Blue is the young(est?) colour - and very NES:y.
Posted: Wed Jun 07, 2017 12:23 pm
I was at first not quite sure whether this should go in general or NES graphics, but since it ended up as 97% general talk about colours, 3% NES...
Apparently, blue is a very young colour, from a historical perspective. Our eyes can see them, but the word for blue haven't been around for too long, and as such, that particular band of frequency has been categorized and percieved as everything else but what we call blue today. Homeros described the sea as wine-dark, there's descriptions of the sky as white before modern culture dubbed it blue, and so on. Ancient Egypt had a definition for blue like we have today (they imported lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and later invented a blue pigment from grinding, mixing and heating four ingredients). Generally, the first distinction seems to be light/dark, then the colour red, then either yellow or green, depending on the studied culture.
Here's a few articles on the matter, for those interested in reading a bit more about the development of the historical discourse and perception of colours. Science alert, Daily Mail, Clarkesworld. Getting your head around how sheep and steel can be described as violet is entertaining.
So after i recognized this, i started thinking about how blue has become very popular in modern times. It is said to be 'calm' compared to other hues (might be so, and i have a reason to believe it, see below). The first reason is pretty straight-forward: Blue is hard to make without synthetics (though there are a few methods). Very few things in nature (as stated in those articles) are pure blue. As a long-time grower of hardy perennials (part time work in a family business), i can say from experience that very few botanical flowers we haven't tampered with are pure blue (often, they're originally purple and then we've cultivated them to become blue at some relatively recent point in time).
A lot of things in the city and on the web are blue. Non-urgent traffic and street signs (though in some countries the same sort of signs are green), a lot of decor, logotypes, especially ones expressing neutrality. Facebook is blue. Wordpress is blue. Daily Mail is blue. Blue has become a common colour in expressions of authority and offical or business matters. And so on.
I suspect that since the definition of blue is so young, we percieve it as neutral (or calming), it's relatively lightly loaded with cultural significance compared to other colours. Even though colours signify different moods and properties in different cultures, i think it is fair to say they've done so for a longer period and are therefore perhaps more saturated with connotations.
If so, the definition of a new colour (really just the cognitive digitalization of an analog spectrum), especially one as wide as 'blue' would perhaps create a discursive void that needs to be filled with new context, from the mark in time when we were able to reproduce the colour ourselves with sudden ease compared to when just using woad or indigo, or before that. Not in a flash, probably, but by procedure of increasing usage, as we fill in with the current needs of symbolic expression. Early strands of connotations seem to have more or less left the room in european cultures. Roman sources describe blue as the colour of mourning, barbarians, and the proletariat.
This could also perhaps explain on a personal level why i somehow feel/percieve that blue is more somehow connected to and working well with the gray scale, even though, technically, it isn't, and even though i see pure blue just as saturated as any other pure colour.
Edit: The NES part if tl;dr
So, after all that free-form reverie on the colour blue, i thought about how blue (and green) is over-represented in the full palette of the NES. This probably has some technical explanation (i tried to google it using various search queries, but found little of use). But is there an aesthetic design decision involved aswell? Especially as the distinction of blue and green is not wholly the same in Japan, according to sources linked above.
Another thing: The young vs old perspective plays out pretty nice in support for the percieved distance between red vs blue (in games, sports, and politics).
Ps, blue is not my favourite colour. Jade or mint green is.
Apparently, blue is a very young colour, from a historical perspective. Our eyes can see them, but the word for blue haven't been around for too long, and as such, that particular band of frequency has been categorized and percieved as everything else but what we call blue today. Homeros described the sea as wine-dark, there's descriptions of the sky as white before modern culture dubbed it blue, and so on. Ancient Egypt had a definition for blue like we have today (they imported lapis lazuli from Afghanistan and later invented a blue pigment from grinding, mixing and heating four ingredients). Generally, the first distinction seems to be light/dark, then the colour red, then either yellow or green, depending on the studied culture.
Here's a few articles on the matter, for those interested in reading a bit more about the development of the historical discourse and perception of colours. Science alert, Daily Mail, Clarkesworld. Getting your head around how sheep and steel can be described as violet is entertaining.
So after i recognized this, i started thinking about how blue has become very popular in modern times. It is said to be 'calm' compared to other hues (might be so, and i have a reason to believe it, see below). The first reason is pretty straight-forward: Blue is hard to make without synthetics (though there are a few methods). Very few things in nature (as stated in those articles) are pure blue. As a long-time grower of hardy perennials (part time work in a family business), i can say from experience that very few botanical flowers we haven't tampered with are pure blue (often, they're originally purple and then we've cultivated them to become blue at some relatively recent point in time).
A lot of things in the city and on the web are blue. Non-urgent traffic and street signs (though in some countries the same sort of signs are green), a lot of decor, logotypes, especially ones expressing neutrality. Facebook is blue. Wordpress is blue. Daily Mail is blue. Blue has become a common colour in expressions of authority and offical or business matters. And so on.
I suspect that since the definition of blue is so young, we percieve it as neutral (or calming), it's relatively lightly loaded with cultural significance compared to other colours. Even though colours signify different moods and properties in different cultures, i think it is fair to say they've done so for a longer period and are therefore perhaps more saturated with connotations.
If so, the definition of a new colour (really just the cognitive digitalization of an analog spectrum), especially one as wide as 'blue' would perhaps create a discursive void that needs to be filled with new context, from the mark in time when we were able to reproduce the colour ourselves with sudden ease compared to when just using woad or indigo, or before that. Not in a flash, probably, but by procedure of increasing usage, as we fill in with the current needs of symbolic expression. Early strands of connotations seem to have more or less left the room in european cultures. Roman sources describe blue as the colour of mourning, barbarians, and the proletariat.
This could also perhaps explain on a personal level why i somehow feel/percieve that blue is more somehow connected to and working well with the gray scale, even though, technically, it isn't, and even though i see pure blue just as saturated as any other pure colour.
Edit: The NES part if tl;dr
So, after all that free-form reverie on the colour blue, i thought about how blue (and green) is over-represented in the full palette of the NES. This probably has some technical explanation (i tried to google it using various search queries, but found little of use). But is there an aesthetic design decision involved aswell? Especially as the distinction of blue and green is not wholly the same in Japan, according to sources linked above.
Another thing: The young vs old perspective plays out pretty nice in support for the percieved distance between red vs blue (in games, sports, and politics).
Ps, blue is not my favourite colour. Jade or mint green is.