Visual Dictionary of Colour

A paper detailing the meaning and significance of art and its varying forms on the world and its inhabitants.

International journal of humanities and social science, 2015

For the normally sighted person, colour is everywhere. In the interior of a dwelling are natural and stained woods, wallpapers, upholstery fabrics, pottery, paintings, plants and flowers, a colour television set, and many more things seen as colored. Outdoors, and depending on the time of the year, there is a riot of colours such as those on an alpine summer meadow, or they are spare in a desert, with olives, browns, garnets, and grays. Colours can be pleasantly subdued, enhancing relaxation, or loud and calling to us from advertising billboards or magazines. Colour entices us to eat, consume or at least to buy. Colour likely has helped us to survive as a species. Our (Known) contacts with the world and the universe are by way of our five senses. Persons with a normally functioning visual system obtain what is probably the largest amount of information about the world surrounding them from vision, and colour experiences are an important outcome of this flow of information.

2013

Colour is one of the most important visual variables that determines our perception and comprehension of the world. Colour is unfortunately often neglected at any design education level and area, although it represents the only design variable able to visually translate many other aspects related to function, technology, ergonomics, perception, semiotics, norms, socio-culture, marketing, and aesthetics. Today’s colour knowledge is considerably influenced by a communication problem among different disciplines and types of expertise with different viewpoints, tools and methods, terminologies, and cultures. The previous PhD research “Colour Design Edu.System. For a systematic and creative approach for an interdisciplinary colour education in design”, and the ongoing work at the School of Design of Leeds University will allow to investigate and propose a toolkit and method able to support students, and teachers too, in the construction of a personal colour knowledge oriented to the cont...

Journal of the Royal Anthropological Institute, 2000

This article revisits the classic paradigm of Berlin and Kay (1969). First, four substantial revisions indicating the current position and appeal to evolution are outlined. Second, the work is placed in its historical context of scholarly thought. Third, the attempt to operationalize the Whorfian hypothesis is shown to establish a frame against which Berlin and Kay reacted, and an experimental practice they appropriated. Their programme is disclosed as a structure in which results are self-evident, when in fact they are deduced from prior commitments. Berlin and Kay's new alliance with colour science is then examined by showing how experiments cancel the life-world, how a notion of 'unmediated presence' is methodologically exploited, how research techniques are effaced and data are 'cleaned'. Finally, it is suggested that the thesis is built on layers of mistakes which produce misrepresentations both of colour science and of intercultural relations. Berlin and Kay's (1969) theory of the universality and evolutionary emergence of Basic Color Terms (BCTs) has withstood the test of time and may be regarded as 'classic' (Gadamer 1989). Four substantial theoretical revisions (Kay 1975; Kay & McDaniel 1978; Kay & Kempton 1984; Kay, Berlin & Merrifield 1991) have strengthened the programme and moved it out of anthropological linguistics into colour science, and a prestigious conference held in California in 1992 provides the stamp of approval by one cohort of colour scientists (Hardin & Maffi 1997). 1 Sociobiologists, evolutionary psychologists and ecological cognitive scientists also regard it as a pre-eminent case study (Lumsden & Wilson 1981; Shepard 1992; Thompson 1995). With the imminent publication of new data from the World Color Survey (hereinafter: WCS) (Kay et al. 1997), it seems appropriate to review and assess this programme. My intention is threefold: (i) to restore a historiographic dimension to the account of Basic Color Terms; (ii) to examine its co-optation of colour science; (iii) to identify errors in it and suggest a new perspective. Before doing so however, I will briefly recapitulate Berlin and Kay's (1969) programme, present an outline of its four revisions, indicate its current position, and bring out its appeal to 'bio-cultural evolution' (now referred to as 'development').

2012

This collection of texts about colour resulted from a request to colleagues known to be interested in colour and contemporary art, for ‘position papers’ to act as a starting point for a series of symposia. We were interested in whether the writings of the contributors who made their interest in colour manifest either through their own artistic practice, or through a close attention to the work of artists as a starting point for their interest, might differ from the words crafted by those looking at colour in contemporary art from the perspective of the critic or theorist. We wanted to see what ‘colour thinking’ might be in an aesthetic period where the insights of artists do not figure prominently in attempts to understand something of the substance and nature of colour. But most importantly, we wanted to examine how making art and thinking about art, with a particular focus on colour, can add to understanding of both the natural and man-made environment. The intention is for the pu...

This paper reflects on novel learning experiences Kelly has undertaken with particular reference to colour. To do this, she describes two examples of learning activities that follow from short visual lectures that unfold the history of mixing pigments and light. In doing so, she addresses the relevance of colour theory to painting specifically, as well as its interdisciplinary potential. Kelly traces the mythic narratives of the original pigments and shows how pigments and resulting paintings have transformed in response to innovation.

Finiture Green, 2025

Whether designing an interior, product, or brand identity, architecture and design professionals consistently rely on colour to establish connections with users and convey specific messages. However, translating abstract ideas into colour selection can be challenging, particularly when working with complex or sophisticated meanings that lack physical or concrete visual references. So, how can we make informed colour choices beyond subjective intuition or traditional associations? To address this, the Colour Meaning Matrix (CMM) was developed. This tool assists creatives in selecting colours with precision and purpose, offering guidelines and suggestions to align ideas with all three colour attributes - hue, lightness, and saturation - and enabling designers to choose colours that effectively communicate the desired emotional and contextual meanings.

Journal of Psychology Research

the pedagogical research in the teaching of color theory, the author has carried out a series of interviews with visual artists in different areas. Some of these visual artists currently involve in the art education as well. Therefore, the sharing of their experience in their learning, practice, and teaching of color theory will serve as good qualitative data for the development of a robust color theory training approach to benefit our current tertiary visual art students. The background of these visual artists covers art educators, architects, fine artists (painters), a comic artist/an illustrator, a visual communication artist, a product designer, and a film-maker while a few of them have profession in more than one areas stated above.