Google employs people to invent colours – and they think their work improves your wellbeing Google has revealed it employs people to invent colours and give them silly names, too. The internet giant today detailed the work of Isabelle Olsson, leader of Google’s “Color, Materials and Finish team.” The missive does make the sensible point that as computers come off the desk and into homes, a splash of colour makes a …
I've started referring to a certain type of gentrified soulless pub as Farrow and Ball, as sadly they're replacing real pubs of character. They can be identified by their signage and interior colour schemes.
As for the Farrow and Ball paint company, I refer to that as Hippy Paint. You can have any Hippy Paint colour-matched in Dulux like a normal person, and you should do if you don't want to repaint in two year's time.
CMF (Colour Materials Finish) is standard in many industries - many 'special editions' of cars are merely a different paint colour and interior trim material. It's basically the stuff that can be changed without retooling.
You'll note that Apple, Sony and Nokia are/were the masters of this. Really though, for Google's home speakers and ear buds I'd start by looking at Nokia's Xpress-on Covers from the 3210 era. I'm also thinking if the iridescent finish on the 6210.
It's about £200, last I checked. It's been on my mind of late, though I found my Samsung Galaxy screen is in close enough agreement with my colleague's MacBook screen and our inkjet printer output that I was confident enough to order some printed marketing materials without recourse to the swatches. I know colour accuracy is important, but just how important depends upon the job. Where the swatches book is very handy is if you wish to specify to a commercial printer some 'spot' colours (eg metallic inks, florescent inks, glossy or matte finishes) that your office inkjet printer can't output.
If you're making a device case out of one part, then no one will notice if the colour is slightly off what you intended. If you are making a device where you intend two parts of a different material to the be same colour, people may notice any variation, even a slight variation.
I love that kind of pointless devotion to pointless precision. It only makes any sense if you control every aspect of the customer experience - what lighting they have and the windows lighting and their indoor decor as all of it will have an effect on the way the thing looks to the customer.
Have you ever tried to read your credit card number under a single 'white' LED bulb? I cant read mine because some designer twat though silver embossed lettering on plastic was a great 'look' even though it renders it completely unreadable in 99% of the times I try and read it. I've had to resort to one of the old carbon copies from my local pub which keeps one for when the internet and phones are down!
There are reasons electric cables have certain colours and not just the marketing whim of the month.
Ooohhh - old carbon copies will deteriorate over time, plus your card number will change, so isn't ideal.
What you should do is write down your card number somewhere safe. You'll need to remember to add the other things such as expiry date and CVV number. And probably best to include your mother's maiden name and the names of your first school and pet.
Then, to ensure it's completely safe and secure, put them all in an envelope and send it to me...
Green will forever be associated with institutional green walls that are supposedly calming, green and brown office carpet that doesn't show stains, and green beer for St. Patrick's Day. All of these are disgusting.
York Peppermint Patties are near black and near white. Case closed.
So they had a whole team spending time and money to find the right color and in the end the boss chose her favorite. Makes you almost miss Steve Jobs. He probably could have picked the 'best color' on the spot. (Any color should work, that's why there is an expensive marketing department.)
Thankfully beige computers and peripherals, usually yellowed by UV, are largely a thing of the past.
The original Sony Playstation was specified to have a slightly indigo shade of beige, so that the inevitable UV yellowing wouldn't show as much. The same head designer went on to create the Sony VAIO line of desktops and laptops, which leant evenly more into a indigo tinted grey.
All Google had to do was go back to the color (or colour) schemes for the 1970 Ford Maverick, where they had:
Anti-Establish Mint, Hulla Blue, Original Cinnamon, Freudian Gilt, Thanks Vermillion, Candyapple Red, Black Jade, Champagne Gold, Gulfstream Aqua, Meadowlark Yellow, Brittany Blue, Lime Gold, Dresden Blue, Raven Black, Wimbledon White
OK, some of those are normal sounding. But I'm sure Google could have quickly found them with a quick search on Bing or DuckDuckGo.
Come on people, they only have three RGB sliders going from 0 to 255, and have to choose one combination of those. Anybody can do this, so obviously they need to justify their choice as being exclusive and well-thought-of: It's not only basic marketing, it's basic survival instinct lest somebody more credible comes along and takes their 3 sliders from them...
Giving fancy names to things makes them more exclusive and more desirable: "Aged gold" sounds better and definitely more desirable than "metallic beige", people will be willing to spend more money on it. "Bright white" is trivial and boring, while "Eternal snows of the roof of the world" is loaded with dream and suggested significance...
I've just had a brilliant product idea, which I offer to the world for development because I can't be arsed.
We need a bluetooth dartboard (maybe one of those plastic ones with the field of holes), or suitable machine vision of an actual dartboard. The face to be done in the typical colour-picker wheel motif, so that after a few pints the designers can pick the colours for pending products quickly, then get back to "real work" (a few more pints).
Meanwhile, my first memory of computer colours is two shades of grey for the frame, IBM Blue for the panels. Mid 1960s, when less stodgy computer users could also get Yellow, Green, and "Coral".
A friend was starting a room painting project, had the swatch book from the paint seller. "Bermuda Bay", "Blushing Violet", "Arctic Glow", and so on. I felt a twinge of sympathy for the poor sod tasked with coming up with names that "sell" (this color looks like day-old dog vomit, um, how about "Dappled Wheat"?); now I guess they get jobs at Google for a bit more than minimum wage, sympathy revoked.
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