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"color" Tag


What made me buy 7 different vegies?


Sunday, May 26, 2019

At the beginning, I just searched blogposts about color by typing  ‘color’ in the search engine. I found out many tagged blogposts were not only about colors but also ‘color system‘. Many of those posts use fruit to show color contrast.  The harmony of between fruits and vivid back ground color looked sexy and aroused my interest. So I ran directly to the market.

As always, as soon as I entered the market, the first thing that catches my eyes were colorful fruits and vegetables.Those colors were made by nature which made clear and bright color. Anyway, I bought different colors’ fruits. Blueberry,rasberry, paprica,pickles,lemons….  and put them on the different colors’ papers. Then I saw the contrast between the color of background and fruit. 

successive contrast is the effect of previously-viewed color fields (“inducing fields”) on the appearance of the currently-viewed test field. To put it simply, If you look at a different color after seeing a color, the color that you see later is different due to the effect of the first color. For example, if you look at red for a while and then look at yellow, you will notice that the pale cyan is superimposed on the yellow by the effect of the red complementary afterglow, and the yellow appears greenish. Such a phenomenon in which the order is determined and the color is continuously viewed with a time difference and each color is seen as a different color is referred to as a successive contrast.

Simultaneous contrast refers to the way in which two different colors affect each other. The theory is that one color can change how we perceive the tone and hue of another when the two are placed side by side. The actual colors themselves don’t change, but we see them as altered.When two colors having different areas such as a background and a picture are directly in contact with each other, a complementary background image having a large area overlaps with a color having a small area, which is different from the actual color. For example, if you put the same pickle on the background of red and blue, a pickle on the red paper looks more darker than pickle on the blue paper.

Hue contrast is a measure of how easily we distinguish between two adjacent colors (hues).Two areas with a high hue contrast will be easy to separate. An object which has a high hue contrast in comparison with its background will be easy to see. Areas with low hue contrast will blend together and be more difficult to visually separate.and this picture is an example of hue contrast. Paprika on green paper is more remarkable rather than paprika on orange paper. Because paprika’s color is an orange, it becomes more vividly remarkable when it’s on complementary color.

Area contrast is the phenomenon that the saturation and brightness vary according to the area even if they are the same color. The larger the area, the higher the brightness and saturation, and the smaller the contrast, the lower the brightness and saturation. There may be a difference depending on reflectance and absorption rate.  For instance, the bigger raspberry under the text looks brighter than the small raspberry.

 

I’m new here


Friday, May 24, 2019

.

*****

I don’t really know the way, but I want to. I have this habit to wander off randomly when I’m unknown with a place. Just to see where I’ll end up if I let go of control. “Let fate decide” says the romantic in me.

After a while I see patterns and I believe that I know where I am. Finding attractive by-streets in every corner. But that’s an illusion. By the next turn this pattern is shattered by reality.

I don’t know where I’m going, but I know I don’t want to stay. Just keep going, till this frame turns into bedlam. Borders can’t contain me anymore. Looking back I can’t trace back my origins. I’m not lost. I’m new here.

I am chaos.

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DOES GREY EXIST?


Wednesday, February 13, 2019

Grey is everywhere. Grey is the sky, the concrete of buildings, the street and its tiles, the walls of the room I am now sitting in, steel linings of windows, many pieces of clothing, the hairs of aging people –

There are many shades of grey, colder and warmer ones. Grey can be defined as the colour between black and white. It can also be seen in a slightly more abstract way as colorlessness, being undefined, without character.

Several definitions of the word grey are:

  • Without interest or character; dull or nondescript
  • Not accounted for in official statistics
  • (of a person’s face) pale, as through tiredness, age or illness
  • (of the weather) cloudy and dull[1]

What all these definitions have in common is that they, in some sense, refer to an absence. It is the absence of color, of character, of definition – it is a lack of capacity to be interesting.

So why would anyone ever choose the color grey for something they made? Would this then be for the object to go as unnoticed as possible? Would it be to suggest neutrality?

THE BOOK

I found a book in the library that was completely covered in grey. The grey enfolded the text and the images that were inside, also filled the empty pages in between. The sides of the pages were grey, as was the cover, so that the book looked like a tile.

It was called “Power?… To which people?!”. It was a book about the Dutch artist Jonas Staal and contained a collection of essays and images related to the work of this artist. The graphic designer was called Laura d’Ors.

The greyness of the book was so dominant that I could not get past it. Although the content seemed interesting and I was somehow

tempted to read some pages and look into the images in detail, I mostly kept turning it around, covering my eyes in the grey that was all over.

I think the grey put a kind of silence around the book that made it into a very solid object. It was such a big visual decision that it forced me to relate to it

before relating to the book itself .

I found myself just flipping the pages in search for more grey, tracing the surfaces that I found with my fingers. I found the colour was also very present in some images in the book. Because of their connection with the cover that had struck me, these images stood out to me more than the other images that were in the book.

It took me a while to realize that the text was written in the same grey. Contrasting with the white background, it looked somewhat darker. I only realised its greyness when there was a big symbol placed next to it in the same colour.

THIS GREY

So what was the grey of this book exactly like?

I think a picture will never show the colour right as I saw it. It was a cold tone, with some hints of blue in it. It reminded me of the Rietveld grey, the colour that is used to paint the walls of the academy. It had the same natural and deep, yet cold quality.

Still, it was different from the Rietveld grey. It seemed less accessible. It was not a colour you could walk into. It was not a colour you would put on a wall. I think it was less green than the Rietveld grey. It was a bit darker as well.

WHY?

To come back to the question I posed earlier: why would anyone ever choose grey for something they made?

In the case of the book there are two aspects of the choice. The first one has to do with the excessive use of the colour. If another colour, for example green, would have been used in the same way that now grey was used, this would have equally caught my attention.

Now, let’s imagine it was green; what would this then result in? I think I would have thought that it would be a book about nature. Or imagine it was red; what kind of associations would that give? It could be about violence, love, blood…

The encapsulating of a book in one colour the way it was done here, immediately results in questions from the reader: why is it like this?

So why then did the designer choose grey? This is a hard question to answer, because associations with grey very often relate to backgrounds, such as walls and skies. Seeing it in such a prominent position where it is taking a lot of attention, is confusing.

Maybe that’s exactly the reason why she chose this colour – it is an anti-colour; like I said, a kind of absence. It puts the book into a background and by that enfolds it in the greyness of the world. It becomes part of the sky, the concrete and steel. It doesn’t have a colour to speak, it has a colour to be. To be a thing.

[1]Oxford dictionary

Jonas Staal: Power?… To Which People?!. design by Laura d’Ors, Rietveld library number: staa 1

Searching for books


Wednesday, November 21, 2018

Thursday, November 22, 2018
I was asked to choose a book that attracted me the most. So I was walking in the library, checking books in different sections. Everything was ordered in categories. It took me around 15 minutes before I found something that attracted me. When I was looking at one of the many shelves that was in front of me, I saw the word “colors” on one of the books and i didn’t even notice in which category it was. It attracted me because I love colors in general, they make me feel happy. I held the book in my hands it was “heavy”. I looked at it! On the cover was written “stop” in Arabic. It felt like it was a sign from the universe telling me to stop searching and take that book. I opened the book and it was full of pictures which attracted me more to it. Because I am that person who can’t concentrate for a long time and read big texts. I rather watch pictures, documentaries or films instead of reading. In the same time i found it pity that i don’t learn or get knowledge from books and therefore i try to learn and get knowledge from experiences in life like ( meeting people with different backgrounds, traveling to other countries, listening to people stories and listening to my own stories ). As i also think that each one of us individually is a book with their own stories and knowledge that we should try to share in the library of life.   It’s funny! that a few months ago i was in the park next to where i stay and there was a big round sign (big circle) with a walking woman/man on it (as you can see in the picture that i attached to the text). I took it with a friend of mine by using a screwdriver home, and kept it home. I like the circle shape it has and i use that a lot in the art i make. Unconsciously i might have picked the book because of that sign i have at home now and it might inspire me for my art.

Colour System Project


Wednesday, May 9, 2018

January 30th

Hi all,

Sunny morning, the colours are back!  pilz

Colour systems are created from very different starting points and urgencies, often related to a specific application and context. Some are based on observations, others on textual theories or visions. They can be technical, poetical, philosophical, tactical or speculative, they can be developed “for home use” or for a large audience or group of users. They are both political and personal, and almost always related to ideology.

Here’s the story about a fake art movement SPECTRA. Also all the other bulletins in that section (from ‘Umberto Eco: THE COLORS WE SEE’ till ‘James Langdon: NOW IN COLOUR’) are on colour-related  topics.

The  question is to develop a new colour system. A colour system that comes from your own, subjective starting point. Medium, scale, application, etc. is up to you. It would be interesting too if you all develop a colour and  a visual, graph-like representation as part of your colour system,

This was how the project started and ended with the publication of all process documentations which you can read if you scroll down.

 

April 4th

But before you do,

 

Look at all the colours we created, silkscreened with Kees Maas as part of this project and glued on the Rietveld Billboard. The next day it was a sunny day..

 

Builboard_Colours2

 

– All Color Names–
–Night Sky Violence, Walking on Light Tears, Sancho Panza, Lost-Diving-Mask-Green, Sickatoum, Sea Bird Blue Goes Dancing, Retired Rosy Brown, Flu Blue, Lost in Some Wax That Game Out Of Shrek’s Ear Green, Uta Grass, Hope Empty, Lizzard Wizzard, Capitalistic Pink, Maria Markan, I’ve Got Leaves In My Eyes, Tolerant White, Dragon’s Egg, Daniel’s Jeans, Adolescent Moss, Glass White / Glaswit, Don’t Be Blue Boo –

 

WORK IN PROGRESS

 
(more…)

So you like patterns?


Sunday, November 26, 2017

The book I choose to research is called ‘Biogea’ and was written by Michael Serres, and designed by Jason Wagner. Published in 2012 by Univocal Publishing, which Jason Wagner co-created with Drew Burk.
From the design of this book and from other books that Jason Wagner has designed I can see hints of his personality if not that then definitely his direction of interest. The way all the patterns are so precise and clean cut gives me the impression that he has a methodological nature and an obvious love of patterns both simple and complicated, while enjoying a subtle use of colour. As seen in another book designed by Jason Wagner ‘Variations on the Body’, which is also written by Michel Serres.

Variations -Cover

The fact that Jason Wagner is a part of the Univocal means that a critical look at the company can give an insight on the designer and ultimately the design itself.

Univocal Publishing was founded in 2011 as an independent publishing house specializing in small-scale editions and translations of texts spanning the areas of cultural theory, continental philosophy, aesthetics, anthropology and more. Univocal’s books including Biogea combine traditional printmaking techniques with the create evolutions of the digital age and feature letterpress covers designed by Jason Wagner, who demonstrates the technique in a video.

https://youtu.be/qwQSNhor1EQhttp://

Using techniques similar to this the publishing company oversaw the printing and binding of books from 2012 to May 2017, in which it ceased operations and merged with another company. This could seem to fall down to Jason Wagner who is stated to be moving on to pursue other projects.

But why did I choose this book? I decided on this book for a variety of reasons. I enjoyed its’ simple yet complex design containing a neat revolving spiral-like pattern which is placed in the middle of the book and looks pleasing to the eye. The pattern it self drew my gaze as I found it really intriguing as it resonated with my own interest in complex and unique patterns which I like to create.

The plain colours and easygoing layout of the book for me made it feel more approachable. The design it self didn’t take anything away from the content, for sometimes I feel that the cover of a book can sometimes give you false expectations of what it contains. Being misled into buying something based on its looks. This book however balances this nicely I think by not taking anything away from the content but instead relating and highlighting the themes within.

Biogea

The Typography is placed on top of the design and relates to and supports it nicely. Accentuating its colours and giving the book a clean and natural feel. The pattern initially drew my attention to the book, but as I took a closer look I found that the texture around the design on the cover felt good to the hand and gave it a thicker and more solid feel. This impacted on my decision as the pattern and texture subtly blend their delicate qualities together to create a book that i found aesthetically pleasing. While the design since imprinted on a thicker material felt noticeably different making it stand out from other designs and books.

The almost scientific complexity of the simple and delicate design also relates well to the content of the book for it’s a mixture of poetry and science. While also presenting a philosophy that merges the humanities with all creation. This has made Michel Serres “one of the most intriguing thinkers of his age”, and I believe is a reason why Univocal publishing has design and printed most of his books. Because of the authors philosophical and poetic inquiry sings praise of earth and life, and what Michel Serres names singularly as ‘Biogea’. The design relates well to the content as it mixes light fresh colours with an intricate pattern, which gives a natural clean aesthetic relating to some of the topics within the book. Some of the obvious examples being the use of blue in the typography which links with text within. “ Today we have other neighbours, constituents of the Biogea; the sea, my lover; our mother, the Earth, becomes our daughter; this beautiful breeze which inspires the spirit, a spiritual mistress; our light friends, the fresh and flowing waters.

Even though the design itself is quite precise it has a sense of movement to it and gives the book a poetic feel to it, this also relates to the content, as it’s a mixture of poetic statements revolving around natural themes. “In these times when species are disappearing, when catastrophic events such as earthquakes and tsunamis impale the earth” the author wonders if anyone “worries about the death pangs of the rivers”.

The author asks the same question of philosophy “as the humanities increasingly find themselves in need of defenders. Today, all living organisms discover themselves part of the Biogea”. Knowing the content of the book also ends up shaping my view on the design of the cover as the series of lines almost create a shield like swirl or sea creature, protected by the bold strong title Biogea.
 

Biogea, designer: Jason Wagner, Rietveld Library Cat. no: 157.3 ser 3

From #BF00FF to #2EFEF7


Monday, April 18, 2016

4Here’s a complete transcript of the ‘Scanio’ scanner presentation that happened inside the ‘Library-Re-Edit’ project. 

 Good evening!

Thank you for coming.

We’re gonna make some history together today!

I’m happy to welcome you on the ‘Scanio’ book-scanner presentation!

It was..[cough] uh it was just a couple of months ago that I received thirty boxes filled with books from SKOR library and from the library of ‘de Pavilions’ Almere. Back to that moment, I announced that we were going to create a special way to order all the books we got. We spent some evenings on thinking what could be the best method to deal with these thirty boxes. What could we do to show the importance and diversity of the content inside these thirty boxes? We had works from Paul O’Neill and Claire Doherty and some design catalogues from 2013. We had books consisted only of plain text, books with photos,  books with only photos, books with one or two words inside, books with only one image and text for 1000 pages. There’s a really bright confrontation between text and image information books consist of. For better understanding we propose to represent it as a color gradient.

Let’s imagine ratio of 100% image content to 0% text content to be defined as a velvet color. And, on the other hand, let the ratio of 100% text to 0% image be defined as a cyan color.

2

So now I want to talk about the product we designed to solve the problem of thirty boxes. Our team created a book-scanner which lets you to scan the publication in order to see what is inside not even opening it. This machine is able to recognize the content considering ratio of text information to image information. As a result you receive an amount of pictures and text in the publication. The result is presented to you as a percentage and a color hue from the gradient line (this way the gradient line becomes a measuring method). I think that showing the information both in percents and colors is a crucial element for ‘Scanio’ project. The research we made showed us the importance of both categories for better understanding and memorizing the result machine gives to you. Numbers are the most precise way to represent information but having a color related to each number is also a great step in visualization of the same information. That’s why we find it so important to keep color gradient as a fundamental part of scanning books. 3

So, as a final product we have a machine very simple to deal with, which can predict what kind of book is in your hands. As an example it can be easily used in libraries and book stores. The scanner creates a new possibility to make a special order for books. It gives a different meaning to the whole structure, since books are sorted from the perspective of visual content inside. Plus, it takes less time to create this kind of structure with ‘Scanio’.

Moreover, we are still developing the idea of making it possible to use the book-scanner as a personal device along with usual printers and scanners. And the ‘Scanio’ name is still a working one…[nervous laughter]

so thank you all very much for coming today

and uh, we’ll see you all soon
thanks

0

 

We asked several people to give us there feedback about the process of choosing a book, and how image/text content influences their choice.

I would never buy a book without images. I swear. The more pictures inside, the best. If there’s no images at all then this book seems to me boring immediately. The perfect example is Robinson Crusoe with old engravings from 18th century. I can start rereading it again just because of the illustrations. Good illustrations are better then any movie based on a book. I would never buy a book without images, really. 

 

00

 

3% is my maximum. Pictures are distracting. Not sure that it’s needed for me at all.

000

— It depends a lot. If you are asking me about choosing between ‘War and Peace’ with illustrations and without any, i would say 100% text. If this is a book for biology class or a manual, then 70% image is the starting point. Even if that book will be more expensive i would take the one with pictures in it. 

— I’ve noticed a really funny fact about myself. In winter time I always want to read these books with plain text, no images. I don’t know why but I think this is the perfect time for those reading moments. So as a Christmas present i’d love to get a 0% one!  

00000

— I have a childhood trauma because of illustrations in one of the books. Don’t want to talk about it. 0%.

 

— I’m pretty scared of books without any imagery content inside. I would start with 45%

can’t read.

4

Parallel Landscape


Friday, November 21, 2014

In general the work of Aliki van der Kruijs explores the relationship (context) between colour, culture and environment with a specialization in textile. Nature is material and subject at the same time. During the master Applied Art at the Sandberg Institute (2012) Aliki juxtaposed her graphic- and fashion design background into a practice where textile as information-carrier plays a fundamental role.
Her thesis Parallel landscape is part of CONTEXTILE: a research into colour, context, text & textile. This thesis is not about what colours are but attempts to see what colours can do.
 

pl1
To read the full thesis you can click the image above or link to ISUU where it is published among her “Traveling concepts” like Made by Rain and others.

Aliki vd Kruijs at ISUU.com

 

BOOKParallellandscape1-2

Parallel Landscape, Sandberg Institute thesis by Aliki van der Kruijs 2012 : graphic design icw Lena Steinborn

quotes:

Colour is everywhere. Everything is coloured. Colour is always the characteristics of something. Colour is an ever-changing self. Can colour support itself? Where does colour become visible? How do we make use of colours? Can colour become an environment in itself?

The remarkable thing about colour is the way it takes place. Visible as well invisible. This thesis is not about what colours are but attempts to see what colours can do.

I tried to find out how colours are changing location and dimension. It’s a thesis on how colour takes place parallel to the landscape in which they emerge.

 

Don’t judge a book by its cover


Wednesday, October 29, 2014

Esther de Vries is a graphic designer specialized in book design. Among many projects, she made two books on her father, the sculptor Auke de Vries. The two books, dealing with the same artist, are yet very different, the first one, Auke de Vries Photo Archives, being much more intimate than the second one, Auke de Vries: Sculptures, drawing and work in public space, which is more meant as an chronological overview on the evolution of the artistic career  of Auke de Vries. But what is surprising is that both books are very different from the first impression the reader can get just by watching the cover.

 

 

Indeed, at first sight and because of its very strong cover and size, the biggest book seems to be one of those very classical and sometimes deadly boring art books that present an exhaustive view of the work of an artist. But going into the design and the content of the volume you can experience it as an actual novel object. A lot of different materials are used in the book, making it exciting to go through, and a great importance is accorded to the process, thus gathering a collection of sketches, photographs and forms that helped or influenced the artist with his sculptures, and even pictures of the artist working in his studio. On all those pictures the text is set in an unquestionable playful way, sometimes even covering the images.

 

 

 

An other particularity that makes the book playful and thrilling is the use of very thin pages presenting a compilation of different forms, cut from a photograph of a work of the artist and magnified. Those pages refers to the collection of forms that the artist developed and used constantly in his work. Esther was keen to scatter that through the pages as, what she calls, an alphabet.

 

 

 

As for Photo Archives, the fabric and very simple cover makes it look at first glance as a secondary book, very small and discreet, soft, not meant to go through the years as the other one. But once more the design and content makes it very special, in a precious and sprightly way. While the other book is meant to present mainly the evolution of the artist’s works, this photography book shows through the collection of pictures the process that took place even before the artworks, as a wandering in the thoughts of the artist.

 

 

Here the relation to the reader is completely unusual, as there is no chronological order or reading direction. The reader, who is more a viewer since

there is no text, can open the book in the middle, at the end, or open the same page again and again, led to wander in the same way that the artist was wandering when he took those pictures.

 

archive_04

 

This is also a quite seducing book, designed between rule and coincidence with a set of colors and places for the pictures that are sometimes cut in two by the Japanese binding, leading the reader to focus on a particular shape that recalls Auke de Vries’ work. I noticed that the two books are very different from the first feeling you can get from them.

 

Yet, maybe Esther’s work, or at least these two books, deals a lot with feeling. That is to say the very strong feeling that the reader gets or is given in both cases of the close connection between the work of the artist and the design of the books. They pay homage to this work. It might has to do with the fact that both books where initiated by Esther herself, and not commisioned, hence the liberties in the design. This is also caused by the very long process that the designer went through while making those books, meticulously choosing each picture and composition, trying all the colors with each image again and again, changing direction until being fully satisfied, regardless of time.

 

All that makes both works very touching and the enthusiasm of the designer becomes very apparent, discovering a treasure made of all those pictures and willing to share it, making it as complete as possible to preserve the emotion aroused by the pictures themselves.

Rietveld library catalog no : Vrie 5 (

Rijksmuseum library catalog no : 832 E 13 (

follow my eyes


Saturday, April 5, 2014

 

Print

Print

Print

Print
Print

Follow my eyes through Designblog. Screen shot keywords. One image after another. In my collages each tag and image is connected. You can trace back the posts.

 

Signs can be art to


Tuesday, May 14, 2013

The art section of the library, this is where we have to choose our third book. This week again we had to take the key words of the last book that we chose, and then choose a new book taking these key words as criteria.

So my question this week is what do we consider the art section of the library of the Gerrit Rietveld?

To start with its all ready a small library in which they already have a small selection of book, and I would say the selection they have there is a selection made on books that would be useful to art and design students. It would seem weird if they had mathematics and science books cause they wouldn’t really be the most used books there, although it would be nice and maybe useful if they had science books.

So saying that I would say that the whole library of the Gerrit Rietveld is already an art library, with books about art, design and of course philosophy.

So that already makes my task easier, now I just have to pick my last key words which were distinction, yellow and stencil, and take these to choose a new book in the whole library (except the philosophy section).

So this is what I did, I entered the library started walking through the shelves picking up every book with an yellow cover, none of them had something with stencil so this keyword wasn’t really useful. All the yellow covered books were quiet boring and not at all distinct so I kept on walking through the library until I got to this book titled 1000 colors (since yellow is a color I picked it up) it had a traffic sign on the cover and an yellow sign that said END at the back. I flipped through the pages and it was a book with let’s say about 500 pages all about signs, a few known signs but also made up ones. It turned out to be an interesting book that shows that you could make a sign up for practically everything and you can make an art out of it.

Rietveld Library cat.nr: 754.9

Color in Relation to our Lives


Friday, March 29, 2013

A bright pink page of the book drew me to it. It was lying in a showcase in the Stedelijk Museum amongst many other objects and flyers, but the brightness of the opened page made the book stand out. On the left page you could see a picture of an Indian girl sitting behind a table. On the table in between her hands was a small heap of bright pink powder, almost the same color as the bindi on her forehead. The page on the right was a page of bright pink textile.

This book (put together by Nikki Gonnissen and Thomas Widdershoven) shows works and gives a feel of the work by Fransje Killaars, a dutch artist who graduated from the Rijksacadamie in 1984. In the beginning of her career she mainly made paintings, but it is her later work, her textiles, which attracts me most.

I read in an article about Fransje Killaars that she is fascinated by the power of color, the relationship between people and textiles and the way textiles are bound up in daily life. I was able to take a closer look at the book in the library of the Stedelijk Museum and I was surprised to see how much more attractive Fransje Killaar’s work is portrayed in that book than for example the images on Google search. It was then that I realized that like Fransje Killaars I was not only fascinated by the power of color, but especially the combination of colors in our daily lives. Seeing Fransje Killaars’ textiles transforming an old attic

space into a bohemian paradise,
or seeing her carpets thrown over a washing line hung amongst palms

seems to play much more on the imagination rather than seeing the fabrics placed in the middle of a white clean gallery space.

In a gallery space the work is merely about colors; about the contrast between them and the brightness that a color can have. Yet for me the excitement comes when you find bright colors in someone’s kitchen, when colors pop up amongst plants, how sunlight can give a color different shades and all colors on the knit sweaters of the Rietveld students in the winter.

 

I caught myself playing around with this fascination on my guilty pleasure.

Instagram

I try to eat an orange every day, but before I get to peeling it I like to take a picture of the bright orange against the clothing I am wearing that day. I have realized that by doing so I put a frame around a moment or literally make a snapshot of the moment. It may be only esthetics, but for me it is quite a luxury that you can find such esthetics in everyday life.
The combination of color and the sense of touch is another element, which I find rather appealing. Holding the skin of an orange against a green, wool knit sweater, running your hands over a an orange shag rug or a purple suede dress is often much more exciting than looking at the same colors on a 2d canvas. Do not get me wrong; I have nothing against the great color field painters, who can use colors in a fragile and moving way. These painters succeed in translating emotions into color, into paint, but when it comes to the exuberance of a color or the contrast between them I think this can be best portrayed in a more hands on manner.

The brightness and the vividness of the use in colors in Fransje Killaar’s textiles seem to be more about the celebration of life, about the joy that a blotch of color can add to every day scenery. The use of color in her work is about the beauty of variety. It is not without reason that a mixture of joyful and interesting people is referred to as colorful. The pink page in the book was what had grasped my attention, but the comparison made with the girl holding the same color pink in between her hands and a trace of the color left as a dot in between her eyes is what made me linger and look at it more carefully.

The On-Colour-Project


Friday, January 25, 2013

No better way to welcome the students back on the academy after their X-mass holidays. With the end-years fireworks still in mind our color circles accentuated the snowy white carpet of this wintery month

Thanks to the excellent cooperation of the Silkscreen department, printing and routinely sticking the posters to the billboard, so we could enjoy the colorful results of one of the Foundation year’s student latest projects.

These circles were part of a project initiated bij Henk Groenendijk and Matthias Kreuzer as a cooperation between the Design and Design Research classes.
An amount of randomly selected color-sytems were distributed among the student after which they researched substantive backgrounds and the possibilities to base a work on that. The objectivity of science (subjective as the sometimes seemed) was used as an impartial starting point. Parallel to that process a color was determined representing the project or an element of the research. This monochrome color was printed in small print run using silkscreen printing technique. Interaction between research and the creative process is documented on Designblog under the “On-Colour-Project” project

For the Open-Day Hansje van Ooijen (chair) composed here own subjective variant, as a backdrop for the Foundation Year’s Open-Day meeting place.

Researchers / editors: Group B students
Initiators / guides: Matthias Kreutzer and Henk Groenendijk
printing / posting: Harmen Liemburg and Kees Maas

Herman Ebbinghaus, Deconstructing the Phenomenon


Thursday, November 29, 2012

Introduction

Herman Ebbinghaus (1850-1909) was a German psychologist, who pioneered the experimental study of memory, was the first one to talk about the learning cube and is known for his discovery of the forgetting curve and spacing effect. He has also discovered a color system, based on a double pyramid colored Red Blue Green and Red after Leonardo da Vinci’s idea. The idea was that due to the variation of brightness, those four colors can be separately distinguished. He strongly believed that being aware of the physiologists discovery,  in the eyes retina there are only three photo-sensitive substances who are responsible for the phenomenon of colored vision and its anomalies. He published in 1893 in the Journal of Psychology in Germany, a “Theory of Colour Vision” – in which he mentioned that humans perceive colors through higher mental processes. He had then discovered that if one of the combinations of pyramids, red and green or yellow and blue have a common base in a three dimensional space and that base spins (as seen in the image), two white hues are produced and the brightness is linked to the speed of the spin. It is a purely phenomenologically oriented portrayal of colors in which the complementary pair does not find a place opposite one another. The double-pyramid has then came to be a stronghold of phenomenology, an era in which colors were simple came to a close. After Ebbinghaus discoveries physics could never be certain again about the nature of light and it’s wave and particles properties that have also been discovered at the same time by Albert Einstein.    

The Machine

It really got me by surprise me that i couldn’t find any other source or any other image besides one website. All about this color system is theoretical, it hasn’t been applied into action. So i was curious to see this phenomenon happening. My first attempt was to create a physical machine with two rotated round edge squares, one would fit into the other and with the help of two air blowers, it would turn.The machine didn’t have much success as i realized immediately, it was an interesting shape but the squares didn’t turn fast enough therefore the phenomenon couldn’t appear. After creating the machine i wondered whether a digital form could be more efficient.

  (more…)

a visual study of the Young-Helmholtz color theory


Thursday, November 29, 2012

Hermann von Helmholtz was a German physician who contributed greatly to different areas of science. In 1851 he made a color system that looked like this:

This color system illustrates how color is perceived by the human eye. The system is based on a previous study made by Thomas Young in 1802, the color system has therefore been named the “Young-Helmholtz theory”. Young’s study states that there exist 3 different types of photoreceptor cells in the eyes’ retina, who are each sensitive to a certain range of light.

Helmholtz then went a step further by assigning different colors to the wave lengths that the photoreceptor cells were capable of detecting. Short wave length, Red. Middle wave length, Green. Long wave length, Violet. If a color between the primary wave lengths is seen, the different cells will react to create a mixture that will create this color. For example, if yellow is seen, both the photoreceptor cells receiving red and green will mix to create this signal. The diagram underneath illustrates this. (1 red, 2 green, 3 violet.)

Colored light is additive, which means the more color is mixed, the closer one will come to white. This is why white is centered in the Young-Helmholz color system. The lengths represent the amount of color eventually needed to get white.

All in all this color system concluded that us humans are trichromatics, which means that we have, as mentioned before, 3 different cells in our eyes that can catch different wave lengths of colored light. So if you are missing one type of these cells, you are colorblind. This information eventually led to developing a color blindness test that is still used today, called PIPIC.

Being new to painting, and especially mixing colors, I was amazed that the three cells in our eyes mix the color that you see for you (and much faster and more accurate than anyone would ever be able to do by hand!)

Hoping to maybe understand how my eyes got so good at mixing color, I wanted to visualize this unconscious mixing trick that they apparently do. I learned from my color system that the mix of colors, which happens in the eye, is a mix of three colors; red, green and violet.

The three colors are divided into wavelengths, this is how the three different cone cells absorb them. Red, short wavelength. Green, middle wave length. Violet, long wavelength.

When we look at different colored things, our cone cells do the mix and our brain sees the  color. cool.

 

 

 

I therefore thought that I might have to put one monochrome item into focus, too boil the mixing process down to the core. I first thought I might make the cones the color of what they saw, to show how they, when mixed, visualized this color. I tried this with a cucumber and the 3rd floor of the rietveld building.

 

 

But it was simply to easy and felt repetitive showing the same color twice. colors are also such an ambiguous and individual experience, so giving the mixed color away this clearly was no fun.

I wanted to show how the eye really works on this almost incomprehensible subconscious level. The cucumber could stay, but the cones needed color!

 

 

I decided to draw a chalk circle (vision is ephemeral), with the object in focus centered. From the center I drew three lines, one for each colored cone. The lines are the same length and represent the amount of that specific color needed in order to achieve the mixed color of the object in focus. The closer they are to the object centered, the more is needed.

So far so good, But a cucumber does not just lie on the floor, a balloon might, but it still seemed too random. A cucumber is found in the supermarket or in your fridge and the balloon, maybe at a kids party. But drawing chalk circles at albert heijn or amongst 30 six year old kids on a sugar high also seemed random.

Chalk is an outdoor thing and so is color, luckily. So I went out in my surroundings and documented, with photos, the different objects i saw. I eventually made a book with all my outdoor color observations.

Click here to view it!

It starts with a green dust bin and then travels around helmholtz color system going to a yellow car and so on, until we reach another dust din, but this time blue. The circle has been completed. At the very end of the booklet we see a white cup, white being a mix of all the colors deserved a special place, so there you go white.

 

 

I am very glad i finally got out of my apartment and ended up working outside, because colors outside, or in public, as communication, is a big part of my color system. The colorblindness test that the Young-Helmholtz theory helped develop, makes sure pilots aren’t color blind, so they know what the light signals on the airstrip are trying to say to them. likewise this also goes on in our everyday public; traffic signals, which bin to throw the right trash in and where the best offers are in dirk. which is why i choose orange to be my screen printed color, featured as a signal cone in the book, because it communicates so nicely. thank you orange.

i brought my book home with me for the holidays, my family liked it.

You Name It!


Tuesday, November 27, 2012

 

ISCC-NBS-System is a color system that has given colors more efficient names. Inter-Society Color Council (ISCC) and National Bureau of Standards (NBS), an American government agency, first proposed the color system in 1932. Its initial purpose was to name the individual blocks of the Munsell Color System, which classifies colors by hue, value and chroma.

 

 

Moreover, just like how Munsell Color System (on which it is based) works, the colors of ISCC-NBS-System are determined under the condition of average daylight and normal viewing. However, instead of naming the colors by symbols, ISCC-NBS-System identifies the colors with the general and understandable terms so that everyone can use it without difficulties and confusion.

ISCC-NBS-System opens up a simpler way to name colors that does not confuse people with symbols and numbers. Actually, it is the most familiar way people name the colors and it is how we were taught to describe the colors. People simply name the colors by the basic colors that they are already familiar with and if more accuracy needed, they add adjectives in front to describe the darkness, brightness and etc. The system was close to what everyone has accustomed to name colors, except it organizes the language.

 

It's a good example of a diagram of ISCC-NBS-System, unfortunately only in Japanese, but you can still get an idea how it is structured

ISCC-NBS-System’s basic hues are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, violet, purple, pink, brown and olive. These colors have intermediate categories so that the names indicate the combination in colors, for instance, reddish orange and yellowish green. Finally, these categories are subdivided into 267 categories. Appropriate modifiers are added before the hue names: vivid, brilliant, strong, deep, light, dark and pale, although not all hue names have modifiers. As a result, the color should be called something like dark reddish gray.

According to ISCC-NBS-System, the name of the color is decided upon the viewer’s choice. It will be orange if the one sees it as orange even though it is red to the others. The names reflect how the viewers see the colors. The colors may be called differently depends on the viewer’s physical conditions, their educational or cultural backgrounds and any other facts that can limit their judgment. For instance, when I went to buy my school uniform in America, I first learned that khaki was not the color that I used to think of, which was close to dark green. My khaki uniform was light brown instead, what I used to call beige. South Korea and the US have given different names to the one color. The name of khaki was no longer important, what mattered was that I could describe the color.

 


My school uniform of Notre Dame Academy and its khaki skirt of which I had trouble describing the color

The given names under ISCC-NBS-System’s rules show the one’s characteristics. The decision on naming the color is made personally and objectively so it naturally shows one’s personality and background. I have a problem differentiating violet, purple and pink. They become even more uncertain when the adjectives are added. When the colors get darker or brighter, they lose their vividness and it is hard to decide to call them with specific names. To me, violet is close to dark pink and dark violet is hard to distinguish from dark purple.

 

Get the Flash Player to see this content.

 

The short movie that I made shows the color that confuses me the most, which is the mixture of violet, purple and pink, with different color names based on ISCC-NBS-System rules. It is 54 seconds long and shows 18 different names, one by one, every 3 seconds followed by the blinks. It is one loop so the names continuously change. The names describe one particular color, which is the color of the background. The viewers can come up with different colors for those names if the color is not shown because it was my personal decision to choose that color for those names. On the other hand, the color tricks the eyes as if they are different colors because of the blinks, but in fact, the only change in the movie is the text. The text contains all possible combinations among these three colors.

 


Left, the movie playing in loop, Right, the silk screened color. I have to say that the colors look completely different in picture, on computer screen and when you see them yourself

As a last step, the class, as a group, experienced the silk screen. I tried to print the color in the movie without looking at the color I already chose in the movie. However, the silk screened color turned out to be completely different than the one from the movie. It was much brighter and more vivid than the color on the screen. It was interesting to experience impossibility of duplicating the color and possibility of creating limitless colors with one name because it can be conceived differently depending on who names it.

 

A Printed Book History 12 : a visual identity


Tuesday, May 22, 2012

 

the edition Suhrkamp designed by Willy Fleckhaus, 1963

The book I want to write about was actually a series – the edition suhrkamp from Suhrkamp Verlag. Willy Fleckhaus designed it in 1963 and it remained unchanged till 2004. He managed to create a very basic visual identity which consists only of colour and typography.
The covers of the 48 books which are published every year are held each in a different colour of the visual spectrum. No pictures can be found on the covers – in fact it is reduced to the name of author, title and publisher put into a grid of lines in the width of the cover page and at the bottom of it. The books are affordable and therefore popular in literature class in school. For a lot of pupils in Germany a certain title is very strongly connected to a certain colour.

 

 

Edition Suhrkamp books were a forum and inspiration for leftist-intellectual discussion in Germany for years, which came apparent as well in reviews written by its protagonists for the edition’s 40 year anniversary. It has published texts from Adorno, Brecht and Barthes. As well as the texts, the daring design stays in the minimalist style of the avant-garde. I see it as a metaphor for the development of the 68-generation that the complete collection can be bought inclusively made-to-fit, white design book shelf for the avant-garde living room. Ideals and individuality are important, but it comes with a surprisingly open attitude towards consumerism and must-haves.
From this text it may seem a rather impersonal approach to my choice of a book from “Printed Matter“, but I am mostly fascinated by the role of edition Suhrkamp as a publisher in society and as one of the most important forums for intellectual discussion in German. Adding to that I like timeless design which became fact here and it is as an example next to for example Otl Aicher‘s pictograms [x] for the 1972 Olympic games. At the same time, because of my impression that all books in “Printed Matter“ stood in a modernist interest of solid, timeless, well-designed books and me being familiar to that 60s rainbow colour design with typo, I chose Willy Fleckhaus‘ series also with a bit of irony.

post by Nicola Arthen

 


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