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

Color

Marketing has been and always will be a part of our lives When most people think marketing, they think of advertisements and thats about it, but it goes much deeper, including choices of colors. People dont normally think about it, because it's such a sub-conscious activity. About the only situation where a consumer consciously thinks about the color of their purchase is when buying a car or clothes, and with clothes the color may not even matter, the image may purely be enough of a catalyst for purchase. When we were asked to enter the grocery store and find the implications of colors, a few of us were confused at first because it was something we had never even thought about. After a few short minutes in the store I quickly realized everything is thought about ahead of time.
The bottles of sunny-D were made orange for a reason. The name alone evokes thoughts of warmth and brightness, so what better packaging than an almost neon color, that is bright enough to attract children's attention and enough of a warm feeling for parents to approve as it seems natural and healthy. There isn't a dull part to this bottle. The label, type, jug, and even the cap are all vibrant colors, who wouldn't be attracted to it?
The label on the tide bottle reads Pure Essentials, what other color would they possibly make the container? Any color other than white would evoke a feeling of being stained or tarnished. Who would honestly buy a container of tide that read Pure Essentials but was in a blue or black jug, very few people. In our minds the word pure and clean are associated with the color white, because white is the easiest color to see stains or dirt on.
All these things are sub-conscious and very few people go through their day wondering how much thought advertisers have put into the colors of different items and wondering who advertising campaigns are targeted towards. Like my high school english teacher once told me "Everything is done for a reason" and I didn't believe her until after completing this activity.

Performance Art Part 4

Jordan Swartz
Performance Art Activity

One of the two peoples stands with their hands between their legs, while the other partner just holds their hands straight out, the two participants join hands. On the count of three, the partner with their hands between their legs jumps and throws their legs over while at the same time the other partner pull up forcefully. This makes the one partner completely flip.
In order to complete my activity, the partners need complete trust and must work off of each other. I'm really glad the people I chose were able to complete the task, they even did it more than once.

Conceptual Art

I liked the activity we did in class. I find it interesting how many different pieces could be created from just eight original 2x3 drawings. If there weren't the cross hairs pieces the overall work would look rather cohesive. I find it interesting that Sol LeWitt can send out these detailed instructions to various companies and institutions and all these works will be original Sol LeWitt pieces because he is the original creator and are all based off his works. All the drawings are based off of his originals so these works are his originals, which I find very interesting.

Performance Art Part 3

I participated in Britney's activity. Fran and I walked five steps apart and either threw, bounced, or rolled a tennis ball, but the same action could not be repeated more than twice in a row. We could move in different directions, towards each other, closer, farther apart, or opposite directions; the person with the ball being the one who decided. I found it an interesting and fun activity. The first few passes and movements were easy, but after the fourth or fifth pass, you had to begin to think what direction to move. You didn't want to continuously move in the same direction, causing a static state. I believe Fran and I completed the task well though. We varied between throwing, bouncing, and rolling and kept our movements varied as well.
I really enjoyed Casey's activity. For her performance art, she had two people repeatedly draw the star of David. The star could be altered as long as it was still the star of David; the participants could color it in, stretch it, shrink it, distort it, anything to alter its state as long it stayed some what true to the original shape. I found this activity to be extremely interesting. I'm fascinated by the power of symbols and this project only helped fuel that. The star of David was altered in multiple ways yet it still resembled the original. I love how something can me changed in multiple ways to express different meanings and evoke a wide range of feelings, while at its core is just a simple image. I'm glad she chose this activity because I think it is an extremely good performance piece in that it really makes people think in some form or another. While every ones pieces made the participants think and react, I think Casey's was good because it related back to one of the simplest forms of art.