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HOW MANY COLORS ARE THERE ?
In 1880, an English brewer,
Joseph Lovibond, began to study ways to make his beer a consistent
color. He eventually learned to create any shade by combining different
tints of cyan, magenta, and yellow; and, while doing so, developed
the first colorimeter, called the Lovibond tintometer.
Studies showed that by combining
his tintometer filters in various permutations, it was possible
to produce some 9 million distinct colors! —xpedx
LETTING COLOR DO THE WORK
WHITE SPACE, Volume
1, Number 5—xpedx
Color encompasses a number
of "ologies," including psychology, physiology, and technology.
Different colors have different subjective meanings and are perceived
in different ways. And reproducing them accurately is both an art
and a science.
First and foremost, the
use of color should be appropriate, and appropriateness is often
determined by convention. Almost everyone knows, for example, that
a dark text on a light stock offers the best readability, yet few
would specify the most legible color combination, which is black
on yellow. Green on white, red on white, and blue on white are also
more legible than black on white, yet relatively few publications
employ these combinations. They are foreign to readers and difficult
to use as a replacement for black in one-color printing.
No one can deny, however,
that color commands attention. Or that the intensity of color is
just as important as the area it covers. For example, a small spot
of an eye-catching color is as effective as a larger area filled
with a tint of the same color.
If the budget limits the
number of colors used, the production manager may get the best results
by using tints and combining colors in an effective fashion. If
the designer is limited to a single color, using a solid of a single
color and a screen of that color will create a richer effect, yet
still require only one pass through a single-color press.
COLOR ME EMOTIONAL
By Mike Riddle
In the printing world we
deal with three different concerns when trying to achieve optimal
color in a finished product. The first concern is for the customer
who is trying to advertise a product he/she needs to sell to be
profitable. The second concern is for the designer who has to somehow
come up with the best way to make the customer’s product stand
out more than the competitor’s. The designer, in a way, has
to be a mind reader to find out what the customer really wants and
achieve that goal. The third concern is for the printer who has
to be able to match what the designer has on film AND in his mind.
Color on paper is how the three parties come together and reach
the goal of the customer. But do any of us really understand color
and its emotional uses?
Recent psychological and
neurological research has shown that the impact of color is profound
and largely unconscious. Studies have shown that 60% of people decide
to purchase a new product based on its color—as opposed to
quality, workmanship, and price guarantee. It is also important
to take into consideration that a person will respond to and evaluate
a product in 90 seconds.
Dr. Max Luescher, a Swiss
psychologist, has developed a means of examining the connotations
of specific colors and their relationship to different personality
traits. Luescher says there are four "psychological primary
colors."
- Dark Blue: Represents
a need for tranquility.
- Green: Persistent, obstinate,
and self-centered.
- Orange-Red: Excitable
and assertive.
- Yellow: Extroverted,
optimistic, and joyful.
Here are a few other examples
of what colors represent:
RED:
Increases excitement, respiration rates, and stimulates eating.
Numerous experiments have shown that if a person stares at a saturated
red field for a period of time, the blood pressure rises.
ORANGE:
Indicates affordability.
YELLOW:
Requires the most complex visual processing, and is recognized by
humans faster than any other color. Companies with products associated
with energy and technological innovation combine yellow’s spontaneity
and red’s impulsiveness & power for their trademark.
BLUE:
This is the number one color among people in the United States.
Certain shades of blue cause the brain to secrete tranquilizing
chemicals. Blue is perceived as dignified, cool, and distant. Major
corporations often use darker shades of blue in their emblems, evoking
a calm confidence and a cooly calculating management.
GREEN:
Certain shades of this color are used in interior design to make
people feel "tended" and secure.
BROWN:
A "Back-to-Earth" feeling.
GRAY:
Tends to make some products seem more e xclusive; symbolizes success.
WHITE:
Indicates delicacy, refinement, and sophistication.
BLACK:
A symbol for dignity and sophistication; regarded as the ultimate
power.
Color may also help you
to stay in shape! Follow this small experiment and see if it helps:
Replace your light bulb in your refrigerator with a blue bulb. This
unnatural light will cause all of those leftovers to look worse
than they really are, thus cutting down on the midnight snacks!
It has also been found that
color has a distinctive gender gap. Males have a preference for
yellow-based reds, and females have a preference for blue-based
reds. Moreover, response to color can be influenced by how much
money you make.
Now that we all know what
color means, we need to throw in one more aspect–color blindness!
Just as no two fingerprints are the same, no two sets of eyes are
exactly identical.
Color blindness is an inherited
condition that is sexlinked recessive. It is estimated that 8% of
all men are to some degree "color-blind," and only .5%
of women. And, as people age, their color vision changes also. A
yellow film forms over the eye so blues look bluer and yellows have
less detail.
So, if I understand this
right, the best person for producing a pleasing product, and designing
the advertising and print for that product, is a young woman, because
she isn’t likely to be hampered by color-blindness or lens
yellowing!
Mike Riddle is a Sales Consultant
for Rocky Mountain Printing. Mike was born in Utah, raised in Idaho,
and moved back to Utah last year. Mike received an Associates of
Applied Science in Printing from NWCC and has 13 years of experience
in the Printing Industry—having worked in Shipping, Bindery,
Pre-Press, in the Pressroom on a press, and now in Sales. Mike has
been a wonderful asset to Rocky Mountain Printing.
WHY IS THE SKY BLUE?
Molecules in the upper atmosphere scatter blue light more effectively
than any other color of the visible spectrum. These scattered blue
light waves are reflected away from the direct beam of light and are
re-reflected to our eyes as blue. --xpedx
There is a well-known riddle
that asks: "If a tree falls in the woods and no one is there
to hear it, does it make a sound?" Actually, a similar question
can be asked in regard to color: "If a yellow rose is not seen,
does it have color?" The answer—which may surprise you—is
no! Technically, color is there in the form of wavelengths (the
spectral data). However, the color we know as " yellow"
only happens in our minds, after our visual sensory system has responded
to those wavelengths! — X-Rite
COLOR
COMMUNICATION
excerpts from
THE COLOR GUIDE AND GLOSSARY — by X-Rite
Color Communicates. Color
sells. Color is the sizzle that drives the sale of virtually every
consumer product in the world. It evokes a wide range of emotions
that draw the buyer to the product. As design, graphics, and imaging
professionals, we know that color is a crucial part of the selling
process because it is such an important part of the buying decision.
If we use color effectively in the manufacturing and marketing of
an item, potential buyers will perceive added value in that product.
To use color effectively,
it must be kept under tight control. The color workflow begins with
the designer’s ideas and the customer's specifications. From
there, colors must be communicated among several different individuals
who will render and reproduce the colors on many different devices.
At each stage of production, output from the previous step becomes
the input for the next process. Every one of these exchanges brings
the color into a new color space—from photographic film to
monitor RGB to CMYK process proofing and printing on a variety of
systems. And, every evaluation is made by a different viewer under
new viewing conditions.
So, how do we ensure that
our original ideas and specifications will remain intact throughout
this complicated process? In short, the answer is color measurement—if
you can measure color, you can control it.
Consider this: we measure
size in inches or millimeters; weight in pounds or grams; and so
on. These scales allow us to establish precise measurement standards
that can be repeated in the production process. This ensures that
all manufactured items are identical and within our quality tolerances.
Using measured color data, we can do the same for color—we
can monitor it at each production stage and check the "closeness"
of color matches using standard-ized, repeatable data.
Color measurement instruments
"receive" color the same way our eyes receive color: by
gathering and filtering the manipulated wavelengths of light that
are reflected from an object. The combination of light, object,
and viewer causes the perception of color. When an instrument is
the viewer, it "perceives" the reflected wavelengths as
a numeric value. The scope and accuracy of these values depend on
the measuring instrument—they can be interpreted as a simple
density value by a densitometer; or as spectral data by a spectrophotometer.
Of these instruments, a
densitometer is the most commonly used. A densitometer is a photo-electric
device that simply measures and computes how much of a known amount
of light is reflected from—or transmitted through—an object.
It is a simple instrument used primarily in printing, pre-press,
and photographic applications to determine the strength of a measured
color.
A spectrophotometer measures
spectral data—the amount of light energy reflected from an
object at several intervals along the visible spectrum. These measurements
result in a complex data set of reflectance values which are visually
interpreted in the form of a spectral curve. Because a spec -trophotometer
gathers such complete color information, this information can be
translated into colorimetric or densito-metric data with just a
few calculations. In short, a spectrophotometer is the most accurate,
useful, and flexible instrument available.
The key point we want you
to remember is this: If you can measure color, you can control color.
Without measurement, describing and verifying color can be ambiguous
and unreliable.
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