Color (again!)

The color yellow is splendid. Its vibrant and invigorating. Noticable and bright. It is everywhere in our lives and constantly seen. The oldest known usage of the color yellow is in the poem Beowulf. Its compliment is purple. Several animals have the color yellow in their names. It is used as many terms, including yellow journalism and racial slurs.

I enjoy the color yellow greatly. My bike is yellow. I have many sweatshirts and other articles of clothing that are yellow. Its a happy color that makes me smile when i see it. Bananas are delicious, they are yellow as well. A study done by the University of Chicago stated that yellow is the easiest color seen from a distance, thus leading to the paitning of taxis, a tradition to this day. School buses are also yellow, so they can be seen, occuring in less accidents keepng are kids safe. In sports a yellow flag or card is given in the event of a penalty.

Coldplay sung about the color yellow in a song. the leader of bike races wears a yellow jersey, a tradition started by the Tour de France. Pencils are traditionally yellow. The planet Saturn has a yelow color to it. Stop ligths have yellow as a warning of a red light. In some aspects of our lives, yellow is a good happy color and in other parts of our lives it is a warning. The color yellow is fantastic.

the relevance of color

I am a Photo major, so while most peoples lives revolve around color and there affect on different attributes, a lot of my time is spent studying a lack of color. My days revolve around find a perfect black and a perfect white and every shade of perfect gray in between, and I'm sure some people would ask why? While virbrant colors and shades might get a graphgic design major excited, to me, they are just cumbersome and wasteful. Why use all those unnnecessary colors when you can express such deeper emotion without ever having to use more than 2 colors.

And this leads me to the point of, what affect does color really have in our lives? If a graphic designer had to work solely in black and white he may be confused and stumble for direction not knowing where to go or how to express his message clearly, menawhile someone like Ansel Adams may have done the same if presented with the oppourtunity of color photography. These greatly varying impacts on both lines of work are what keeps the arts so interesting.

Black and white photography has this vintage feel to, that keep a lot of photographers sticking with it. The tones and varying levels evoke emotion and display great depth, while color photographs can accomplish this too, black and white has been doing it for so long, that many ask why stray? Meanwhile graphic designers flourish in the area of an abundance of color because it makes their jobs easier. When a client says I really want this fact to be stated, all the designer has to do is put it in a bright or contrasting color, something that wouldn't be as easy in black and white.

The usefullness of color differs greatly based on your profession and the aruguemnt for and against it will be argued til the end of time.

ketchup

How much of our lives is completely connected to color? How many objects that we see on a daily basis do we just assume are always going to be a certain color? This question was answered for us, sometime in 2000, with the introduction of green ketchup. While to most people over the age of the eight, this seems like a ridiculous idea, it may have been one of the best marketing ideas of the past decade.

"Today's kids are exposed to lots of vibrant colors and animation, and they expect these same experiences at the dinner table," said Gene Grabowski, spokesperson for the Grocery Manufacturers Association.

With kids being the number one consumers of ketchup, why not market it toward them? Once news of the new ketchup color spread, Heinz got requests for pre release samples, from families, schools, and churches.

To many, ketchup is red, it always has been and we thought it always would be. But it was brilliant to introduce a new color to things. What Heinz thought they would sell in a year they ended up shipping out in the first ninety days. To kids, it doesnt matter if it's green, red, or purple; it still tasted like ketchup and on top of it all its fun. so while many thought green ketchup may be a bad idea, at first it was one of the greatest marketing ideas of all time.
While I couldn't find why or for what reasons, I did find that Heinz discontinued the production of colored ketchups in January of 2006. Maybe ketchup is supposed to be red after all.
"It's Easy Being Green" http://pittsburgh.about.com/library/weekly/aa101700a.htm 13 February, 2008