[HN Gopher] Why is the world losing color?
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Why is the world losing color?
Author : trevin
Score : 220 points
Date : 2025-04-02 15:02 UTC (7 hours ago)
(HTM) web link (www.culture-critic.com)
(TXT) w3m dump (www.culture-critic.com)
| techpineapple wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Cars suck then. We have destroyed our environments, both
| natural and human made, because of them.
| rowanG077 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| delichon wrote:
| > 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.
| pixl97 wrote:
| Pretty much every retail store is like this. I mean, it's
| been this way for a while, but there is so much loud colorful
| advertizing that having a quiet place to live in feels much
| better.
| elmomle wrote:
| > I wish the inflationary trend in linguistic overstatement
| did the same.
|
| Nowadays literally everything I read is the most egregious
| overstatement I've ever seen.
| the__alchemist wrote:
| Love the phrasing. I found myself in the past few days
| getting in a pair of disputes in HN comments that may have
| boiled down reading the exaggerated adjectives literally,
| when the authors may not have intended that.
| Umofomia wrote:
| > I bet one of those color comparison graphs of the average
| website in 1998 through today would show the same trend.
| <marquee><blink>Indeed</blink></marquee>
| Mistletoe wrote:
| Speak for yourself then because I think this looks great and
| fun.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/mildlyinteresting/comments/1jnr4bz/...
|
| By the comments, I don't think I'm the only one.
|
| Look at the logo evolution.
|
| https://www.reddit.com/r/LivingMas/comments/17yizkw/evolutio...
|
| Why is Taco Bell slowly losing color like a vampire is draining
| it of fun and blood? I see these driving around and I just
| shake my head, what about light purple and white represents
| Mexican culture and food? It's the whitest thing they could do
| without making the sign all white. Same thing with Target. Now
| some of the logos are white on white!
|
| https://www.designyourway.net/blog/target-logo/
|
| It's odd that in this era where we are supposed to be embracing
| diversity and difference that we are homogenizing our logos to
| white or gray goo.
| smallmancontrov wrote:
| I dunno, I think the purple and white is quite in line with
| the degree to which Taco Bell food represents Mexican culture
| and food.
| WD-42 wrote:
| Are you young? I've noticed the upcoming generation has begun
| rejecting their parent's bland aesthetics.
| Mistletoe wrote:
| No, I'm not young. I remember all those Taco Bell logos
| from 1985 up pretty much. :)
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| I agree. I'd even say it embodies optimism.
| appleorchard46 wrote:
| The example they use of Baroque art actually perfectly
| demonstrates this. It primarily consists of neutral tones that
| integrate well with the blues and muted oranges woven through
| it. Not exactly riotous color, as they put it - but very
| similar to the use of color you see both in modern designs and
| older cultural traditions.
|
| (edit) I do think we've swung a _little_ hard in the direction
| of color minimalism recently; it can get oppressive when
| combined with the trend towards minimalism in structure and
| form too. But I think it 's fine for the default to err toward
| inoffensiveness and color to be used purposefully, and if/when
| public opinion shifts away from that there isn't exactly any
| impediment to design shifting with it.
| kmeisthax wrote:
| Isn't all that art faded out, though? I wouldn't be surprised
| if Baroque period art was originally painted with riotous
| color first and then faded over time to where it now looks
| merely like an "opinionated use of color".
|
| In a similar vein, all those old grey marble statues the
| Greeks and Romans made used to be bathed in riotous color
| before the paint flaked off.
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Well, visually exhausting is something that imho happens only
| if you find unpleasant the colors you're seeing. The wonderful
| island of Burano is something I would never get tired of, yet
| it's so colorful.
|
| I think that the visual exhaustion comes from the fact that the
| thing we see everyday are made to catch our attention and not
| to decorate. So ads, shits and giggles that don't really add to
| our experience but that catch - and drain - our attention
|
| Then again I'd probably be fine with a super duper wallpaper
| like this so perhaps we won't agree on some things such as
| having few colorful elements
| https://www.photowall.com/ee/memphis-piazza-panorama-wallpap...
| tracker1 wrote:
| I don't hate the wall art in your example... it's not quite
| my taste, but it doesn't make me pull my hair out. If you
| look at something like the link below, I'd hate having to be
| anywhere near it. Busy patterns and mixes of color just feel
| like noise and give me (sometimes literally) a headache.
|
| https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/vintage-bathroom-
| makeover-p...
| amarcheschi wrote:
| Ok, I don't like that mess too
| dreamworld wrote:
| Yes and, part of it is advertising visually tormenting us. They
| throw uber catchy colorful banners of stuff we're often not
| interested in the slightest, doing everything to get our
| attention. Also, websites featuring advertisement are
| encouraged to have more muted tones so they stand out. That
| gets tiresome and we tend to want rest for private spaces.
|
| But overall I agree. If everything is uber-colorful, that can
| become just overwhelming. Also we are a lot more stimulated
| throughout the day with screen and movies and games. In the
| olden days you didn't have a smartphone with a colorful screen,
| so putting lots of colour in your house or your church made
| more sense.
|
| I'd want less advertisement, and more thoughtful color choices
| throughout cities and digital spaces.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| You can see the same thing in music recordings during the 60s.
| Stereo and quadrophonic sound was new so everything was panned
| all over the place really hard. Drums all on the left, vocals
| hard right etc. It's an interesting effect sometimes, but
| generally a gimmick and/or distraction. We don't really do that
| anymore, for good reason.
| jntun wrote:
| Because the analog equipment back then could only do binary
| panning.
| wholinator2 wrote:
| I've heard this is a recommended paradigm for mixing, to
| only ever pan things R, C, L and nothing in between, but it
| doesn't make sense to me. Possible because i have to mix on
| headphones, but it sounds much too extreme to me. Sure,
| _some things_ can go all the way but i generally enjoy to
| fill the space between the far edges, and allow some reverb
| busses to blur the lines a bit if needed.
|
| Is hard panning really strongly recommended like that, or
| just a hold over that the old heads learned and passed down
| bongodongobob wrote:
| No, that's complete nonsense.
| ricardobeat wrote:
| That's totally not true. The original stereo patent from
| the 1930s is based on M+S signals, not separate channels,
| and was born out of a desire to position sound across a
| stage (movies).
|
| By the time the hard-panned records of the 60s were made
| the technology was already old, it was just a stylistic
| choice.
| Henchman21 wrote:
| IIRC, the Beatles "Sgt. Pepper" album was among the first
| stereo-mixed albums released. As much fame as that particular
| album has, the original mix is really bad. Drums all left,
| guitars all right, nothing in the center. It sounds _weird_
| to modern ears!
|
| Also IIRC, I believe George Harrison's kid remixed it
| properly, just a handful of years ago.
| bongodongobob wrote:
| One of the reasons being that more people had mono systems
| so the stereo mixdown was just kind of a "for fun"
| afterthought. They didn't take it as seriously.
| alabastervlog wrote:
| Even worse is when they keep screwing with the panning. I
| can't stand Led Zeppelin II for that reason. Someone just
| couldn't stop messing with the damn slider, right in the
| middle of songs. The ones with merely bad, but static,
| panning are far more tolerable.
| munificent wrote:
| I don't think we stopped doing it because it's gimmicky.
|
| Recordings in the 1960s were mixed to be played back on
| stereo speakers. You can hard pan stuff and in your living
| room where you listen to it, it will produce a nice pleasant
| stereo image because each ear can hear some of both speakers.
|
| Today, audio engineers mix music to be listened to primarily
| on headphones. If you pan something hard left, it's literally
| not going to be heard in the right ear at all which sounds
| horrifically artificial.
|
| So now music has to be mixed to synthetize a pleasant
| soundstage when heard on headphones.
| parpfish wrote:
| > 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.
|
| could a factor driving current monotone style be less about
| aesthetics and taste and more that we're all just cognitively
| exhausted?
|
| everything is fighting for our attention because our attention
| has been monetized. so when something bland shows up, it
| simultaneously provides a bit of respite and can seem more
| 'trustworthy' because it _isn 't_ clamoring for your attention.
|
| if i were buying some kitchen appliances and i had a choice
| between a brightly colored models or a stark, utilitarian
| models, i have to admit that the stark ones have appeal because
| they "look professional" (even though it may not actually be
| pro quality) and "the color is just a sales gimmick" (even
| though boring industrial grey is also a sales gimmick)
| euroderf wrote:
| > we're all just cognitively exhausted?
|
| If you include electronic media as a source of this cognitive
| exhaustion, then I'm with you. If greyscale dominates the
| physical environment, then it's a reaction to something
| equally pervasive.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> If greyscale dominates the physical environment, then it
| 's a reaction to something equally pervasive._
|
| My impression from the data is not that greyscale now
| dominates the physical environment, but that browns once
| dominated. Presumably because things like wood, copper,
| etc. once dominated the materials we engrossed ourselves
| in. As we've expanded the paints and other materials we
| live with, we've found much more balance.
| bluGill wrote:
| Is that really true or isiit just that blues and greens
| biodegrade and so the only evidence of the past's colors
| we have is the mineral colors. We have evidence that
| paint has been used on wood furniture - but not what
| color was used.
| 9rx wrote:
| It is true that it is my impression of the data. A
| different dataset could possibly give me a different
| impression, but without that dataset...
| nine_k wrote:
| I think the sensory load idea is productive, but I'd add a
| related idea of drawing attention to key things only.
|
| I don't care if my kettle looks "professional"; one is pink,
| another is orange.
|
| But I prefer walls around me to be white or very lightly
| colored, not, say, intensively red. That would constantly
| distract me.
|
| Code in my editor is colorful like a Christmas tree, bur most
| of the interface is muted beige and green. This is about
| certain things requiring my attention, and others sparing it.
|
| When everything is loud, nothing is, nothing _stands out_.
| Bold colors often work better as accents.
|
| (Sometimes it's about non-aesthetic considerations. I prefer
| my car to be approximately white to soak in less of the hot
| summer summer sun.)
| XorNot wrote:
| I have a different take on interior wall colors: any shade
| too far off from white actually darkens the room no matter
| the color.
|
| Paint colors subtractively from light: you never get more
| light into a room when you're knocking out wavelengths
| rather then reflecting them. Whereas with whiter walls you
| always have the option of manipulating color by using
| colored lighting.
| dinkblam wrote:
| > cognitively exhausted?
|
| i find it cognitively exhausting to watch movies that are so
| dark that most times i cannot even see the eye color of the
| cast
| moralestapia wrote:
| The pic featured on TFA evidently shows that color is going
| down vs. black/white.
|
| This is a trend, not an opinion.
| munch117 wrote:
| Whatever colour you put on the wall at home, you get used to.
| Your senses acclimatize to it because you see it all the time,
| even if it initially seemed "riotous".
|
| Once you step outside, it does matter though. If your own home
| is shades of grey, then any colour you encounter outside is
| going to seem garish.
|
| Visually exhausting you say? If you are being stressed by the
| colours of the world, then that's a problem of your own making.
| tracker1 wrote:
| Even if it's in one's own living space it's possible to not
| get used to something. In those cases, for those types of
| personalities, it'll usually get replaced or painted over.
| One thing I completely abhor are busy tile patterns, it can
| be the shapes or colors, and no, I wouldn't get used to it.
|
| In terms of the colors of the world... I'm fine with
| nature... it's the man-made that gets to be garish at times.
| munch117 wrote:
| Then what happens, if you're that type of person, after
| you've replaced or painted over something? Do you relax and
| become comfortable with what's left? Or do you move on to
| the next irritant, that will bug you until you've replaced
| or painted over that?
|
| I saw some pictures from a house where everything was
| white. The walls were white, the tables and chairs were
| white, the pillows were white, lamps were white, etc. But I
| bet the owner didn't see it as everything being white, like
| I did. I bet that when they'd look at the same pictures,
| they'd see all the little details here and there that were
| not white, or not quite white enough. I imagine them being
| in a constant state of stress over the non-white blemishes.
|
| I don't know them, I just saw the pictures, so I don't
| truly know how they feel, I could be just imagining things.
| But my gut feeling is that someone with a home like that is
| not at ease with themselves.
| tracker1 wrote:
| For your example, probably. Different people will have
| different compulsive behaviors. I painted my kitchen
| cabinets shortly after moving in... I didn't do the best
| job of it, and I do notice the blemishes, inconsistencies
| and bleed through as well as a few spots that chipped
| over the last 6 years or so. Not enough that I stress
| over it, or even really think about it in general, but
| recognize.
|
| I don't think I'd ever want something all that monochrome
| for myself. To me, subdued isn't about monochrome so much
| as limiting the noise. I don't even mind a sharp
| contrast, such as a colorful photo/painting. It's what I
| can only describe as visual noise that gets me.
| Especially with patterns that aren't really something
| you'd see in nature.
| BLanen wrote:
| > But when everything is colorful, nothing stands out.
| Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything being,
| well, monotone.
|
| This is meaningless.
|
| "When many things are different, everything is the same".
|
| Its a sentence that seems meaningful, but actually is not. It's
| just abstraction without generalizing.
|
| "000000000000000000000000000" is a sequence just as _something_
| as "H90F3iJsjo$(4Opla1zSKX@)!2k" because in the second
| sequence they're different and in the first they're all the
| same? Great, you just discovered sets and the axiom of choice.
|
| We are literally discussing the difference within the sets!
| Obviously the second sequence is more diverse.
|
| First, I thought your argument was going somewhere but then it
| took this turn.
|
| I would agree with the first part and then argue that before
| the synthetics-revolution things were mostly just shades of
| browns(which is a type of dark unsaturated orange). Except for
| the upper classes who could afford the expensive colors. Now
| that color is cheap and normalized, it lost (some) of its
| allure. Not being able to signal your wealth anymore.
|
| Now adding just a conjecture of mine; Now that 'clean' is still
| somewhat more expensive(upper classes still being able to
| afford more cleanliness by using other peoples labor), minimal
| textures(not literal textures but design-wise) are more
| attractive because it displays your wealth. Plain-white being
| the easiest to see blemishes on. With black being easier look
| unblemished. Also, 'tasteful' color arrangements will still
| signal your class somewhat due to requiring cultural knowledge.
| tracker1 wrote:
| I would describe it more as noise... When there are loud,
| clashing color patterns everywhere, it all turns into noise
| and nothing really stands out. It's like watching analog TV
| with poor reception... there's stuff there, but really hard
| to make out or focus.
|
| I'm with GP on this, I'd prefer most things be somewhat
| subdued and letting key pieces come out. The subdued doesn't
| have to expressly be a shade of gray or brown/tan either.
| taneq wrote:
| Modern SCADA systems are designed like this too. They used
| to be a riot of programmer art in primary colours, with
| most things blinking at any one time. Now they're grey-on-
| grey for anything "nominal" with alarms in orange or red.
| Far less migraine inducing and far easier to see the
| important things.
| crazygringo wrote:
| I'm going to change your first example. Can you see what
| stands out?
|
| "00000000qq000000000I0000000"
|
| Now I'm going to change your second example, also by three
| characters. Can you see what stands out?
|
| "H90F3iJsjo$(4ORma1sSKX@)!2k"
|
| Is that a clearer example of what I'm trying to say? In the
| second example, because every symbol stands out, no symbol
| stands out. Or to put it more technically, noise has
| overwhelmed any signal.
| IshKebab wrote:
| > Its a sentence that seems meaningful, but actually is not.
|
| It's perfectly meaningful. When everything is colourful you
| can't use colour to stand out. It's very simple. Obvious
| even.
| roenxi wrote:
| Sure you can. Red rose in a field of green for example.
| Human eyes evolved to see the colours the way they do
| precisely because they were working in a world where nearly
| everything is colourful and some things needed to stand
| out.
| xboxnolifes wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Based purely on intuition, I want to agree with you. However,
| the data in the article suggests there's been a fairly
| consistent decrease in color of media since the 1800s. You
| would expect an explosion of color in the 1960s and then a
| decrease, but one does not exist. At least, the "explosion" the
| data shows is a very minor increase that does not affect the
| overall pattern.
| crazygringo wrote:
| The data in the article is either not representative or
| didn't go back far enough.
|
| The best example, cars, only goes back to 1990. And the
| museum objects are objects a science museum happened to keep,
| that go back to 1800? Hardly representative of consumer
| objects in general. There isn't even a single chart about
| clothing.
|
| Glancing through historical clothing and car magazines from
| the past century is going to tell you a _lot_ more.
| izacus wrote:
| So do you have actual own data to counter this?
| yorwba wrote:
| If you look closely, there's actually an increase of red,
| green, blue, etc. at the same time as the increase in black
| and white, and it's the brownish colors of undyed organic
| materials that are decreasing. (Or maybe they were originally
| dyed and the color faded over the last 200 years.)
|
| Whereas before you might've been limited to a choice of
| lighter or darker wood for your furniture, now you can have
| it in any synthetic color you want, including pure black and
| pure white.
| IshKebab wrote:
| Yeah I'm pretty skeptical of that visualisation anyway. It
| sure _looks_ like there 's more grey scale, but that's
| because they've grouped it all at the top. If you actually
| look at the pixels in the below "white" a lot of them are
| very dark and unsaturated too.
|
| I don't think it's really a meaningful visualization.
| They're trying to show something 2D in 1 dimension.
| 9rx wrote:
| _> You would expect an explosion of color in the 1960s and
| then a decrease_
|
| The data shows an explosion of "new" colours in the 1960s,
| although the trend never stopped. Technology is still no
| doubt the answer - including the explosion in the black to
| white spectrum. We aren't limited to natural colours or
| colours, period, like we once were.
| watwut wrote:
| Geocities were explosion of color.
|
| Also, pop art.
| autoexec wrote:
| > You would expect an explosion of color in the 1960s and
| then a decrease
|
| What happened was a lot of muted colors, earthy yellows,
| browns, and oranges in the 70s followed by an insane amount
| of the brightest colors possible in the late 80s and early
| 90s where fluorescent blues greens and pinks were everywhere.
| It seems like everything got a lot more bland after that and
| we've never recovered to happy medium.
| detourdog wrote:
| The big difference between 1800s and the 1960s is that oil
| paints were mixed "onsite" for color and the the 1960s had
| the commcerialization of latex paints and Pantone colors.
| lofaszvanitt wrote:
| "Everything being colorful is as monotonous as everything
| being, well, monotone."
|
| What a load of crap. Where do you live, in a cave? have you
| ever been in a jungle perhaps? what about birds with colorful
| feathers? you want to wash out those colors too? jesus, nature
| dictates and nature is full of vivid colors. so your argument
| goes down the drain.
|
| there is no such thing as modern taste. there are trends
| dictated by a handful of psychotic gatekeepers who got hooked
| on their own farts.
|
| old movies had the absolute best coloring. compare those movies
| to the ones seen now and you are on the verge of retching.
| these superficial, devoid of human value superprocessed heaps
| of shit they try to force feed to people, just plain
| unwatchable. not just the story lacks, it has zero message,
| nothing to chew on, just some brainwashing action scenes.
| that's good for the plebs they say while squeezing people for
| money.
|
| absolutely reprehensible, that a handful of gatekeepers put
| people into these literal psycho gardens that is devoid of
| anything resembling human. what's missing is the human part.
| the humanity is slowly missing from everything.
| crazygringo wrote:
| Jungles are actually a great example. They are mostly neutral
| browns and dark greens that form a pretty neutral
| background... with the occasional beautiful bright accent
| colors from a bird or flower or something. But if you trek
| through the jungle, it's pretty boring color-wise most of the
| time. Which is why spotting a colorful bird is such a joy.
|
| But can you please take the personal attacks elsewhere? HN is
| not the place for those.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| > _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._
|
| I don't consider this to be a be-all, end-all of design, but I
| appreciate that designs following this approach can be
| stunningly beautiful. That said, _this is not the problem_. The
| problem is, what happens these days, someone films your room
| with that "gorgeous green plant that stands out all the more
| against its neutral background" and... _color grades the shit
| out of color_ , making it near pitch-black on non-HDR TVs (and
| most computer screens) and merely _grey with tiny amounts of
| trace color_ on HDR TVs.
|
| _This_ is the problem - or at least its TV aspect. That
| Napoleon example was spot on - most movies these days look like
| the right half, whereas anything remotely approaching realism
| would make it look like the left half. And TFA correctly
| notices the same washing out of colors is happening to products
| and spaces in general (which means double trouble when that 's
| filmed and then color-graded some more).
| crazygringo wrote:
| The drained-color thing is exclusive to a certain type of
| TV/movie drama, and then also a serious technical problem
| involving HDR device-side (which is a whole other story).
|
| But if you watch any comedy, or reality show, or plenty of
| "normal" dramas, on a regular TV, the color is normal.
|
| However, yes, there has been a certain trend involving
| Christopher Nolan, "gritty realism", and legal-political-
| military-crime themes, to do color grading to massively
| reduce saturation and aggressively push towards blue. I don't
| like it much but you can also just not watch that stuff. It's
| stylistic the same way film noir was. Some people hated that
| back in the day too, now it's just seen as a style of the
| time.
| troupo wrote:
| > The drained-color thing is exclusive to a certain type of
| TV/movie drama
|
| It's not. There's even a term coined for it, "intangible
| sludge". https://www.vox.com/culture/22840526/colors-
| movies-tv-gray-d...
|
| > I don't like it much but you can also just not watch that
| stuff.
|
| It's now permeated everything, so it's hard to not watch
| stuff, as it's everywhere, with few exceptions.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Right. For a long time I wondered what's going on, and
| eventually started believing it's my fault - that maybe
| I'm just a rare HDR-poor person watching TV shows on SDR
| computer displays, maybe I've hit an unusual corner case
| in the video decoding path, or something. I kept
| believing that until Star Trek: Picard, Season 3, which
| made it clear _it 's not me, it's them_.
|
| The whole show, like everything in the past decade or so,
| was dark and washed out (except for some space FX parts,
| where at least some colors were saturated, sometimes).
| This lasted up until the last two episodes, where for
| plot reasons[0], some protagonists found themselves
| onboard a ship from TNG-era shows (1980s - 2000s), pulled
| straight from a museum, which means the set was recreated
| as it was on old shows, _complete with the lighting_.
| From that scene onwards through the final episode, as it
| jumped between that one special set and every other dark
| and gray scene, I had proof in front of me that scenes in
| modern shows can be properly lit, they just aren 't, and
| it's an active choice[1].
|
| Importantly, this scene wasn't a one-off gimmick that
| risked coming out too bright on normal people's HDR-
| enabled TV screens. The set involved was, per the
| showrunner, pretty much _the_ whole _raison d 'etre_ for
| the entire season, and they burned most of the season's
| budget on perfecting it[2]. Them being able to light it
| well (and have it coexist with every other badly-lit
| scene) only proves there's no technical obstacle involved
| - that dark and washed out TV is just a choice everyone's
| making for... unclear reasons.
|
| --
|
| [0] - Hard to navigate around a major spoiler and
| highlight of the era in the franchise.
|
| [1] - Actually, I can't give this scene enough justice.
| But given how massive moment that was for people
| following the franchise, I'll just provide a link to the
| video (SPOILER WARNING):
| https://youtu.be/t-mY4Xbjyn8?t=42 -- watch in max
| quality; compare okay-ish exterior CG early on, observe
| how dark and washed out scenes with people are - and this
| is literally how the entire season (and really, entire
| show) was until that point... or just scroll to 2:27, and
| then on a perfect cue - "computer, lights!" - observe how
| next 30 seconds reveal that _everything could 've been
| properly lit from the start, but for some non-tech
| reason, it wasn't_.
|
| [2] - Most of that was eaten up by casting very specific
| people, but the set itself was damn expensive too.
| crazygringo wrote:
| > _It 's not. There's even a term coined for it,
| "intangible sludge"._
|
| It is. The article you link even begins:
|
| > _So many TV shows and movies now_
|
| That's what I'm taking about. Those "so many" belong
| mostly to a certain type of drama.
|
| You're not seeing it in comedies. You're not seeing it in
| reality shows. There are also plenty of dramas that don't
| have it, possibly a majority but I'm not sure.
|
| It's not everywhere, contrary to what you say. It may,
| however, seem "everywhere" if you're only watching that
| type of drama.
| mrandish wrote:
| > color grades the shit out of color
|
| Color grading itself isn't the problem. It's just a creative
| tool that can be used well or poorly. The problem is the
| intentional stylistic choices being made with the tool. I
| don't have strong opinions about TFAs arguments re: color in
| general but as someone deep into cinema production
| technology, there's a troubling lack of visual diversity in
| modern cinema and it's not just color, it's dynamic range and
| texture too.
|
| It's crazy because this is happening in an era when digital
| cinema workflows from cameras to file formats to post-
| production allow everyone to capture, manipulate and
| distribute visuals with unprecedented levels of fidelity and
| dynamic range. Even DSLRs down to $3000 can capture full
| frame 4k camera raw with >14 stops of dynamic range which is
| insane. The great cinematographers of the past needed
| incredible skill to capture dynamic range from deep shadows
| to punchy highlights on film and it was always a risk since
| they had to wait for dailies. And they had little latitude to
| manipulate the image captured on the camera negative in post.
|
| Today's imagers, formats and tools make capturing immense
| dynamic range not only fast and easy but cheap and virtually
| risk-free yet so much cinema looks flat and boring - and
| there's no technical reason for it. This video shows
| compelling examples contrasting recent movies with those shot
| on film in the 90s but also movies shot on much less capable
| digital cinema cameras in the early 2000s proving it's not
| digital or grading that's driving this. "Why don't movies
| look like movies any more?"
| https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTUM9cFeSo.
|
| According to Hollywood cinematographers in the video it's
| partly intentional artistic choices, part the impact of
| composing and lighting for HDR, part lack of creativity and
| production skill and a big part over focus on flat lighting
| for VFX shots (because the more expressive the digital camera
| negative is, the harder it is for VFX teams to match with
| CGI). I'd add another factor which is that younger
| cinematographers, LDs and camera ops who learned on high
| dynamic range digital cinema cameras have been trained to
| shoot a flat LUT. While this technically maximizes the
| latitude available for color grading in post (which is
| generally a good thing), the issue is that many extend this
| to composing and lighting shots that have virtually no
| expressive look in the captured digital negative at all.
| Color grading in post should be for small tweaks, conforming
| shot-to-shot variance, mastering and, occasionally, saving
| the day when something goes wrong with a shot. While modern
| editing and grading tools are immensely powerful, re-framing
| and grading in post cannot substitute for creative on-set
| lighting, lensing, composition and exposure choices. Great
| cinematographers still create their looks with lighting, lens
| and camera as if there were going to be no grading in post.
| Unfortunately, this seems to increasingly be an under-valued
| skill.
|
| The requirements of modern VFX also contribute in an indirect
| way as well. It takes on-set time and energy for the camera
| teams to capture and check the increasingly complex list of
| clean plates, reflection map spheres and color/contrast
| references with specialized LUTs and metadata at a variety of
| apertures for every shot. This takes time away from
| traditional lighting and composition and ultimately producers
| don't budget enough time. When something has to give - it's
| not going to be the VFX plates. In modern effects-heavy
| productions, the VFX director always has a team on-set for
| every shot verifying they're getting what they need. While
| this is necessary and understandable, unfortunately, the
| reverse is rarely true. The cinematographer is not
| supervising the lighting and composition of all the major VFX
| elements because they are being produced by a dozen different
| vendors over a year-long post-production cycle. This can
| still work when you have a director like a James Cameron
| who's hands-on throughout the process and has top-notch VFX
| director and cinematography skills. But that's not the norm.
| This creates systemic incentives for directors,
| cinematographers and LDs to lens flat, unexpressive shots.
| Because if there's not consistent, hand-on creative direction
| over the whole process, the editor and colorist are left
| trying to stitch together a bunch of shots and elements that
| weren't created to exist cohesively in the same frame. I
| suspect not managing this complexity is how visual disasters
| like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania happen.
|
| Sadly, there's no reason it has to be this way. Technically,
| it's entirely possible to create a VFX-heavy movie that looks
| like every part of every frame was lensed by a master like
| Bernardo Bertolucci. There's nothing required that's even
| that hard or expensive compared to modern VFX blockbuster
| complexity or budgets. I think the reason we haven't seen it
| yet is two-fold: today's top producers, directors and
| cinematographers rarely have the new and diverse skill sets
| required in one person and none of the few with the skills
| and experience has had both the creative intention and budget
| to do it. I'm actually hopeful that maybe in the next few
| years someone like a Nolan or Cameron will decide to try to
| take it to this level as an aspiration. Currently, many of
| those with the budgets and cred are choosing to address the
| challenge by reverting to creating effects with practical
| sets and in-camera techniques. This can avoid the problem but
| it's looking backward instead of embracing the challenge and
| doing the pioneering work of figuring out how to push through
| and solve it. Whoever does it may discover all-new creative
| and expressive capabilities.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| There's definitely a cultural component to "modern taste".
| South Asian cultures have a preference for warm tones and many
| vibrant colors. East Asian cultures from developing and
| developed countries these days have lots of cool tones and
| monotone aesthetics. While I found the article a bit short on
| the "why", I do agree that the West has had a philosophical
| disdain for color from the Industrial era.
| jajko wrote:
| No thank you. I prefer rich colors, they consistently make
| world look a more lively place, the more the better. There is
| some getting used to of course, but it doesn't normalize at the
| same bottom that sea of grey/white/black is.
|
| I hate this with passion with cars - sea of grey in western
| Europe. Heck, both of our cars are grey - we always buy used
| ones and there was simply no other option that wasn't 10k more
| expensive for params we wanted and were willing to pay. It
| looks bland, boring, unimaginative. One of top reasons why buy
| new - one can actually choose something nicer.
|
| I've spent 6 months backpacking all over India and boy do they
| use crazy intense colors all over and everywhere including
| clothing - orange, purple, pink, very bright, both men and
| women. A very, very nice visual experience one doesn't get used
| to. Then coming back to western civilization where literally
| everybody dresses in black or dark grey during winter. Its just
| sad view, like winter with low amount of sunlight isn't
| depressing enough, no lets add some more monotonous colors.
| krtkush wrote:
| As an Indian living in a western European country - I very
| much prefer the gray/ neutral colors here. I always found the
| excessive and ugly use of color in India overwhelming.
| Though, I agree, a bit of more colors in winter wear would be
| nice.
| goatlover wrote:
| I'd rather movies and TV shows look more realistic than washed-
| out, unless there is a good stylistic reason for it.
| TeMPOraL wrote:
| Same.
|
| Sensory overload argument is particularly painful here,
| because it's essentially saying that the one thing you and me
| _want_ to look colorful - the entertainment _we choose_ - is
| doomed to be washed out because the stuff we don 't want to
| see - advertising - has to overdo stimulus to catch
| attention.
| amelius wrote:
| What does your desktop look like?
| pixelatedindex wrote:
| > Making it the main element in everything is just overdoing
| it. It's bad design.
|
| I disagree. The 60s through the 80s had a wide color palette
| with extremely good design. Early 1900s too. Heck even the
| Greek statues were extremely colorful.
| izacus wrote:
| Your conclusion is not supported by data, you basically made
| the periods thing up to confirm your own preference.
| taeric wrote:
| I mean... ish? There is something to be said for a minimal
| styling, but there is clearly an aesthetic change to things. As
| an easy example, wallpaper used to be far more common, and was
| often far more busy than the neutral colors people insist on in
| homes nowadays. Not just more colorful, but with designs on
| them.
|
| You can see the same with dishes. Clothes. Book covers.
|
| I can agree that I don't want everything to look like a riot,
| as it were. I do sometimes think a bit more color would be
| nice.
| drewcoo wrote:
| That misrepresents Technicolor. The 3-film process was adopted
| in the 1930s. It was the most popular, but not first,
| incarnation of Technicolor.
|
| Kodak also had Kodachrome by the 30s, despite nostalgia for
| Paul Simon's early solo work.
|
| The more common earlier color adoptions had to do with pigments
| in paint and especially fabrics. Bold red was so popular for
| shirts for men over a century that hand-me-down worn-out pinks
| were considered "boys colors."
|
| https://www.thevintagenews.com/2019/05/01/pink-blue/
|
| > It's bad design
|
| Says whom? Do you represent the design police? I was never
| there, don't know the person, and don't know what a person even
| is, so I'm not guilty, occifer! I'd like a lawyer present,
| please.
| fguerraz wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| base neutral colors sell well, exotic colors sell in small
| amounts => they die out due to small scale/being niche
| efavdb wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| efavdb wrote:
| awesome insight. i've heard this referred to as the "site
| merchandising" problem. There are some products that are
| there to attract people / give them a choice, but they don't
| sell themselves.
| baq wrote:
| I heard plasma tvs did exactly that for beard trimmers or
| whatever.
| limitedfrom wrote:
| Reminiscent of halo cars in the automotive industry. Fancy
| flagship vehicles produced to show off the brand and bring
| attention (to their other vehicles), but not necessarily to
| become profit makers themselves.
| c22 wrote:
| Yeah, my theory was that the yellow ones caught people's
| eye since it stood out from the visual clutter, but
| yellow isn't anyone's favorite color, so you end up
| buying blue or red...
| saratogacx wrote:
| As someone who's own{s|ed} 2 yellow cars (A Mercedes
| SLK230 and a Mustang MachE) This makes me sad. I've also
| owned 3 red cars and one blue one so my color choices
| aren't exactly in line with the sales data.
| mac-mc wrote:
| Taxis took over the color yellow unfortunately.
| syndeo wrote:
| I always loved the yellow Acura Integras too.
| philistine wrote:
| Or the Mac Pro.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I think it goes one layer further, everyone is worried that
| everyone else is worried that colors don't sell. "I like this
| used bright pink Honda, but I'm worried no one else will buy it
| if I want to sell so I'm not going to buy it"
|
| Like it's a perceptual disease where there's a difference
| between real preferences and perceived preferences and people
| are making decisions based on their wrong assumptions about
| everyone else, and when everyone is doing it it becomes true
| even though we're collectively all making less optimal choices.
| bluGill wrote:
| Cars are not buy it for life items. I generally buy a 3 year
| old car because it is about half the price of a new one - but
| I'm limited to what color I can find. If I bought new cars I
| could get whatever color - except that new car buyers won't
| be seen in a 4 year old car, and they can only afford to
| upgrade (to the extent they can) if the car has resale value
| so they care about what color they (the dealer) thinks will
| sell.
|
| When we bought our current house it was perfect except the
| colors were an awful neutral grey - I had a hard time
| convincing my wife despite the otherwise perfection, and only
| did because we spent several thousand dollars getting it
| repainted before we moved in. I'm sure the sellers realtor
| thought the neutral colors were a great idea, but they almost
| cost several thousand dollars (there was a bidding war when
| we bought the house, we almost didn't bid and so the sellers
| would have lost).
|
| The important point is if you like color make sure you pay
| for it, and reject things if they don't have the color you
| want.
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| > Cars are not buy it for life items.
|
| No, but they certainly can be "buy it for the life of the
| car". I prefer that myself. New cars are nice, but I'm not
| going to trade up to a new car every few years. I will buy
| new (or new-ish), and then drive it until it dies 15 years
| later. Much more cost effective.
| bluGill wrote:
| If you buy new and drive for live you are a minority and
| so manufacturers (and banks via loans) won't make that
| type of thing that sell you but don't have perceived
| resale. If you buy newish used and keep for life you are
| stuck with what they think you will buy.
| colechristensen wrote:
| I'm on my 16th year with my Jetta, bought new. For
| appearances I should probably buy a new car (it's
| totaled), but I'm pretty sure it will last another 16
| years and will only be replaced out of necessity (were I
| to have a family) or vanity (were I to have a midlife
| crisis). I've worked from home or commuted by bicycle
| most of the time I've owned it so I've averaged < 8,000
| miles per year.
| colechristensen wrote:
| >If I bought new cars I could get whatever color
|
| You can get a black one, a white one, a grey one, or then
| maybe two or three others that are most often in a
| red/green/blue/green which is really more of a flavored
| grey or black. Currently the Toyota Camry, really the only
| paint you can get where I'd (in a perhaps slightly silly
| restrictive way) would call "a color" is red. The other 11
| options are either greyscale or slightly tinted greyscale.
| graypegg wrote:
| 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/ ? 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 wrote:
| Colour is a form of bling and bling is tasteless.
| robinsonb5 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Translation: my subjective taste is high and those who differ
| are vulgar.
| WD-42 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's especially ironic because Apple did, at one time, push
| vividly coloured transparent-plastic designs.
| umeshunni wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| lurk2 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| zuInnp wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| gnatolf wrote:
| 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.
| intellectronica wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| When I learned about teal-orange LUTs I started seeing them
| everywhere.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Ditto.
|
| Maybe we should be more blissful, not sure what leads to
| bliss....
| joshvm wrote:
| 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.
| Karrot_Kream wrote:
| I enjoyed Midsommar's overuse of orange/teal because it
| really led to the feeling that the viewer was on a
| psychedelic trip (which usually comes with oversaturating
| of reds and orange.) Agree that Marvel is doing a lot of
| trend chasing in its color grading.
| Freak_NL wrote:
| > Kind of like the nausea-inducing, shaky "hand held camera"
| thing that was so predominate some decades ago. Good riddance
| to that.
|
| _Shudders_. A lot of shows were utterly unwatchable for me.
|
| (Now they're just unwatchable because of the
| mumbling/whispering and the colour palettes tweaked to the
| extent nothing has any contrast left.)
| cyberax wrote:
| > I am a huge fan of color and go out of my way to buy bright
| colored cars
|
| This. If you look at the cars, pretty much the only "stock"
| bright color is red. I used to drive a grass green car (vinyl
| wrap), and it stood out everywhere.
|
| I wish car makers offered more color options by default.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Almost all car makers offer bright colours by default. In my
| driveway is a bright blue Subaru (it was hard to pick between
| the blue and eye-searing orange) and a bright copper coloured
| Suzuki. Mazda is becoming famous for their innovative colour
| options. Google "Nissan Micra colours" to see what even
| Japan's most conservative carmaker offers to those who care
| to look.
| cyberax wrote:
| On selected models only :( E.g. Ford doesn't offer anything
| brighter than muted red on their Escape vehicles. They do
| have brightly-colored Mustangs, but nothing else.
|
| Even Mazda doesn't offer them for all their vehicles.
| mvdtnz wrote:
| Mate there are plenty of options if you want a nice
| coloured car.
| joshstrange wrote:
| > Not like I had any viable options for my MacBook Pro though
|
| Apple really drops the ball on colors in 99% of their products.
| You have the iMac and.... oh wait, that's it. There are no real
| colors on the pro phones and even the non-pro phones looks like
| something that got 1 of 10 coats of color. And then the MBPs
| have a handful of shades of gray, I would totally buy a green
| or blue MBP if there was one.
| ryandrake wrote:
| Another thing that might also play a role is this styling trend
| of vehicles looking "meaner" and more and more aggressive. This
| was discussed[1] a bit on HN a while ago. Bright colors don't
| really match the "My vehicle is going to punch you in the face"
| styling (for cars and especially trucks) that has become
| popular.
|
| 1: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=32425520
| wil421 wrote:
| I think the generations below boomers prefer non-chrome
| options. The blacks and dark accents add to the meaner look.
| sixothree wrote:
| Literally every vehicle seems to have that diagonal line
| incorporated somewhere. I mean the one generally near the
| windows that slopes downward as it moves towards the front of
| the car, regardless of the general shape of the car itself.
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Not sure which diagonal line you mean but I expect some
| creases are added for structural reasons, so the large
| areas of the metal are rigid, not floppy.
| AlotOfReading wrote:
| I assume you mean the line near the handles on this Corolla
| [1]? That whole part of the car is doing a lot of different
| things.
|
| 1. Flat vertical panels are a no-no. Adding creases
| increases buckling resistance.
|
| 2. That's a hugely important area for cabin noise because
| the side mirrors cause turbulence and the vehicle body
| needs a channel to constrain the turbulent flow and flex as
| little as possible near the door seals.
|
| 3. The skin needs to expand outwards from the line of the
| pillars to fit the window mechanisms, the handles/locks,
| and the side impact protection without intruding into the
| cabin space.
|
| 4. It makes the car look more sporty and interesting. The
| technical term for the crease itself is "character line",
| and it's the main reason why the Corolla has one. It's
| visual reinforcement for the modern standard combo of low
| hoods-high trunks that's considered attractive styling.
|
| 5. The greenhouse (cabin) narrows towards the top for
| rollover safety and aerodynamic reasons (a.k.a tumblehome),
| and this needs to blend with the rest of the body in a
| visually appealing way. The cybertruck is a good example of
| how unusual it can look if this is just a straight line on
| the body. Here's a comparison between the current design
| and an ai-generated "rounded" design [2] [3].
|
| [1] https://file.kelleybluebookimages.com/kbb/base/evox/CP/
| 44005...
|
| [2] https://www.motortrend.com/files/67a2770e2906d20008bad2
| 9f/1-...
|
| [3] https://static0.carbuzzimages.com/wordpress/wp-
| content/uploa...
| JKCalhoun wrote:
| Mercedes lead with "silver" cars decades ago such that the
| color itself meant luxury. Other car manufacturers (and car
| buyers) then followed.
| 9rx wrote:
| I'd say farm equipment has embraced the same "meaner" trend,
| but has also doubled down on bright, vibrant colours.
|
| Noticeably, though, the colours don't date the equipment. 20
| years ago the colours were the same, and 20 years from now it
| is very likely that the brand new ones will still feature the
| same colours still.
|
| That hasn't been the case for passenger vehicles. They are
| famous for having a colour available this year and gone the
| next, so if you have one of those no-longer-available colours
| it sticks out like a sore thumb as looking old. Which is what
| I believe the consumer truly fears - owning a car that looks
| old and dated.
|
| The blacks and whites have remained consistently available,
| so it is far less risky.
| keyringlight wrote:
| Something I found myself paying attention to as I was getting
| tired of cars and looking towards training for a motorcycle
| is what colors stand out, not just high-visibility clothes
| but the vehicle too because you want to be seen. Once you've
| tuned your eyes into looking it's shocking how many riders
| are pure black when they're more vulnerable on the roads.
| It's an interesting exercise when you're walking around a
| city onto a new street with cars parked up to see how quickly
| you can count how many there are, I found it can be difficult
| to separate out cars with how common black is now, and the
| less common brighter colors really stand out.
| UncleOxidant wrote:
| > Meanwhile you spend your entire time owning the car and
| driving around like a brooding storm cloud.
|
| Living in Oregon I don't want a car that blends in with the
| asphalt and clouds. I want a florescent lime green car that's
| easy to see. Those are hard to come by.
|
| Also, I recall traveling to Athens Greece back in 1999 and
| wondering why people were all wearing greys, charcoals, black?
| I posited that they were depressed or something. Recall that
| the 90s were still pretty colorful in regards to clothing here
| in the US. And then just a couple of years later people here
| were all starting to wear those greys, charcoals and black.
| imjustaghost wrote:
| https://dbrand.com/shop/devices/macbook-skins Here you go - now
| you can make your macbook look great and unique.
| RiverCrochet wrote:
| 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-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-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-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 wrote:
| > 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.
| troupo wrote:
| > 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.
|
| Because buying anything not in the standard
| white/black/corporate gray is easily an extra thousand euros on
| top of the car price. Red is still sometimes offered as
| standard color.
|
| Just checked. I drive a Mazda CX-30. In Sweden literally
| anything that is not white is 500 to 1000 euro extra:
| https://www.mazda.se/bygg-din-mazda/MAZDA%20CX-30/5WGN/# skip
| to Exteriorlack (exterior color).
| deadbabe wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Pair with this complementary piece by W. David Marx:
|
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| Do people associate the Greeks with the Spartans more than
| the Athenians though?
| roughly wrote:
| 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.
| watwut wrote:
| Kids are taught about them as about super serious no fun
| civilizations. Then I associate it woth fetishisation of
| military conquest and such.
|
| I would see God's as hedonistic but not greeks. Honestly, my
| bias is that they were very boring amd sort of artificial.
| int_19h wrote:
| With Romans, at least, the typical (and incorrect) popular
| narrative is that they were initially austere - and that
| period is when their civilization achieved its peak - and
| then _became_ decadent and ruin followed.
| WillAdams wrote:
| Interestingly, there was a specific printing technology for
| expanding the palette of colour printing, 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.
| megmogandog wrote:
| 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.
| ctrlp wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| It's the Seattlefication of the world.
| rlue wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| liampulles wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| There's a really interesting book about this exact topic:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "Hides dirt" is a disadvantage to many. Especially somewhere
| public.
| kridsdale3 wrote:
| We famously had "The Brown Era" in video game art direction for
| a while, maybe 2005-2010. Most people claimed they hated it.
| legitster wrote:
| 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.
| StefanBatory wrote:
| Brown and all its hues is very underappreciated color.
| mwkaufma wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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...
| mwkaufma wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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
| drivers99 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| bluGill wrote:
| As adults that is true, but in high school perceived peer
| pressure is important and so most kids act like their
| peers. (there are a number of different groups in most
| schools and they are not a like, but you pick yours and
| belong to it)
| bigstrat2003 wrote:
| It's true as a kid too, it's just that a lot of kids
| haven't learned the lesson yet. One of the most important
| lessons you can learn when you're young is to disregard
| peer pressure.
| watwut wrote:
| Or he thinks girls like it. That he looks more cool than
| other boys like that.
| hakaneskici wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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!
| empiricus wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| go outside!
| vvpan wrote:
| 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.
| tqi wrote:
| "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.
| seydor wrote:
| 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.
| layer8 wrote:
| The 2020 study this is based on:
| 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
| BloodyIron wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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.
| jmyeet wrote:
| 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
|
| [2]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/1278376/brass-lancashire
|
| [3]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/82323/titan
|
| [4]: https://boardgamegeek.com/image/4869350/titan
| alabastervlog wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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...
| kypro wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| I have a bright coloured car and it's easy to find in the car
| park!
| Animats wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| > 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.
| asciimov wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| "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 wrote:
| It's not entirely generational; as an Xennial I despise it with
| the fire of a thousand flaming suns.
| munificent wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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 wrote:
| 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).
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