market" is something that could be or couldn't be illegal. "grey" also make me feel that something's not clear to me. It's kinda like the "I'm trying to think but nothing happens" syndrome, where your mind come to a complete blank.

Mac:
Inga, Your comments on Grey are interesting. If I may propose a two-part hypothesis?
1. Grey is universally experienced by all people (has the same effect). - - -
2. Grey will have 1000's of differently perceived meanings. - - - - - - - - - -
Oh! Is there a conflict here? I say no. What do you say? Regards, Mac

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What is the symbolism of red?

Bullfighting: Can a Bull actually see "Red?"

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What is the symbolism of red?

LKPete
Hello: I was a student at Parsons in the 1970s. I've been writing a book about color meanings around the world-  Global Graphics, Color. Here are a couple of other books that can: 1) When Blue Meant Yellow, which is about how colors got their names, and 2: The Color Compendium, which is an encyclopedia of color.

In the meantime, I can tell you that from what I've discovered, there are lots of different meanings for red in almost every culture. It always means "blood" but even then it can be either blood shed heroically or the blood of a victim. In Asia, red is almost always good luck. The main point you'll need to focus on is that red (as with all colors) means different things depending upon the context in which it is used. In Japan, red ink is a traditional method of writing a letter than ends a relationship (like a dear john, or a pink slip). A red sportscar in the US might be thought of as a fun and "sexy" car, but if a middle-aged bald guy is driving it, it's seen as a pathetic display of male menopause. In most cultures, red is used to get attention. It's been a banner of revolution since the French Revolution (and probably before) and as a flag has become a symbol of populist, usually communist, revolts. I could go on, but the two books I mentioned are a good place to start. You might also check the library at the Museum of Natural History, the works of Faber Birren (a 20th century color expert; he's good but sometimes gets a little carried away with his magicy, new agey, alchemist angle), the work by two anthropologists named Berlin & Kay, who studied the evolution of the language of color worledwide. I don't know the name of their book, though. Good luck with the project, and buy my book when it's out in the spring!

RoyGBiv
See A Guide to Color Symbolism and Global Grapics: Clues and Taboos by the author of Color Matters. PDFs ...You can download them immediately

jamie chou
I guess I need to explain this since I posted the question. Take Chinese for example, there are more than 30 single characters describing different kinds of red. Red of wine, red of silk, red of wood, red of meat.... And even more phrase are used to descirbe different levels of red. All these are not just about words, but how the meaning of colors evolves from daily life, not just for a single color RED. At least, we can know when is not a right time to use a color with right meaning (wedding in Japanese uses white, while in Chinese is red.) At lease, this is what I am trying to explore now- knowing the meaning of colors in different cultures through language.

Mac
Color People, I'm confused. I've seen people looking at color and writing about it. Many are diligently investigating color - it's supposed meanings - associations - bla bla bla - in various cultures, in different corners of the globe...etc. But to what end? Where does the investigation lead to? If I took the word Red (or perhaps the word 'water'...any word) and looked at it in a dozen...a 100 different languages, I'd come up with the just as many different results. Red...in English, in French, in German, in Hopi, in Binary, in Octal, in any language, in any form. So (?) here I sit with mounds of paper ... Red in 100 languages. Even Red as spoken by some bleeding cave man that said "gRrEDdh" or some other gutteral grunting word. A bunch of guys on one dirt mound mumbled for a thousand years and poof...the French language popped up. (It's phonetically beautiful isn't it?)

Another bunch of guys on another dirt heap yacked away and came up with English...and another recently started chatting in binary. All of the systems work fairly well. (All of them even include the word Red...how lovely.) And now I've compiled them all... But to what end? If I created 5 new cultures or found 7 new civilizations for you to investigate...and you compiled all of their colorassociations and 'meanings' what would that add to your work? Would it bring you closer to somegoal? Any thoughts about all this effort? What is really being sought here? Anything? Mac

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Mac, are you familiar with the work by Berlin and Kay, on Language and color identification? the text is: Berlin, B. and Kay, P. BASIC COLOR TERMA: their universality and evaluation. Berkeley: University of California Press, 1969. I've only seen some notes and charts, but it is very interesting, about "color terms," etc. I'd be interested to know what you think. bj.

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Bullfighting: Can a Bull actually see "Red"?

Question: Is the "red" cape at a bullfight for the bull to see, or the crowd? Does the "red" color of the cape infuriate the bull or is it the motion of the cape that pisses him off? If a bull can actually see the color "red" or not, is the easy part of this problem. Now here is the hard part, unless you're a bull, how can you prove what a bull visualizes (in 100 words or less)? Dan Petrie

Shana
I do not know how they actually figured this out, but while I was researching bullfighting I read that bulls are colored blind. It is the moving of the cape that actually atracts the bull to charge. Leah Shipley

Anon
Bulls don't care what you're wearing,they don't appreciate any kind of fashion statement made by humans. They don't care for us period. Get in a pasture with them and they will show you the way out-no cape needed.

Does the color yellow matter?

Yellow and Emotions

Yellow rooms

Yellow in American Horror and Science Fiction

Also, see "Yellow's Effects in Public Spaces" Archives - Physiological Effects
 

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Does the color yellow matter?

Question:
I want to use the color yellow in my marketing Point-of-sale materials. Is there any statistical information regarding the effects of the color yellow?

LKPete
You should look into the Luscher Color works. He was a Swiss psycologist who came up with theories about peoples' responses to color. This was done in the late 1940s, and is fairly standard research for marketers in Western (developed, industrial) countries that share a cultural heritage (a key thing to remember is that reaction to color is, like most everything, culturally specific). How and whether to use yellow rather than another color depends upon what you're selling, who you're selling it to, and where it's going to be placed. Yellow is certainly visible and stands out in a crowd. If you could post more specific info I could be more specific. Otherwise, you might want to check out an older but still valuable book called "Selling to People With Color" or somethign like that, by Faber Birren who was an expert on color and often advised marketers. The book I'm thinking of was written in the 1950s but is stillreferred to by people who need color marketing info.

Anon
well, i believe the color yellow does matter. i went to a school once where the staircases were painted yellow to prevent people from hanging out on the stairs. [it presented a fire hazard]. So, the stairways were banana yellow, and no one hung out there. Look into the brillant color in a blazing yellow-orangy fireplace or bonfire and ask them if it emotes a feeling of relaxation or... something a bit more 'lively'.

Janet
Not that I am an expert but I worked in an art gallery for two years and learned that yellow is a color for anger and agression. Not suprising that our new director's first action was to paint his office yellow.

Mac
Janet, Now....that's a quizzical posting you have there. Will you help me with it? In your post, you mention "that yellow is a color for anger and aggression." What does it mean, when one says "it's a color For...." Does it mean that the color (in this case Yellow) "Inspires" the feeling of..(in this case anger)? If so, does your director/boss sit in his bright yellow office and emit anger and act aggressive? Does he ever wear out from staring at all that yellow? You might want to consider the following.... If he 'chose' his wall color - I doubt that he intended to have the color reflect or amplify his anger or to further the feeling he gets from the things which upset him. His yellow walls may instead be predicated upon what he needed - to compensate for the 'stuff' that has made him upset, angry, and aggressive. What does his wall color mean to me given the picture you've painted? It means something is frustrating him significantly (just my guess) and that in as much as he may display anger... he really would like to get the heck out, get away, go to a south sea island, get a new job or position that has SOME hope, some future, something he can smile and be happy about. And everytime he sits in his office, he might feel that 'urge' to be in a place that offers something more hopeful than his present circumstance does. * * * Yellow is not 'a color for' anger, per se; not anymore or less than Red or Blue or Purple and Green Polka dots are. Any thoughts on this? Regards, Mac
 

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Yellow and Emotions

Question:
I need help finding what emotions or feelings are given by the color yellow. Help would be appreiciated. Chris Banach :

NKD:
As an interior designer, I find that a pastel yellow, especially when teamed with cream colours, makes a room appear innocent and glowing. On the other hand, bright yellow, when paired with stark white reminds me of a day at the beach. Overall, whatever the shade, yellow in combibation with white or cream is a very positive colour ininterior design. Clients always enjoy yellow rooms.

Paky :
It depends on the type of yellow. some shades are too vibrant, too aggressive. you can agitate a person without meaning to by wearing, say, canary-colored clothes.

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Yellow Rooms

LKPETE
At impressionist painter Claude Monet's house, the kitchen was predominantly a vived yellow: cupboards, chairs, almost everything. From pictures you can't tell how loud it all feels, but in person,you can't imagine how somebody could face it every morning, or, rather, you could see how it would wake you up fast.

Tony Jack Howard
Have you read Charlotte Perkins Gilman's famous short story, "The Yellow Wall-Paper"? Gilman creates a protagonist whose physician/husband treats her "nervous disorder" by confining her to a room papered in yellow which she describes as follows: "The color is repellent, almost revolting; a smouldering unclean yellow, strangely faded by the slow-turning sunlight. It is a dull yet lurid orange in some places, a sickly sulphur tint in others." As the story continues, the yellow wallpaper slowly drives the protagonist crazy. Give it a read and see what you think. My guess is no one will want to paint his or her bedroom yellow again. ;-)

R. Holbert
Do you know the story is of Gilman's life? The fact that she was depressed and that she commited suicide? If you haven't read "The Yellow Wall Paper" i highly suggest you do. It is an increadable story. I think the way Gilman describes the grotesque yellow wall paper is actually her way of describing the character's (or possibly her own) life. It is an excellent story and really gets to you right where it matters.

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Yellow in American Horror and Science Fiction

Question:
I'm doing a paper on the importance of yellow in american horror fiction. it keeps popping up in story after novel after story and it's always a bad thing. Can domeone explain?? Kate

LKPete:
Not exactly, but here's a couple of things to ponder: Yellow is a color that's not natural to the human body and its appearence bodes ill, literally. Jaundice, yellow fever, etc. Yellow is also the color of quarantine and the color traditionally used to portray the treacherous disciple Judas. I've also heard it proposed that the yellow eyes (set on black) of big cats -- panthers, etc.-- is a deep-seated terror provoker in humans. Some sort of genetically encoded sign of danger. Maybe it's sometimes being used for deliberate contrast. Yellow is generally a happy, joyful color, so maybe using it as a chromatic ghoul is meant as counterpoint or some sort. This may be complete bunk, but it'll get the instructor's attention and probably up your grade a couple of notches. Go for it!

 

What is the meaning of purple?

What is the meaning of violet?

What color is indigo?

Purple for Brand/Logo

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What is the meaning of purple?

Question:
I'm very interested in what the color purple means. I was told that it represents lust, but that's not the answer I'm looking for. Tahrra

MacEngrg@AOL:
Ummm, what shade of purple?

Dzinr:
Tahrra- Lust is usually symbolized more by violet than by purple. Which is probably why Mac asked what color. Purple is symbolic of the spiritual or creative nature. You may be seeking or growing in a new direction in your life. I have also studied color extensively and am in the process of writing a book using color to create balance in your life. Hope you get the answer you're seeking. Dzinr

heather:
the color purple is known as a "royal" color because, way back in the middle ages, purple dye was the most expensive to make. therefore, they only used it on the robes of royalty and priests, and such, because they were the only ones who could afford it.

Mac
SS, I thought purple was the color of 'people eaters'. (purple people eaters)? Purple can be the color of royalty.. Purple can be anything you want it to be - so can all of the colors. It might get frustrating after awhile though. I've heard people say Purple is the color of - violence, sensitivity, immaturity, love, hate...you name it. Visit another country and you'll get 100 more varieties of meaning. Compile them if you dare, it might drive you nutty. Hence titles like - When Blue meant Yellow... It can be confusing, can't it? Regards, Mac

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What is the meaning of violet?

 Question:
What is the meaning of violet in religion(s)?? Know of any books on the subject? Rondean

erich.buxbaum
Comes from the old purple (which was violet) and is one of the liturgic colors. After Constantinople was taken by the Turks in the 16th century the production of purple (violet) was terminated (from the purple sea snail) and purple became red. Therefore the cardinals have now red (higher color) and the bishops violet. Before the cardinals had violet which used to be the higher color.

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What color is indigo?

Question:
My boyfriend and i are having a little debate about the color indigo. i say its a color somewhere between blue and purple, like a deep blue, and he says its the white light in the spectrum (??)...i'm pretty sure i'm right, because i know the indigo plant is deep blue and used for dyes, but i can't find anything specifically saying "indigo is a deep blue". help, am i right? Heather

Laura:
In Optics, a division of physics, Indigo is the color found between blue and purple. Yet because of its proximity to both, it is rarely visible in a prism or color spectrum. There is truely no white light in the spectrum. White light is the combination of the three primary colors of light. And the color white on a color wheel is the combination of all the colors. Spin one really fast to prove it. :) Laura

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Purple for Brand/Logo

Question:
With over 14 years of experience in company and product branding in addition to advertising, bold primary colors work best. I'm curious if anyone knows of any studies on the use of the color purple. It is my contention that a plum/purple color is inappropriate for a high tech company's brand or color scheme. The rationale is simple. Purple represents one of fun, energy, and somewhat gaudy or cluttered. Any opinions, experiences anyone can share. Advertisers folks on theweb, do you have opinions? Steve Hammond

Mac
Purple is: sensitive, vibrant, aware. It is often preferred by adolescents and young children - by the immature. Purple is known as a 'magical,mystical, bonding a fusion of two into one. It is a blend of moderation and confidence. Purple in a positive sense offers connection/fusion. But but but...... Don't be too quick when you decide to select or deselect color for a logo.... (A little knowledge is a dangerous thing?) To truly 'assess' a logo or determine it's psychological impact -one must assess form/shade/color together. One must know the psychological character of lines, form, and shading as well as color. Few people are trained to psychologically assess a logo in this manner. So, I'll leave it at that. At least you know what you're up against.

Jill Morton
Forms appeal to the intellect, colors to the emotions and the two go hand in hand. Thanks Mac. Another thing to remember is that we lump all these associations on a color but we have to ask what purple are we talking about? Pale purple can be quite romantic or mystical in a very spiritual way, deep dark purple can be apocalyptical... the terrors at the end of the world, so spoke Goethe. Notice Adobe PageMaker's use of "Pure Purple" in their packaging/ manuals.Did anyone notice all those macho purple trucks two years ago? One should always seek to distinguish between the timely and timeless associations of a color. And know when to use it to an advantage.