“The birth of a new color exists”. Well I’m intrigued; I’ve always wanted to see a new color. This video gives you a little behind the scenes look at the Pantone color factory. Be prepared for a number of tasty shots of ink and paper. The video is “to celebrate the release of The Plus Series, the next generation of the classic Pantone Matching System” and was produced by Base.
What would be really cool is if a color was invented that actually *looked* new. Sure they have ‘invented’ lots of new colors, but to the average person, it’s all the same stuffs: green, blue, pink, etc. You show 99/100 people a new Pantone color and they will look puzzled if you tell them it didn’t exist before. What I want to see is a new color that literally doesn’t exist yet. The kind of thing that is so new your mind cannot even comprehend what it would look like because by definition it is impossible. Something outside the spectrum of visible light. Until then, I don’t want to hear about these “new” colors. A little trippy I know, but when the Pantone guy said they invented new colors I got excited.
via Quipsologies.
Scientific American had and article on “Forbidden colors” a while back. It’s a fascinating read if anyone is a subscriber or can get their hands on that issue.
Heres a link: http://www.scientificamerican.com/article.cfm?id=seeing-forbidden-colors
Nice to know I’m not the only one who thinks about this kind of out there stuff.
Man… and I have a hard enough time at Home Depot picking out colors for my room. And they only carry maybe like 100 colors.
The birth of a new color “exists”? I think coherent word-use needs to be a prerequisite for that kind of self-importance.
That is trippy, but I’ve thought the same thing. Sometimes you feel like another combination of CMYK just isn’t enough.
Uh. Well, I’m pretty sure we already have every color visible. Unless you start seeing in the ultraviolet, I’m sorry to say it’s not possible under normal circumstances. But there is always…drugs. Specifically D.M.T. There are a lot of reports from people claiming they saw colors that don’t exist. Tell me how that works out.
It’s kind of weird to think that at one point day glo colors were actually new. Sure, some exist here and there in nature, but they’re pretty unusual and would have been totally new for most people seeing them. I never really thought about that until the inventor of day glo paints died recently.
I love how the woman dressed like the pantone scheme with her blue gradient shirt + scarf. She loves her job.
I’m all for this, unless it ends up like the Lovecraft story. :[
http://www.yankeeclassic.com/miskatonic/library/stacks/literature/lovecraft/novellas/colouro.htm
My favorite new Pantone color… light urple
Has anyone here heard the story of Dave Gorman’s Googlewhack Adventure? The actual Googlewhack story itself has no relevance to this article, as it was born from the procrastination of a Novel he was trying to write. BUT, the novel he was intending to write was about a man who had imagined a new color that didn’t exist & that nobody else could see. The man eventually went insane trying to prove the existence of the color, traveling all over the world to find a species of plant/animal that contained this color… and when he eventually did find the color, there were wars over which Corporation could own the color. However the book was never written as it would involve writing about something that doesn’t exist and can’t be described.
Fun video.
re: Matt
I was thinking the same thing! Highly recommend the Lovecraft story. Definitely one of his best. Awesome. Awesome.
Man, though I always thought it’d be cool to have a literally new color exist as well, I think it would suck at the same time. Do you realize how many designers would whore the hell out of that new color? It’d be everywhere within months. I’d get sick of it fast. I’m sort of glad a “new” color isn’t widely available because I’m that’s all we’d see for a couple years.
Sure I read something somewhere about peoples wavelength vision slowly evolving and allowing younger generations to view widening spectrums of light…canna remember where though!
I’ve also wondered about discovering truly NEW colors. Unfotunately, humans are only capable perceiving a small span of light wavelengths. What would be *really* cool is if humans developed the ability to perceive light outside of the currently visible spectrum. For example, being able to see infared, gamma, ultraviolet, etc.
With those types of waves completely saturating our surroundings, I suppose everything would just become a wash of colours. Doesn’t sound so bad to me.
I once took a LOT of shit from my fellow players of the Star Wars RPG for inventing a new species that was basically a velociraptor that was a “new color.” I got bagged on with a harshness. Last time I ever gamemastered.