For
a start, depending on the country and language, color or colour may be used. The
difference is quite literally the difference between having a dictionary or
not. Both were perfectly fine ways of spelling color, with many
English-speaking or French-based scientific communities using “colour” and
everyone else, including the numerous American and international standards organizations
choosing “color” instead. For a boring list of existing color organizations, we
have Pantone, Color Marketing Group, The Color Association of the United States
(CAUS), International Colour Authority, International Commission on Illumination
(CIE), International Color Consortium, and International Colour Association.
- Pantone defines colors primarily for printing books, magazines, and other physically read material.
- Color Marketing Group defines colors for textiles, such as clothes.
- CAUS defines colors used in the United States from everything from the colors of that can be used within car interiors to the American, Philippian, and other national flags.
- The International Colour Authority determines the “in” colors of the year, along with the Color Marketing Group, and defined using colors defined by Pantone, for publication by the International Trade Centre.
- CIE defines color, plain, simple, and as blunt as possible. When they say something is “red”, they aren’t picking a color like Pantone, they are defining a range of colors as seen and interpreted by humanity that fit to the physics definition of light and its wavelength. If they say something isn’t red, you would be hard pressed to find any organization or group aside from possibly a color blind individual to tell you otherwise (of which those colors are standardized too).
- International Color Consortium is a group of computer companies defining how a color defined by CIE should look on a computer.
- International Colour Association encourages discussion and research between the prior color groups and advocates International Colour Day every March 21.
Countries have
some of the greatest variations of standardized colors. For example, in the United
States, right-wing Republicans are often categorized by “red”, while left-wing Democrats
are “blue”, but outside of the US, red is a left-wing color and blue is a
right-wing color. In the Netherlands often use Orange in any national and
international event, but with the exception of the usual usage of red and blue
by opposing political parties, the next most common political color is green,
which has four different shades between the numerous political groups. In China
and other Asian countries, Red is a good, lucky color. Many other countries see
red as bad, danger, halt, etc.
This brings my
examples to direct examples such as transport, where railroads and automobiles
use red for stop, yellow/amber for slow/prepare to stop, and green for go. Red
also tends to mean love, danger, heat, joy, revolution, and socialism/communism.
Green has been used to identify nature, death, merchants, permission, the environmental
movement, the US dollar, and is very important within Islam. Yellow is
associated with wealth, sunshine, happiness, caution, phone books, and is well
known for school buses and taxis within the US. Blue is known for water, the
sky, cold, and sadness which is very often used in paintings, art, movies,
plays, etc. Lastly, black and white: black often defining death, evil, and
mourning while white is often used in association with good, clean, neutrality,
and is often a color looked at as quality in fabrics such bed sheets, matrimony,
or in Asian countries, it is used for funerals. They are opposing colors, while
also being differences of the other, so “white” is total color while black is
the total lack of color.
While not the
most colorful post, it should paint a better picture of uses and applications
of color throughout the world.
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