29 ms·

Why is the world losing color?

• techpineapple 2y ago
  "Color has always had a strange status in Western philosophy — and more often than not, that status is second-class." I wonder if one big change is a shift from a more working class family focus to an upper class influencer focus. Maybe this is just because was a kid, but It does feel to me like as a kid in the 80's and 90's and probably earlier, that the middle class was essentially the aspiration, and everything was geared towards the middle class family, think happy meals and McDonald's play place. Now, everything is geared for the wealthy social media influencer's, it's not a meal, it's an experience.
  • vkou 2y ago
    That's just upmarket-priced vendors using influencers to advertise. You're not going to get people to pay you $80 for a meal, but you could get them to pay you that much for an experience. You didn't see as much of that before social media because it was a waste of money to run ads for that stuff on TV. (But you could find no shortage of them in print magazines.)
• crazygringo 2y ago
  It's not "losing" color. At periods when technology resulted in new color possibilities, people went overboard with color. Make all the things colorful!! Think of the technicolor sixties. And we can go back in history and see the same thing with new clothing pigments, new paint pigments. But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out. Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being, well, monotone. Modern taste is more about more neutral-colored foundations with color accents. Don't paint a whole room green -- have a gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more against its neutral background. Don't paint a whole wall orange -- have a beautiful orange-hued piece of art on the wall. It's just more tasteful to use color as one element, along with size, shape, texture, and so forth. Making it the main element in everything is just overdoing it. It's bad design. I don't want constant "riotous color", as the article puts it, in my home, or my workplace, or while I'm driving. It's visually exhausting.
  • mempko 2y ago
    Cars suck then. We have destroyed our environments, both natural and human made, because of them.
    • rowanG077 2y ago
      I don't think anyone would argue the point of cars is to look pretty or make the environment more balanced. Cars are successful in spite of looking like shit and damaging the environment.
      • r14c 2y ago
        the history of cars in the US is pretty complicated tbh. most major cities had street cars and rail systems for a long time before major government initiatives ripped them out in favor of highways and streets. I'm not sure cars would be as popular without that major push towards car-centric infrastructure.
        • rowanG077 2y ago
          Of course. If you can't drive a car anywhere cars would not be as popular. That doesn't sound like rocket science to me.
  • delichon 2y ago
    > It's visually exhausting. This. It's about managing stimulation levels and contrast. If the environment is continually shouting at you it's hard to hear the whispers, where the meaning is. I bet one of those color comparison graphs of the average website in 1998 through today would show the same trend. I wish the inflationary trend in linguistic overstatement did the same.
    • deleted 2y ago
      [deleted]
    • pixl97 2y ago
• fguerraz 2y ago
  I would argue that the main reason is because everything is about money, and the shorter marketability of everything. Colors are polarising, and affect the unsold inventory and perceived resale value. Why manufacture objects in 10 different colours if you know the green one is going to be a tough sell? Why buy a blue car if you think you’re going to sell it back after 2 years and struggle to do so? You don’t want things you don’t intend to keep to have personally, period.
  • slt2021 2y ago
    base neutral colors sell well, exotic colors sell in small amounts => they die out due to small scale/being niche
  • efavdb 2y ago
    In fact, there is demand for colorful products. However, the way businesses measure demand today is through the aggregate unit demand. In effect, you get the lowest common denominator products rising to the top, and people with specific preferences can't get at their desired products. If instead, businesses would measure demand at a more granular level, they'd see this and be able to better serve their customers. my startup varietyiq is working towards helping apparel businesses do this / have seen it work very well.
  • c22 2y ago
    A long time ago I worked at a children's toy store and among other things I was responsible for ordering and restocking the bins full of small loose toys that cost under a buck or two. A weird thing I noticed was that if an item came in an assortment of colors that included yellow, yellow was always the slowest color to sell. Often bins would end up with just yellow inventory after all the other colors had sold. But I discovered that if I removed the yellow samples from the bin entirely that the overall sales for the item would plummet. I'd often joke that we should open up another store that only sold yellow merchandise as a way to move the excess inventory that built up from me implementing a yellow-buffering system, but instead we'd just end up donating them to a school or giving them away on Easter or whatever.
    • 2y ago
• zuInnp 2y ago
  For me, it is very apparent in movies nowadays. I watched the Lord of the Rings over Christmas, and I was stunned by how colorful the movie is. Even in the darkest scenes in Mordor, it felt more colorful than movies of today. Today, it looks like everything is shot in log and then someone does not add the saturation back. But I am also guilty of this .. when I got my new camera, my graded clips also looked very flat, but I like(d) that look because of all the movies and youtube videos looking like this.
  • JKCalhoun 2y ago
    Wild. Because that is one of the first, most heavily color graded films I can recall. Theoden's coming out from under the spell of Saruman is the most hit-you-ver-the-head use of color-grading that I can think of. (And, perhaps in a fantasy film it's fine.)
    • kridsdale3 2y ago
      Last night I watched Erin Brokovitch (2000) and it was like looking at film that had been partially sepia-processed with the heavy handedness of the grading. The Matrix was a year before that, but they had a narrative reason to use grading, and did so quite well.
      • WorldMaker 1y ago
        The Matrix also had a technical reason/glitch that pushed them earlier in the process to pursue the narrative reason. (Per some of the commentary, the early effects work they were doing, such as processing the first versions of "bullet time", were very susceptible to green/blue screen leakage so they leaned into that, and used it to decide which shots should use green or blue screens and let that leakage drive other parts of the color grading, including introduce "fake" color leaks onto set work that didn't use chroma keying [green/blue screens].)
  • gnatolf 2y ago
    And for a brief moment I stopped to think about whether we're looking at a horrible middle earth hallmark movie or just some 'clever' parody.
• graypegg 2y ago
  I won't pretend to be an expert on the cultural aspects of this, but the most compelling historical proof they have of their thesis is that chart showing the measurement of hue over a whole bunch of objects in museums, by era. Is it possible this is a bit of... https://xkcd.com/1138/ https://xkcd.com/1138/ ? The Y axis is 100% because you can only look at the objects we have, but that doesn't reflect the fact we don't have 100% of objects from 1800. We only have the objects we cared enough about to protect. So... in someways, (in no way proof of anything) this could show the opposite? We produce a lot of junky monochrome things that get thrown away fast, and things that we care enough to protect for generations tend to be coloured. We're sort of seeing the half-life of things by colour in that chart.
• banqjls 2y ago
  Colour is a form of bling and bling is tasteless.
  • robinsonb5 2y ago
    Excessive use of colour can certainly be vulgar - but restrained use is a valuable tool for clarity. As I type this, Firefox shows no hint at all that it has input focus, other than the tab's background being very slightly lighter and the tab's title text being very slightly darker. It's not so very long ago that colour would have been used to communicate this information clearly and unambiguously.
  • goatlover 2y ago
    Translation: my subjective taste is high and those who differ are vulgar.
• WD-42 2y ago
  Gen Z is rejecting this "millennial bland" aesthetic of turning all spaces into an Apple store. Just one reason I appreciate and look forward to the coming generation. Take a look at some of their trends in art, music, fashion, graphic design... plenty of color to be found.
  • mitthrowaway2 2y ago
    It's especially ironic because Apple did, at one time, push vividly coloured transparent-plastic designs.
    • umeshunni 2y ago
      It makes sense, doesn't it? When computers were beige, they went all in on color to stand out. When everything started being more colorful, they moved to white and then grey/silver. Now that everything is grey/silver, they're moving to gold/rose.
  • bluGill 2y ago
    I've heard that before. Supposedly gen X (which I'm a part of) was rejecting the bland colors of their baby boomer parents back when we were in our 20s. I don't know what happened.
  • psunavy03 2y ago
    As an elder millennial, words cannot express how much I despise "Millennial Gray." When I was househunting for my current house, it was depressing how much was out there, because a brand-new gray kitchen, bath, or floor is an absolute dealbreaker for me. Paint I can paint over, but yuck.
    • anal_reactor 2y ago
      I specifically bought a "millennial gray" apartment and put bland furniture: it's mostly white, black, and brown. The twist is that I'm putting colorful decorations, so that when you enter my living room, your eyes ignore all the "functional" items, and focus on decorative items, because these are colorful. It's like those video games where environment is grey but interactive objects are lit. Only the living room has any colors. Bedroom and bathroom are as boring as can be, so that you do your shit, don't get distracted, and get back to the living room.
• itsanaccount 2y ago
  [flagged]
• lurk2 2y ago
  I’ve certainly noticed this in film and interior design (most AirBnBs will have a familiar grayscale palette), but the opposite trend has occurred in software. Windows 2000 was far less colorful than Windows 10, which in turn had a more saturated palette than Vista and Windows 7.
  • robinsonb5 2y ago
    And Windows 11 is significantly less colourful again. Also, you're missing out the most colourful version of all - Windows XP! (The first thing I did with WinXP was revert it to the Win2K look - restricting the use of colour to where it's useful: namely showing me which bloody window is active.)
• galkk 2y ago
  They take Napoleon, as recent film with bleak colors. I will take latest matrix. The movie was awful, of course, but I was in awe of its bright, vivid, wonderful color work. If only plot was better.
• VoodooJuJu 2y ago
  [dead]
• intellectronica 2y ago
  I miss the 90s and the wild, loud colours the landscape of the future was supposed to be painted in. Now everything is off-white or grey.
• kelseyfrog 2y ago
  Color is the last vestige of ornamentation[1]. Modern design didn’t kill color. It put it on probation. Stripped of aesthetic authority, color now has to justify its existence or get cut. No more freedom to wander or express, it shows up for assigned tasks only: branding, signage, error states, traffic lights. In the cult of "form follows function," color met the axe. We no longer trust it to create, only to comply. Expressiveness? No. Just signal. Never art. A century after Ornament and Crime, we put color on a PIP. Beauty must be functionalized. 1. https://www2.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf https://www2.gwu.edu/~art/Temporary_SL/177/pdfs/Loos.pdf
• pxoe 2y ago
  [flagged]
• deleted 2y ago
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• JKCalhoun 2y ago
  Wow, so much to rage about from the article. I am a huge fan of color and go out of my way to buy bright colored cars, phones, etc. (Not like I had any viable options for my MacBook Pro though). Resale value, it hides dirt well are some of the sadder excuses I hear for buying gray and "silver" cars (wouldn't be cool if they really were silver, not "metallic gray"). Meanwhile you spend your entire time owning the car and driving around like a brooding storm cloud. Color grading might be the most evil thing to descend on film making. It's to the point of distraction now. Like it draws attention to itself. (Watching "Mickey 17" in a theater and a scene comes on that screams "color graded!" and then it's become all I can see. Kind of like the nausea-inducing, shaky "hand held camera" thing that was so predominate some decades ago. Good riddance to that. Oh well, I guess all I can do is to keep voting with my shopping preferences.
  • RiverCrochet 2y ago
    When I learned about teal-orange LUTs I started seeing them everywhere.
    • JKCalhoun 2y ago
      Ditto. Maybe we should be more blissful, not sure what leads to bliss....
    • joshvm 2y ago
      It's fun watching Marvel's catalogue from start to current. They really went all-in early on, then the mode-du-jour changed and it's almost obvious how hard they avoid it (a lot of red and green lights for example). Interfaces, weaponry and engines are always egregious in that franchise. I remember Midsommar being another particularly bad example - the entire apartment set in the opening scenes is dressed in orange/teal. Down to book spines, vases and light fittings. It's interesting to see films that don't use strong grading at all. I think Star Wars wasn't too bad here because the whole visual language was set up in the 70s and everything now tries to reflect it (lots of primaries in control panels because those were the lamps they could use back then). They do have "planet" grades but it's not too bad.
• RiverCrochet 2y ago
  Random thoughts. Movies: Movies descended from live theater, which was not realistic by definition, so things had to be attention-getting in order to draw people into the reality of the story, including use of color. Older movies, and older colorful movies, were closer to that tradition and therefore kept some of that impressionism, which faded as "realism" became the thing to do in movies. Cars: Searching online I found this chart: https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-preview.redd.it%2FOiVxCu8_q_87EsPQMNhluCUHE3EJizM7s3m3xYQkY0g.jpg%3Fauto%3Dwebp%26s%3D5818753161e99e75e35a04924b988f661d662491 https://www.reddit.com/media?url=https%3A%2F%2Fexternal-prev... - and ... it seems that people stopped buying green and purple cars and are buying black, white, and silver instead, with red/burgundy varying somewhat over time. A paragraph here - https://www.colorwithleo.com/why-isnt-green-a-popular-car-color/ https://www.colorwithleo.com/why-isnt-green-a-popular-car-co... - provides something insightful: "Historical Perceptions of Green Cars For many decades, green was seen as an unappealing and sometimes odd choice for vehicle color. Back in the 1950s and 1960s, green was associated with military and industrial vehicles, which didn’t make it an attractive option for personal cars. The green paints used on older vehicles also tended to fade and discolor over time, giving the color a reputation for looking worn and dated. This perception lingered for many years, and made consumers wary of choosing green for their own cars." But not sure how true that is and not sure it would apply to the 90's--the starting time that the chart covers. I really don't remember anyone in the 90's having a green car at all, to be honest. Logos: Company logos have been getting simpler for a long time, almost to the point where it's pretty much it's the brand name in a specific font in most cases. I recall reading about an "anti-branding" trend in logo design - https://shapesofidentity.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-anti-branding-aesthetics https://shapesofidentity.substack.com/p/the-rise-of-anti-bra... - and that's because of lowered trust in brands overall - which is true. Brands aren't worth a damn if they can be bought and sold and the company beneath them change without notice.
  • handfuloflight 2y ago
    > Company logos have been getting simpler for a long time This is driven in part by a shift towards mobile screens and the compression in visual space. Even on the desktop the favicon has an influence with this deconstruction.
  • 2y ago
• deadbabe 2y ago
  Colors aren’t cool. You know what’s cool? Clean perfect lines, rich texture and materials. Imagine a cube of polished concrete stone, with a wood plank sanded and stained to a warm perfection, basking in the glow of a square window at a perfect 45 degree angle. Beautiful, it can move you to tears. This worship of color is how you end up with Gen Z who paint over beautiful bare wood furniture and cabinets. Enraging.
• akomtu 2y ago
  > The underlying theory in all of these cases is that while color is sensory, unstable, and chaotic, form is rational, stable, and pure. And pure reason is inhuman. Color represents emotions, form represents reason. Since emotions is a big part of human nature, the loss of color means the western society has been sliding into a depression, and the west is depressed because it's falling under the influence of the origin of this colorless stereometric brutalism.
  • hakaneskici 2y ago
    I get this feeling when I visit certain places with beton brute architecture, and I always wonder what kind of suffering did the architect go through to design something like that?
• dansmyers 2y ago
  Pair with this complementary piece by W. David Marx: https://culture.ghost.io/cultural-stasis-produces-fewer-cheesy-relics-like-rocky-iv/ https://culture.ghost.io/cultural-stasis-produces-fewer-chee... He writes about incentives since the 1990s that have pushed artists to shy away from making bold aesthetic choices that might seem dated a few years later. The result is more stability and a longer shelf-life for culture, but less experimentation and fewer ways for new styles to break out.
• roughly 2y ago
  One interesting thread here is the long shadow of Greek and later Roman statuary and architecture on Western European self image - the marble statues, columns, and architecture of the Roman empire were taken as the origin story for Western culture - "we were an empire built on philosophers and artists, and look at the (gleaming white) purity of their works." It turns out, of course, that all those gleaming white statues were vibrantly colored back when their creators were around, and the Greeks and Romans were not cultures of conformity or austerity - quite the opposite, but the seeds of the philosophy sank in hard, and here we are. (Ironically, both stoicism and Christian asceticism were responses to that Roman excess, but they've somehow been merged with the white marble to produce a "purity" aesthetic to be lionized whenever someone gets the mildly uncomfortable notion that their neighbor is not exactly like them.)
  • bowsamic 2y ago
    > the Greeks and Romans were not cultures of conformity or austerity - quite the opposite, but the seeds of the philosophy sank in hard, and here we are. I don’t think anyone thinks they were. They are usually assumed to be hedonistic in popular culture
    • dragonwriter 2y ago
      Maybe not “the Greeks” broadly, but Spartans specifically are equated with austerity to the extent that “spartan” is adopted as an adjective meaning “showing indifference to comfort and luxury”.
      • bowsamic 2y ago
        Do people associate the Greeks with the Spartans more than the Athenians though?
    • roughly 2y ago
      I think you really start to see the fetishization of the Greeks and Romans in the Neoclassicism movements in the 18th century as an aesthetic, and I'm actually not sure how much was known about the actual Greek and Roman lifestyles (Roman, in particular - a big lot of this is tied up with the notions of Empire) at the time.
• megmogandog 2y ago
  The loss of color is concerning, but something I find interesting is the image the author chooses to illustrate Loos' quote, "We have achieved plain, undecorated simplicity." I would argue the building pictured falls short of this goal in important ways. A lot of contemporary architecture lacks the modernist commitment to flat planes, pure volumes, etc. and adds lazy and useless decorative/textural elements. The building pictured would look better if it was less adorned! (But even better with some color) The ugliness of the contemporary world isn't a result of modernism, but rather neoliberal indifference to beauty.
• WillAdams 2y ago
  Interestingly, there was a specific printing technology for expanding the palette of colour printing, Hexachrome: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexachrome https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Hexachrome Tried several times to use it in projects, but the customer always balked at the additional plate charges, even when they _loved_ the added vibrancy and colour range. The only printer I know of who was actually successful using it to make money was in London --- took on spot colour jobs from other printers when the spot colour was inside the expanded Hexachrome gamut, allowing for a faster turn-around (jobs on the same stock were ganged up) and no charge for washing down a press to change out the ink.
• ctrlp 2y ago
  Adolf Loos designed some incredibly sumptuous interiors. They aren't lacking in color. Methinks he's being used unjustly as a scapegoat to grind some axe. To me, this essay is an example of "slop."
  • rhet0rica 2y ago
    To double down on that notion—the baroque rococo interiors that the author idolises at the end were the exclusive purview of the astonishingly wealthy, in no small part because of how expensive they were to implement. Accordingly they were equated with absolutism and corruption. It's hard to decide how much of the author's position is born from ignorance versus how much of it is born from disingenuousness.
• ieie3366 2y ago
  It is not. If you feel so, it is a massive red flag that your brain is in a depressive state. Source: fixed my mental demons and now the world is suddenly full of color and life, as if I was a child again
• dudinax 2y ago
  It's the Seattlefication of the world.
• rlue 2y ago
  Am I the only one who thought the lead photo should have included Gen 1 iMac vs. latest lineup? Even the 2021 anodized aluminum version is comparatively muted!
  • salgernon 2y ago
    Going through my junk box the other day I found a USB to two port RS-232 converter from that era - that came with 4 colorful snap on front pieces to match your iMac.
• skrebbel 2y ago
  My wife convinced me that we should buy a dark gray car cause it would be less obviously dirty. I deeply regret not trying harder to convince her back, so we'd get a bright red or yellow one instead. It's super hard to find the car back on a parking lot and who cares when it's dirty? Bright colors are nice. I'm now trying to compensate by only buying colorful clothing going forward.
  • bluGill 2y ago
    You can buy vinyl wrap for cheap and DIY install is possible. (professional install is expensive). I'm not sure how good they are, but it is your best option if you want color.
  • johnea 1y ago
    I'm with you on that. I bought a used car recently, on which I got a great deal (as an EV in San Diego, I'm expecting the car to pay for itself in 5 years via gasoline savings), but it's dark grey 8-( I'm thinking of spending another 1 or 2 $K to have it painted. The economy of the purchase is diminished by that, but hey, I have to l.ook at it everyday, and it's boring (and hard to find in parking lots, as you mention)...
• liampulles 2y ago
  I live in South Africa, and when I traveled to the Netherlands on holiday last year, I was quite taken aback at how muted everyone's clothing was. It is definitely not like that here - everything from our flag down is full of color.
  • lambdasquirrel 2y ago
    Sample size of two, but when I went to Costa Rica and then China, I did not get the sense that color was going out of fashion in either place. Indeed it seemed jarring how cOLorFuL everything was. But after a week I got used to it.
• guyzero 2y ago
  There's a really interesting book about this exact topic: https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/chromophobia https://reaktionbooks.co.uk/work/chromophobia edit: ha, the book is mentioned halfway through the essay. I should finish reading before commenting. I agree with the book's thesis - there's an impulse to associate colour with "the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological" in contemporary western society. We've somehow managed to other color itself. "The central argument of Chromophobia is that a chromophobic impulse – a fear of corruption or contamination through colour – lurks within much Western cultural and intellectual thought. This is apparent in the many and varied attempts to purge colour, either by making it the property of some ‘foreign body’ – the oriental, the feminine, the infantile, the vulgar, or the pathological – or by relegating it to the realm of the superficial, the supplementary, the inessential, or the cosmetic. Chromophobia has been a cultural phenomenon since ancient Greek times; this book is concerned with forms of resistance to it. Writers have tended to look no further than the end of the nineteenth century. David Batchelor seeks to go beyond the limits of earlier studies, analysing the motivations behind chromophobia and considering the work of writers and artists who have been prepared to look at colour as a positive value. Exploring a wide range of imagery including Melville’s ‘great white whale’, Huxley’s reflections on mescaline, and Le Corbusier’s ‘Journey to the East’, Batchelor also discusses the use of colour in Pop, Minimal, and more recent art."
• legitster 2y ago
  May I make a case for brown? - Brown is an extremely warm color, and sucks up all of the ugly blues from unnatural light sources - Brown pairs well with all sorts of shades and colors, just like the millennial gray and white tones - Brown can come in all sorts of shades and vibrancies, but is not as stimulating as other colors - Brown hides dirt, scuffs, and stains extremely well Humans have spent most of our history being very familiar with the color brown in our natural world. I moved from a modern home (everything in white and grays) and into a 1920s brown home with brown-beige walls and all of its original brown wood accents and fixtures. And then I stuffed it with brown furniture. Not only is it beautiful and cozy, I swear that this was the first year I didn't suffer from seasonal affective disorder in a long time.
  • HPsquared 2y ago
    "Hides dirt" is a disadvantage to many. Especially somewhere public.
  • kridsdale3 2y ago
    We famously had "The Brown Era" in video game art direction for a while, maybe 2005-2010. Most people claimed they hated it.
    • legitster 2y ago
      It may be called the "brown era", but it had more to do with desaturated, monochrome palettes in general (to this article's point) and muddy textures.
    • anthk 2y ago
      Ironically Quake was like that in 1996, and, partially, Deus Ex.
  • StefanBatory 2y ago
    Brown and all its hues is very underappreciated color.
  • magicalhippo 2y ago
• mwkaufma 2y ago
  Wait, his "graph" measures a greater gamut of colors in photos from the nineteenth century when they were all B/W? Who's still buying this retvrn hucksterism?
  • shoxidizer 2y ago
    The graph is from a study of objects held in the collection of a museum, not photographs by year they were taken. It says so in this article. https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer-vision-to-explore-the-science-museum-c4b4f1cbd72c https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer...
    • mwkaufma 2y ago
      Yeah you're right, I jumped the gun there. On the other hand, color trends of science museum exhibits are a cherry-picked example. "Culture Critic"'s whole shtick is to put a photo of a modernist building next to an ornamental one, and this just seems to be that, but with a superficial layer of scientism.
      • shoxidizer 2y ago
        Personally I think the collection used is pretty good, not perfect but not cherry picking. I find CC's explanation unsatisfactory and loose, mostly placing the blame on philosphers that predate the recent trend of less color by decades or millennia, and skipping over well known major events in the history of color fashion. But I do agree that ornamentation and color are less common today in architecture and product design than they were in prior decades, and than they were for much of history. Except perhaps for a narrow band of blue. https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Male_Renunciation https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Male_Renunciation
  • drivers99 2y ago
    Current photos of old objects. I admit I had the same question based on the caption included in the graph itself, which just says "photos." > a study of over 7,000 objects in the UK’s Science Museum found that the colors of consumer goods have been steadily neutralized since 1800. Bright, saturated tones have been giving way to gray, beige, and taupe for centuries.
• hoherd 2y ago
  Part of this that affects me is interior decorations in the age of RGB LED lighting. If your home interior is white, you can cast any color onto it from an RBG light, but if your interior paint has a non-greyscale hue, coloring it with LED lights produces unexpected results that are inconsistent with other areas of the house that are painted other colors. Another part that affects me is being colorblind. When I was in elementary school I was mocked for wearing one blue sock and one purple sock, something that I was unaware that I was doing. I began wearing less color because at least I could be confident that I wasn't mismatching my clothes. But then in high school I was mocked for always wearing greyscale clothes because "what are you, colorblind or something?"
  • bluGill 2y ago
    My son (11 years old) always wears mismatched socks. Even when we match them in his drawer he will unmatch them (we no longer bother). I'm not sure if style has changed or he just isn't old enough to care what girls think.
    • syndeo 2y ago
      Well hey, if that's his style, and he can find the confidence to "own" it, the right kind of girl will appreciate him for it. (As long as it's not too outlandish of a sock combo, ha)
      • bigstrat2003 2y ago
        Yeah, I've definitely noticed that people respond well to unusual styles as long as you wear it with confidence. For example, I sometimes wear a pocket watch when I dress up. It's not in vogue or anything, but I think they're cool and I don't really care whether or not anyone else does. The funny thing is, I've had multiple people tell me that they appreciate my pocket watch thing. I think maybe people are attracted to authenticity, when someone has the confidence to do their own thing for their own sake rather than worrying about others' opinions.
        • 2y ago
• hakaneskici 2y ago
  I wonder if seeing the world through digital screens had any effect on this. Biologically, color drives behavior. Exposure to the same color palette over time develops tolerance, so *different* colors might be perceived as more attractive. I believe each individual is unique in their color perception and emotional response, but there's obviously a shared social aspect of it too. That said, it's interesting to see the young generation's artistic preferences, which reminds me of 90's for some reason :)
• colmmacc 2y ago
  A long time ago I adopted a personal style of wearing bright colors. I have simple good fitting t-shirts in all colors. Glasses in blue and red. Shoes in yellow. Sandals in green. Jackets in orange. You get the idea. It's always easy to make an outfit that goes together and makes a good impression. Men's Japanese and European fashion brands work well with this choice. I see this on the streets in Paris or Amsterdam fairly commonly, but rarely in the US. I've found that it's very disarming and engaging; even though I'm over 6'3" and a big guy with a tight hair cut, I'm almost never perceived as a threat. I'm a natural introvert, but it seems to make approachability easier. Since having a kid, and him growing into a toddler, I think it helps there too. It's just more fun. Strong recommend.
  • jfim 2y ago
    That's interesting, how do you manage the color palette? Are all the colors bright or are just using one or two bright pieces as accents?
  • syndeo 2y ago
    I do something very similar! Just mix and match. Never really looks bad IMO; and anyone who disagrees hasn't said so yet… and their opinion probably doesn't matter anyway!
  • dustincoates 2y ago
    >I see this on the streets in Paris or Amsterdam fairly commonly, but rarely in the US. I can't speak to Amsterdam, but it's commonly said that the way you know Americans in Paris is that they're wearing bright colors. The navy blue suit is almost a uniform for professional Parisian men.
• empiricus 2y ago
  My small victory is to set the tv on a wider color space, and so make youtube more vivid. 5% of things will look a little strange, but the majority looks more beautiful. Note you actually need a modern tv with a REAL wide color space.
• micromacrofoot 2y ago
  Not sure it's worth a whole blog post, but I think we have more ways to express ourselves than ever... the color hasn't gone, it's moved. I might resell my house or my car but my PC is a like looking into a rainbow supernova. My clothes have patterns and prints that weren't even technically possible 100 years ago. I can go buy paint for my walls at any hardware store that would cost a fortune during the renaissance. I can print any artwork I want at home at amazing quality or pay a little more for an even better pro print. I've got a number of screens in my house that can reproduce more colors than I can differentiate. The world is more colorful than ever, I don't think we have to point to the tired car examples or temporary trends in home decoration or filmmaking and claim something's missing.
• rambojohnson 2y ago
  go outside!
• vvpan 2y ago
  For those not in on Twitter lore I want to point out that the post is written by a well known white nationalist/neo-nazi dog whistling account.
  • sandspar 1y ago
    Who cares? Judge the information.
• tqi 2y ago
  "The answer isn’t just about fashion or materials, but is rooted in a much older understanding of the relationship between color and truth." Nah it's just fashion and materials. Even if you just look at apples product line, you can see they went from colorful plastic to monochrome metal and glass to how reintroducing colors to several of their product lines. People want so badly for there to be underlying, global conspiracy that they see it everywhere.
• layer8 2y ago
  The 2020 study this is based on: https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer-vision-to-explore-the-science-museum-c4b4f1cbd72c https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer... And there was already a very similar article last year: https://uxmag.com/articles/why-is-the-world-losing-color https://uxmag.com/articles/why-is-the-world-losing-color
• seydor 2y ago
  the car color thing may be real, but also it may be that people went overboard with color because they could, and then color got boring. For the percent of colors in photos, i m not sure. Older technologies oversaturated colors and probably underrepresented greys (or turned them to red/green) , but maybe newer photo technologies allowed more blues and greys. The cinema thing is real and very annoying to the point where i have to oversaturate all my screens in order to stop seeing actors' faces as corpses.
• alpemre 2y ago
  [dead]
• BloodyIron 2y ago
  Why is nobody talking about how Car Insurance is typically higher with any real colour selections? Insurance companies calculate that vehicles with certain colours (for example, Red) have a higher statistical probability of being in a collision than say... grey. This has created a downward pressure for people who would like colours in their vehicles, but would instead prefer to just pay less in car insurance since they may be aware of this aspect. I for one don't like that car insurance companies do this, but this very likely is a huge reason why fewer people buy vehicles with colour beyond Grey/etc.
  • legitster 2y ago
    I think this is a myth (at least in the US). I don't even have to provide the color of my car to get an insurance quote. The exception (maybe the source of the myth) is that cars with custom or exotic colors will cost more if you opt for comprehensive coverage.
    • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
      >I think this is a myth (at least in the US). I don't even have to provide the color of my car to get an insurance quote. When I renew my insurance, on the website it shows 'grey'. They know what colour your car is.
      • legitster 2y ago
        The color is usually required to tie it back to government databases. I can change my car color and it doesn't affect my quote at all. https://www.progressive.com/answers/red-car-myths/ https://www.progressive.com/answers/red-car-myths/ https://www.allstate.com/resources/car-insurance/do-red-cars-cost-more-to-insure https://www.allstate.com/resources/car-insurance/do-red-cars...
    • throwaway422432 2y ago
      Can't speak for the US, but having built a few versions of a car insurance comparison tool for a popular Australian comparison site; colour was a factor used by a few insurers: yellow & white getting a discount; grey, black, dark green costing more. WHile red and orange are perceived as being sporty, factors such as a driver under 30 with a Nissan 300ZX, WRX or a V8 would blow out a premium far more and some insurers wouldn't even take the risk.
• jmyeet 2y ago
  I play boardgames. I am also visually imppaired. So for me functionality is a massive issue. Readability is a massive issue. Being "pretty" is not an issue. In this class of games, it's common for a game to be printed, possibly have several printings, and then go out of print. For particularly sticky games, they may come back with a reprint or redesign years later. And I've noticed going back decades that the redesign almost always replaces bold, functional, high-contrast designs for low-contrast, "realistic", "pretty' designs. Examples: - Brass: original [1] vs redesign [2] - Titan: original [3] vs redesign [4] - Saint Petersburg: original [5] vs redesign [6] I don't know why this is but part of it comes down to people wanting to add "value" by changing things rather than just reprinting them. But why go "realistic"? I think there's a pervasive idea in this space that "realism" is good. So that's a trend. Cars go beyond color. Cars become a white or other neutral color because it's the least potentially "offensive". Car makers want the largest possible market. Plus companies like Hertz want this kind of car. But look at cars from the 1950s through 1980s and on top of color you have a lot of cosmetic design choices that we don't have now because they're less aerodynamic but, more importantly, cheaper. In a way, the car ceased to become an object of expression. Instead for many people it's just pure utility. So the designs became utilitarian. You may disagree because people are very opinionated on what cars they prefer but I think that just expresses brand preferences not aesthetic choices. Chain restaurants also exhibit this trend. Compare McDonald's from the 1980s vs now. A lot of fast food restaurants are now much harder to distinguish. [1]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4265429/brass-lancashire https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4265429/brass-lancashire [2]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1278376/brass-lancashire https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1278376/brass-lancashire [3]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/82323/titan https://boardgamegeek.com/image/82323/titan [4]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4869350/titan https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4869350/titan
  • alabastervlog 2y ago
    Do you have original and redesign mixed up on Brass? 1's ID is much higher than 2's, not sure if BGG does sequential IDs but I think I've noticed in the past that they seem to. Either way, I'd never even consider buying 1 (the redesign?), it's nearly impossible to "read" that board, while 2 (the original?) looks immediately inviting, without being at-all ugly.
• jcalx 2y ago
  > It’s not just cars — a study of over 7,000 objects in the UK’s Science Museum found that the colors of consumer goods have been steadily neutralized since 1800. Bright, saturated tones have been giving way to gray, beige, and taupe for centuries. That is... not what that first chart ("Percent of pixels") shows? Much the opposite — reddish beige to taupe dominated the 1800s and slowly dwindled to ~20% by 2020. Meanwhile, greens and blues became a lot more common from 1960 onward. To this article's credit, it does acknowledge the shift towards industrial materials, but it's still worth reading the article [0] where this chart originates. The nature of photographing objects contributes to the wider range of brown hues in older objects: > The wide range of colours in the telegraph comes in large part from the mahogany wood used in its construction. But the colours also come from its shape (the rounded pillars reflect light and create shadows) as well as its age (the wear and tear creates colour variations). whereas more recent objects trend toward smaller sizes and homogenous materials that photograph more evenly: > In contrast, the metal and plastic materials in the iPhone give much less variation. It also has a more basic shape and is in better condition. The pure grayscale band at the top of that chart has expanded significantly, but (variation in beige-ishness aside) can you really say that the left side of the graph is much less homogenous? [0] https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer-vision-to-explore-the-science-museum-c4b4f1cbd72c https://lab.sciencemuseum.org.uk/colour-shape-using-computer...
• kypro 2y ago
  I've been interested in the subconscious emotional response to colour for a long time now and have a kind of autistic obsession with the colour selections of myself and others (especially the colour of clothes). None of what I'm about to say is backed up by any reading or research I've done on this topic. This is all my opinion and experience, but I guess its somewhat topical and some people might find it interesting. Many years back I used to practice social skills and pickup. I realised quite quickly while learning how to socialise that colour is one of the more important ways to alter how others perceive you prior to knowing you. Specifically, greys and blacks were generally a bad choice and tended to signal low-confidence or a lack of character. There is an exception here for formal wear, but generic fashion choices like a black tshirt, grey shorts and black shoes will make you look devoid of personality. Always try to wear some colour if dressing casually and if you want to appear more friendly soft blues, greens and pinks I think are some of the most inviting colours. Hot pink was one of my favourite colours to cautiously add when socialising as a guy in a casual setting because it can be quite an interesting colour choice. It's far less aggressive than a strong red, but almost equally as striking. And its purpose is more confusing (and therefore interesting) than other colours since it could both be a sign of a confident heterosexual guy, or an outwardly gay guy. For this reason I've found hot pink is a good colour to add if meeting girls in a casual setting because it can be initially sexually neutralising while also an indicator of confidence (being too sexually forward is generally a bad strategy). However, in a formal settings whites and blacks are generally what you'll want to go with. Beige colours can also work, but might make you look a bit old fashioned today. I thought the reaction Jordan Peterson got when he starting wearing very colourful and striking suits was interesting because it confirmed a lot of my speculation around how people view colour in formal wear. It's very, very difficult to balance class with colour. If you want to appear classy it's almost required that you stick with whites and blacks. I personally suspect the world is losing colour because of the above two points – we associate class with neutral colours (blacks and whites generally) and strong colours can impose strong emotional responses which we might want to avoid (generally speaking anyway). My guess is that if you saw a brightly coloured home or car you will have a sense that the person who owns that thing has a lack of class and a strong colour might even suggest something negative or unintended about the owner. For this reason you might be tempted to just stick with something neutral to avoid this. This would be especially true for colourful items of low value because creating a strong emotional reaction around an item of little value it's probably going be perceived as overwhelmingly negative. Hence why some teen driving fast in a bright red but inexpensive car can be aggravating, while someone else driving fast in a bright red Ferrari while not especially classy is still likely to be far less negatively perceived. And beyond the class aspect, I'd suspect the lack of colour we see today is a reflection of our lower self-confidence both as individuals and culturally. I suspect people increasingly don't want to stand out or make an impression in public, and culturally in the West we're less confident and perhaps don't believe our public buildings deserve to be as striking or grand as they were in the past. I don't really know why blacks and whites suggest class either. I suspect that's a cultural thing that could change, but perhaps that would first require us to be confident enough to make an emotional impression. Perhaps too much confidence is viewed as unclassy today, while being timid and softly spoken is generally seen more positively. Either way, even if you believe the world should be more colourful, I wouldn't suggest leading the way on that in your own life – at least not if you care about how others will perceive you.
• shocks 2y ago
  I have a bright coloured car and it’s easy to find in the car park!
• Animats 2y ago
  Maybe only on surfaces. Lighting has become very colorful. Look at modern Asian cities. Beijing is rather grey in daytime, but at night, there's colored lighting. Shenzhen, where LEDs are made, has reached insane levels of lighting effects at night. Not only do most of the skyscrapers have animated lighting effects, the effects are coordinated across the whole downtown area. Then there are frequent drone shows. American cars are now coming stock with lighting effects previously seen on lowriders.
• rahkiin 2y ago
  > According to major auto paint suppliers, more than 80% of new cars are now grayscale. Black, white, gray, and silver dominate the roads. Reds, blues, and greens in auto production are increasingly rare. This is biased data: when cars that are not white or black cost 1000 of euros more from the factory, and custom non-preselected colors even more, then people tend to but the cheap colors. Especially when they are corporate lease cars and the corporation doesn’t care about the color. If car companies want more color, do not charge for it.
  • deleted 2y ago
    [deleted]
• asciimov 2y ago
  It would be nice if cars came in Hot Wheels Spectraflame. I’m sure the greigification of automobiles is down to some spreadsheet somewhere showing them they save two nickels for offering one less color.
• parsimo2010 2y ago
  "Millennial Gray" is a somewhat derogatory term that describes the interior decorating in many people's homes. It seems to be a generational thing. I think color will come back as Gen Z and Gen Alpha get older and become more dominant in the economy.
  • psunavy03 2y ago
    It's not entirely generational; as an Xennial I despise it with the fire of a thousand flaming suns.
• munificent 2y ago
  It's a cute article, but I don't think it holds up under scrutiny. I suspect it is much more a collection of unrelated reasons: * Historical objects in museums are likely more colorful because we cared to preserve the most visually striking objects. Classic survivorship bias. * Music has less dynamic range than in early recordings because producers were competing to be the loudest sounding song on the radio (see "loudness wars"). Those wars are actually over now and dynamic range has been increasing for about a decade. * There is a whole lot going on behind trends in cinematographer color grading if you look into that world. But in the example here, I think it's largely that audiences expected "muted brown" as the color grade to send a "period film" signal. Witness also how every medieval or fantasy movie feels compelled to have all of the castle walls bare gray rock when they were in fact plastered and brightly colored. Likewise Roman architecture being alabaster white. Audiences wouldn't believe a Roman movie with painted statues or a fantasy film with colorful castle walls. * Cars have muted colors because consumers moved towards a model where they sell cars every few years. When purchasing a car, they choose neutral colors to maximize resale value. Also, I think cars are simply much less a part of someone's social identity and status symbol and more of a utilitarian object than they they used to be. (Witness that when people buy expensive sports cars, those are more likely to be brightly colored.) * Interior design trends come and go, but I think one of the drivers of gray walls was that it became a popular style for Airbnb rentals to avoid turning off potential renters. That led it to become associated with internationalism and modernity, and from there it sort of took off. Also, an increasing number of people are renting and are simply unable to paint their walls more interesting colors.
• jillesvangurp 2y ago
  A lot of this stuff is just designers imitating each other. You see this a lot in web design where every website uses similar colors, fonts, visual language etc. I've worked with a few good designers that do actual original design where the point is to be different in a tasteful way. Standing out from the grey masses. If you get a lot of people copying each other, it all averages out to the same bland/boring stuff. A lot of Hollywood productions these days are sequels, re-runs, and endless variations of successful movies. Down to copying stylistic elements, color grading, etc. I love Tim Burton and Wes Anderson as directors. Both use vibrant, saturated colors and have a very recognizable style. Tim Burton uses lush, saturated colors to portray suburbs (many of his movies feature lush green lawns white picket fences, etc.). And Wes Anderson has his famous style of exactly centered subjects,using a lot of surrealist visuals, and elaborate sets and models. I loved the little Roald Dahl thing he did on Netflix two years ago or so (The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar) where all of this was on display. If you haven't seen that, worth a watch.
• pb060 2y ago
  What I find infuriating is to see colors stripped from children’s toys and clothes, especially by Northern Europe brands. Those dull beige taupe tones might attract parents but I’m sure that they bring little joy and stimulation to children.
• brailsafe 2y ago
  I loath the lack of vibrancy in modern design and fashion. So dull, so boring, so agreeable. Thankfully it allows people who do have a bit of personality to easily stand out if they want to. Still waiting a red MacBook pro
• jakub_g 2y ago
  The chart with car colors has been famous for a few years. However I'm seeing an inverse trend in past 1-2 years (at least in France); new cars are getting very colorful. For example: - Renault Clio is very popular in metallic orange - Renault 5 e-tech in bright yellow and green - MG in aqua/azure blue - Peugeot 208 in dark yellow and blue and dark red
  • Ylpertnodi 2y ago
    Is there a case to be made for 'well, that's what we had the most colour of...', with regards to manufacturers...of the paint, that'll sell it cheap, just to get rid?
• Waterluvian 2y ago
  Does this attempt to normalize for the possible case that colour is overrepresented in older art because pigments were so precious? Do we see a lot more purple represented than we should have expected to if we went further back than 1800? And as it became cheaper, it’s less novel and less interesting to utilize?
• skocznymroczny 2y ago
  When it comes to things like cars and room interiors, neutral colors have a much better resale value because they appeal to people more widely. For cars, vibrant colors might mean higher insurance rates (red cars are associated with sports cars, young drivers and aggressive driving).
  • throwaway422432 2y ago
    That is the general perception with Red and Orange which can cost more to insure. There are other factors with car colour: - Visibility: white and yellow are more visible and get a premium discount. - Fleet ownership: which mostly means white. The amount of grey manufactured at the moment is interesting as they attract a higher premium because they are basically the same colour as the road. Black is also deemed less visible.
  • BeFlatXIII 2y ago
    Car color ought to be banned from being a consideration for insurance rates.
  • johnea 1y ago
    I've never had an insurance company ask about the color of a car...
• sva_ 2y ago
  Maybe like spices. First they were something special in the western world, then they became abundant and cheap.
• adverbly 2y ago
  Just got back from a trip to Spain and Portugal. Basically had culture shock driving down a wide north american road. It's not just the colors. It's the emptiness. The clearance of everything in north america is insane. It's just so boring.
  • sojournerc 2y ago
    All of North America?
    • adverbly 2y ago
      Not all I suppose - but it is the default.
  • anthk 2y ago
    Well, if you went to Spain to the Castilles/Aragon, specially to the Serranía Celtibérica area, you would find the same rural emptiness of the US. And, in Asturias/Cantabria/Palencia, at "Picos de Europa", you woudn't believe that these spikey, rough mountains with hard winters belong to Spain.
• kazinator 2y ago
  Is that Mr. Bean (red car, lower right) stalking out his arch-nemesis (upper-left, yellow)? NVM, I think that's a Fiat, not Austin. https://i.imgur.com/IA0TqUu.png https://i.imgur.com/IA0TqUu.png
• aoeusnth1 2y ago
  I am continuously surprised by the neverending parade of white cars on the roads.
  • aulin 2y ago
    They don't get as hot when parked under the sun though.
• RandyOrion 2y ago
  Interesting observation. I prefer things with low color contrast in general, just to leave some color space for important things. Maybe this preference stems from the time I tweak color themes in IDEs. In contrast, I also found more and more photography pieces which show vibrant colors and high color contrasts.
• casey2 2y ago
  All cat tractors are yellow. Does this answer your question? A handful of companies make almost all products. China is a concrete jungle anywhere you have a mass of cameras. That about sums it up. Not whatever US-based fashion trend that you hate this week.
• ryao 2y ago
  > Baroque art stands in direct defiance of the chromophobic worldview. It doesn’t strip down experience in the name of order, but rather builds it up — embracing sensation and structure together. All I can say is that if it is not baroque, do not fix it.
• cc101 1y ago
  cowardliness
• djmips 1y ago
  American video games used to be that, all brown, and Japanese games tended to be more saturated and colorful. To some extent this is still be true but I've noticed a willingness now to break out of the bleak color grading.
• SirMaster 1y ago
  HDR movies and TV have more color than old SDR stuff. Go back and look at 80s, 90s movies and compare to 2024 movies and the 2024 movies have way more color. Except a few examples here and there that are stylized or graded that way intentionally, but those are few and far between in my experience. Like go look at mainstream stuff like marvel movies. Those are all way more colorful than basically any movie from the 70s-2000.
• johnea 1y ago
  > "Baroque art" ? I guess these people weren't alive in the 1960s 8-/ The psychedelic era had color everywhere. Not only color in design, but in people's general appearance. When I look through my highschool yearbook (1977), I'm shocked (shocked I tell you) at how _different_ everyone looked, not from now, but from each otther, then. I'm not just talking about stoners vs jocks, everyone had an individual look based around their overall physical characteristics. Now, it's mostly Justin Beeber nazi-haircuts, and the ubiquitous "please run me over in the crosswalk" black clothing fashion statement. In general, people aren't attempting to have an autonomous indivduality, instead everyone (wing-nut and woke-nut alike) are striving to value posture in their chosen identity "community". How boring...
• ellis0n 1y ago
  80% of developers on StackOverflow are unhappy and burned out and I don’t think they are thinking about colors and the brightness of life. Bored Ape has become a symbol of an era where many people's dreams have shattered and they have turned into a grey mass. The diversity of colors is a symbol of joy and freedom. The wars have swept across the world and now entire countries like Ukraine have lost all color because the colors of war are gray and black, and there are people who impose shades of gray because they are only interested in money and don’t care about colors.