FACTORALY - E54 COLOURS

Episode Date: September 5, 2024

Nothing is more ubiquitous than colour. It's everywhere. Hosted on Acast. See acast.com/privacy for more information.

Hello Simon! Hello Bruce, how are you on this fine day? I'm absolutely spiffing, thank you very much, how are you? I'm all right, thank you very much indeed, haven't heard you use spiffing before. It's like a challenge. What adjective can Bruce come up with on this episode? Well, quite. I'm feeling in the pink. Oh, great. Not in the black. No, not in the black.

So before we launch right into the mayhem, let's tell people what we're doing here. Who are we? Where are we? Why are we? Why are we? I think that one might be a little bit deep. I can't be bothered at this time of day. It's far too late at night for that. Yes, or is it far too early in the morning? It depends. You guess. So, by way of introduction, my name's Simon Wells.

My name's Bruce Fielding. And we are both professional voiceover artists. That we are. Which is why we sound like this. Or we can sound like this. Or we can sound like this. But no one wants an entire half hour podcast sounding like that. No, that would be too much, I think.

It would be way too much, wouldn't it? Yeah. So that's our jobs. What we're doing here, we are hosting a podcast called Factorily, which you already know because it's right there on your screens. How would you describe Factorily, Bruce? where we discuss something that's fairly obscure or fairly boring or fairly interesting and either make it shorter if it's a very big subject or longer if it's a very small subject. Yes. Today is a very big subject.

Very big. Hadn't quite realised how big it was going to be. Seems to be a recurring theme lately. Yeah, we're doing that a lot. We must try and find some subjects which are much smaller. Yes. Oh, to have a subject where we're actually scratching around and desperately trying to find interesting facts. So that's what we do. We are here to talk about interesting stuff for a bit.

Yes. And the topic that we are going to talk about this week is colours. Colours. I don't even know where to begin. Colours are everywhere. Colours are in everything. Well, sometimes they're not, are they? Oh.

Go on. So there's all the colours and none of the colours. Yes. Which are two of the key colours, sort of. Right. So all of the colours being bunged together, making white, and none of the colours at all making black. Yes.

Unless. So there are several caveats to this. I spent way too long getting quite sciency and looking at what are colours, are how are colors made primary colors secondary colors additive coloring and what's the difference between a primary color and a secondary color okay so it depends who you ask so a primary color is a in theory it's a color that exists on its own and is not made up of other colors a secondary colour is when you mix two or more primary colours together to make another colour. So we are all taught from a very early age that

there are three primary colours, red, yellow, blue. They are not made up of anything, they exist on their own. When you mix them together, they make other colours. You mix red and blue to make purple, you mix yellow and red to make orange, You mix blue and yellow to make green. Fairly standard. Not entirely accurate. There are more primary colors than that. Those are the most simple, most basic, most obvious ones. And some of the oldest recognized.

So there was a chap, you may have heard of him, called Isaac Newton. Did something with apples one day. Brings a bell. Yeah. oldest recognized so there was a chap you may have heard of him called isaac newton did did something with apples one day rings a rings a bell yeah he was a sciencey guy um and amongst various other things he did lots of experiments with light and he was the first chap well officially the first chap did he design the pink floyd album i thought you were going to make that reference that's fantastic bravo um he did some experiments with um light and prisms so he took a triangular glass prism don't know why i'm making that symbol to you on the screen here because people can't see that that's stupid isn't it i'm making a triangle sign with my hands um he took a prism he put some light through it he noticed that the the white light split out into

its constituent parts forming a spectrum or a rainbow which as you say is very similar to the front of a pink floyd album cover um and uh he he essentially he was the first one to officially list the the colors in a rainbow as i was going to say sing along with me, but the rainbow song is entirely inaccurate. Yes, it is. He listed those colours as being red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, violet. Richard of York gave battle in vain. Isn't that a great acronym?

I love that. So that is a colour system called RYB, red, yellow, blue. And those are the primary colors of that system there is also the rgb red green blue okay there is also the cmy cyan magenta yellow in those systems each of those colors are primary colors by virtue of the fact that they exist on their own and you mix them to make other things but you can mix the colours of the CMY model to make the colours of the RGB and the RYB. So yes red is a primary colour but you can mix two colours on the CMY to make it. So is it a primary or is it not? Okay, this is the bit I don't understand.

Same. So, we're watching like you could be looking on your phone or on a screen and your screen is made up of red, green and blue. Yes. Where's the yellow? It exists in the green minus the blue. So, if you mix red and green, you get yellow?

Right. Okay. Sit down. This might take me a while. Because it's an additive system, right? Yes. So there are additive colour systems and subtractive colour systems. Right.

The additive colour system is essentially in use of light so if you take colored rays of light and add them together yeah they make other colors because they're different way because you're adding wavelength to wavelength yes exactly yeah so each color has different wavelengths i think if i remember rightly on the rainbow on the spectrum red has the short shortest wavelength and violet has the longest wavelength you're shaking your head it's the other way around there we go whatever i just said flip it upside down um they are different wavelengths so that's additive coloring there's also subtractive coloring when you actually mix pigments like physical colors together um they absorb color

they subtract they cancel each other out. Yeah. So when you look at something that's yellow, it's not because it's yellow. It's because it absorbs all the colours that aren't yellow and reflects yellow back at you. Okay. So something that's yellow absorbs all the blue, violet, red.

Something that's blue absorbs all the yellow green red and only reflects back the blue if you put those Is your brain hurting yet? A little bit. If you put those two colours together what is left over that they haven't subtracted is green and that's what makes green. Please keep listening.

That's as far as I'm going to go on that. We'll drop a link onto the blog that gives you the website where I got all of that from if you want to do a deeper dive. Yes. I mean, you mentioned CMY. It's generally known as CMYK, isn't it? Because the K is the key, the black colour. Oh, is that right? I didn't get that.

Yes. So when you're printing, you use CMYK. And when you're using a screen or something, it's basically whether it's reflecting it at you or whether it's projecting it at you. That is far more succinct than what I said. Yes, that's good. And also, how you perceive the colour is entirely personal.

Because, I mean, for example, you know, we only have one X chromosome. Okay. Because we're not female. Sure. And X chromosomes are very, very good at spotting red. Oh, really? So if you're a woman with two X chromosomes, you're even better at spotting red than a bloke is.

Is that so? Yeah. So men and women see colour differently, which is very odd, because you will never see colour the same way that a woman sees colour. Now, that's interesting, isn't it? I've got a partially colourblind uncle-in-law, I think.

Anyway, trying to work out the logistics of that. And I've always wondered, who's to say that what I'm seeing as a color is correct? What if, you know, I look at the grass and I say that's green. You look at the grass and you say that that's green. What if the color we're seeing is not the same colour? We have no way of comparing that. Call it the same name. Yeah, exactly.

The grass on the other side of the fence is always greener. Unless it's actually blue and we don't know. No, it technically is. Because if you're looking down at grass, you're just seeing a patch of grass. Yes. Whereas if you're looking across over a fence at your neighbour's grass, you're seeing grass with the grass background. So actually it looks greener than the grass that you're looking at. So that adage is actually true. Yes. And it will always

be greener on the other side because you're looking at it from that angle. But when you get to the other side, it won't look as green as what's on the other side, which is where you started. So your grass will look greener when you get to the other side. it won't look as green as what's on the other side, which is where you started. So your grass will look greener when you get to the other side. That's fantastic. Oh, that's just, oh, sorry, everyone. This is going to be an absolute mind meld of an episode, isn't it? Sorry. Yes. Before oranges came to this country, we didn't have a colour called orange. We just used red.

And anything that was kind of a rusty, orangey colour, we just called red. That's why in this country we have red deer, robin redbreast, red squirrel. Redheads. Redheads. They're not actually red. They're more like orange. But we didn't have the word orange until oranges came over here. And then we all suddenly

went, oh, well, that colour that we've been calling red all this time is actually quite like that newfangled fruit, the orange. Let's adopt that word into our language. There you go. So I mentioned that not all the colours in the I Can Sing a Rainbow song are colours of the rainbow. No, they're not. That rainbow song is very inaccurate. I mean, the big one is pink. Sure.

Which is not in the rainbow. And in fact, there are people who argue that pink, because it doesn't have a corresponding wavelength of light, doesn't actually exist. Gasp. So what am I looking at when I see a pink rose? Well, exactly. Very pale red. Does the pink exist? Okay, let's assume that pink does exist

because otherwise there's going to be a lot of contentious discussion. But it's a very soothing colour. I mean, colours have their own emotional reaction on you. Yes. So, for example, pink is a very soothing color which is why and i never noticed this before not that i've been many of these places but mental institutions and prisons are often painted pink really yes it calms everybody down i see they do have sort of very specific um emotions attached to them it's's like black. Black is very powerful.

You know, you've got sort of like, that's why sort of judges' robes are black and, you know, sort of policemen's uniforms are black. There's a lot of power in black. But black is also at the same time the colour of despair, as per the Les Miserables song. Yes. And depression and anger.

You talk about being in a black mood, don't you? Yes, you do. The black dog of depression on your shoulder. Black's an odd colour. Yes, it is. It's quite difficult to replicate as well, isn't it? Going back to the RGB colour scheme, which is used majoritively on screens,

you know, TV and computer screens, because it's projecting light and using the additive system. You can't actually project black as a colour made of light. You have to project all the other colours and then take them away in order to leave what would be black. Yes. Which is why when you're watching something on TV and there's a scene with lots of black in it, it doesn't always look quite right. Well, it's also how they sell LED televisions, isn't it? So the blacks are really black. Yes, that's right. Yes. How black can the blacks be?

Well, black. Well, no, they can be very black. Right. So you can invent a colour. For example, there's a pigment called Vantablack. Okay. Which is copyright Anish Kapoor. Oh, really?

The artist, yeah. So only Anish Kapoor, who's copyrighted the colour of Vantablack. Okay. He's the only one who can use that colour in his art. Really? Wow. And it absorbs 99.96% of light. Oh, my goodness. I think I've seen that on a news programme.

You sort of look at it and everything just disappears. It feels like you're being sucked into a black hole. Yes, it does. There's no reflections on it at all. It's very strange. There are people who do copyright colours. Like, you know, if you see a UBS truck in that specific brown. Oh, yes, yes.

They've copyrighted deliveries in that specific brown, so only they can use that specific brown for delivery. Right, yes, OK. And things like, you know, if you're lucky enough to get a beautiful little blue box from Tiffany, the Tiffany blue is also a trademark colour. No other jeweller is allowed to use Tiffany blue. Oh, I see. I'm really glad you've gone down this line because so did I. I used to be a postman. I used to work for Royal Mail. And the particular shade of red that Royal Mail used is trademarked to them within their industry. So other things can be that shade of red, just not within the delivery industry.

And there are quite a lot of London-y things that are very precisely that shade of red. So London buses, post boxes, obviously Royal Mail, telephone boxes, the red in the Union flag, the red on the uniform of the Royal Guards. They're all that same shade of red, which is apparently Pantone 485C. Okay. It's catchy, isn't it? Which led me to look at Pantone. Yes.

I have a vague experience of this, which is to say I don't really paint my house very often. But when I have, I've taken great delight in walking into a diy store and looking at all these little cards and pots of paint telling you what color they all are they all have silly names your midnight blue and jasmine yellow and overjoyed red or whatever you know stupid things like that but they all have a code they all have this pantone code yes um pantone was a company that was set up in 1963 and they took it upon themselves to

sort of make a unified definition of colour so that obviously from your days in printing all the way through to fabric colouring, all the way through to any sort of design, anywhere where two people need to know exactly that they're working to the same colour scheme. Yes. Pantone have a numerical code for all of these different colours and shades and so on. I mean, they have about 10,000 colours. They're quite a few. In the Pantone matching system or PMS. PMS.

A little unfortunate if you're American. Exactly. You talked about paint colours. My favourite is Farrow and Ball. Oh, yes. And Farrow and Ball have some very strange colours go on name a few

you've got to guess what sort of colour this is Mole's Breath Mole as in digging under the ground Charcoal Grey it's a lighter grey still in the grey region, I'm taking that as a win Mouse's Back light brown sort of mid brown Nancy's Blushes in the grey region. I'm taking that as a win. Okay. Mouse's back. Light brown.

Sort of mid-brown. Okay. Nancy's blushes. Some kind of red? Yes, it's sort of like a pink. Wine dark. Wine dark, not dark wine. I suppose a deep red burgundy kind of colour. No, it's sort of a grey.

Is it? Yeah. How odd. Whirlybird. I wouldn't even like to hazard a guess. It's sort of a mid-green. Is it? Yeah. Okay. Who comes up with this?

I don't know. And they've got so many whites, you know, white tie, Wimborne white, just loads. I'll put a link to the Farrow and Ball colour cards in the show notes as well. It is very, very silly. These days, companies are told that they need to have their own corporate colour, something that identifies them. So Royal Mail have that red. FedEx have that brown.

Cadbury have that particular shade of purple. And then I had a look at our own website, factorally.com. Oh, right, yes. Well, we chose it, didn't we? Yes. We chose it. So historically, I really like the color blue, and I've used it on my branding for my voiceover website and business cards and so on.

So we have blue on the Factorally website. Yes. For you, there's orange. Which I assume is an important color to you somewhere along the line. I just like orange. You don't see... It's mostly car colours. Oh, yes, OK.

Surprise, surprise. Race cars I've had painted in a code which is G923RAL3024 from the Morelli Group. And you will not know what that is, but you will recognise it from dino rod vans. It's a very, very bright fluorescent orangey red. Yes, I know the one. Yes. Fascinating. So the wonderful gentleman who created our website, Martin Jackson.

Hello, Martin. He took our love of blue and orange and he picked these colours to put on our website. And I actually looked up the codes for these colours because I'm like that. He's chosen two colours called vivid orange and vivid blue oh now we talked about um pantone codes there are also other codes if you go on to any sort of photo editing software and you use that little eye dropper emblem to pick a color off the screen it will give you a hexadecimal code uh which you know much like the pantone it's just a useful code you type in this hexadecimal code, which, much like the Pantone, it's just a useful code. You type in this hexadecimal with only one digit out.

It'll be an ever so slightly different color. Your shade of vivid orange is hexadecimal FF9000. My shade of vivid blue is hexadecimal 3E9BE9. Isn't that useful information, Bruce? Can't we all just walk away from here being happy? Sorry, I just woke up. Sorry. People can see lots of colours.

People can see about 10 million colours. Can they really? Yeah. Gosh. Because the way that colour works in your eyes is you sort of pick up with rods and cones and things. And I know that animals, a lot of animals can't see red. Okay.

So they're missing one of the colours in their cones. This has always confused me because the old thing about a red rag to a bull, if bulls can't see red, what are they seeing? Movement. Just movement without colour. Yes. And hearing somebody shout ole in a very Spanish accent. That's going to help.

I read something similar to that in terms of black and white and colour photography. This is totally working from memory now, but something along the lines of the human brain processes colour before it processes shape. So if you see an object, you will notice that that is, I don't know, looking around me, blue mug. I will notice the fact that it's blue a fraction of a second before I notice that it's a mug. Yes. And this is why black and white photography has a particular effect on you.

It feels more dramatic. It feels like you can focus on the detail of it a little bit better because you're not being distracted by the color you're just seeing the shape and the form and the content without your brain being overloaded by this bit's red that bit's blue that bit's yellow okay you talked about um blue being your favorite color i did you know that of course that blue was a very lower class color right up until the 13th century. It was kind of like the colour of woad and people who were very lower class and barbarian generally wore blue.

Until they started painting the Virgin Mary in a blue shawl and a blue dress and a blue coat. That'll do it. And then blue became very popular and very, very smart. Right. Not as smart as purple. No, purple is quite different, isn't it? I mean, before they invented synthetic dyes, they had to make dyes from natural things. And purple dye was made by crushing snails.

Okay. And you had to crush about 20,000 snails to make one ounce of purple dye was made by crushing snails. Okay. And you had to crush about 20,000 snails to make one ounce of purple dye. Oh, my goodness. Which is why it was only really used by sort of very, very senior people in government or aristocracy or whatever. And in fact, it was so rare

that if you were seen wearing purple, it was punishable by death if you weren't actually entitled to it. Because you were using up all the royalties quota of purple. I took a quick gander sort of somewhere between dye for clothing and pigments for paint.

And you look at various artworks from different areas of the world at different times. They come along with different colour themes depending on what was available at that time. So you go through entire eras where blue is everything because that pigment was suddenly available from a different part of the world and could be easily transported into Europe. Before then, blue couldn't really be found very easily. Right. Except in ancient Egypt. Okay.

Oh, lazuli. Very good. Yeah. So in ancient Greece and Egypt, they used a reasonable amount of blue pigment, which was made from a mixture of sand, lime, and copper ore, mixed together and heated. And it made this kind of greeny-bluey pigment. They made red by, quite dangerous, mixing mercury and sulfur and roasting them together.

And apparently that produces a red pigment. Did Egyptians have sort of like face masks? What, like Venetian face masks or like face masks as in skin health care? No, no, sort of face masks that would stop you from inhaling boiling mercury. I don't know. That could make you go quite mad. That could make you, yeah, mad as a hatter that could make you. Yes. See our episode on hats. And then, you know, century after century, new methods of making colour were discovered. New minerals were brought in from around Europe.

Around the 1500s, these little insects were discovered in Mexico that solely live on cacti. These are called cochineal. Cochineal. Cochineal. Yes. And if you crush those up, they make a really bright crimson. So all of a sudden uh european artists started using this this bright red color so paintings sort of changed

their color scheme throughout the years depending on what was available at the time right it seems to me we've sort of crushed up lots of animals to make colors yes you always used to use natural stuff um i think at one point they favoredoured using, you know, you could get sort of different colours of earth from different places. You could use wood bark, you could use spices, you could use plants and flowers and all these sorts of things just crushed up to make colour. They were a little bit loath to use animal products because it goes off and it goes smelly and it fades quickly. But yes, you could use that as well. Red is one of those strange colours that makes you hungry.

Okay. Especially when combined with yellow. Right. So if you think of lots of things, for example, McDonald's. Yes. Red and yellow. Oh, yeah. There are so many, when you look around, there are so many sort of food products.

Yeah. Heinz uses red. Oh, sure. Coca-Cola uses red. Yes. There's a lot of foodstuffs and drinks that use red. And it's proven to actually make you, now I don't know whether it makes you hungry because you associate those colours with the products. Right. Or the other way around. those colours with the products. Right.

Or the other way around. Which came first, yes. Yes. Oh, brilliant. Yeah, now I'm suddenly trying to picture McDonald's in blue and green. That doesn't make me want to eat a McDonald's. No, not at all. How interesting.

You said earlier on that colours invoke different moods. I wonder whether that is different from culture to culture. So we all think of green representing envy, red representing anger. Yes. I'm sure there are some countries and some cultures where that isn't the case. I'm sure there are some cultures that would say that red is soothing and green is the colour of nature. Yeah. Or when you go to the Far East, when white is the colour of death. Is it really?

So you really don't want to get married in a white wedding dress in the Far East. Well, we'd be in shtook. We're both wearing white shirts right now. But, you know, if you give somebody lilies in the Far East, it signifies death. I mean, you would give it at funerals. Oh, I see. Yes. And then red is a lucky colour in China. It is, yeah. Yeah.

So there are all sorts of connotations to wearing colours in other countries. How interesting. All right, I've got a question for you. Oh, go on. Black rhinos and white rhinos. Sure. What colour are they? Grey.

Correct. Hooray! What do I get? Okay, and night, is that black? I mean, so the night sky is black, except it isn't, because in a lot of paintings it's sort of a dark purple colour. Okay. So I don't know. Technically, it's the colour that the Germans call Eigengrau.

Right. Which is a grey. It's a very dark grey. Is it? But now, Eigengrau is now a technical term for the colour of dark. Really? Yeah. Huh. Well, I mean mean one of the

blackest things obviously is is space yes except it isn't oh technically space is actually a bit beige is it yes says who there was some research done okay so if we add up all the light coming from galaxies and the stars and the clouds of gas and dust, you end up with a colour that's close to white, but actually a little bit beige. Really? If you average out over the whole sky, this beige colour is diluted and becomes almost, but not quite, black. Brilliant. Hence the German Eigengar.

That's fantastic. Snooker balls. Yeah, sure. So, you play snooker balls yeah sure so you play snooker i do i do play snooker actually so okay what's the order uh if we're going for uh one person trying to clear the table on their own in order yes uh you go for a red ball then any color you like but usually black because it's the highest score right once you've cleared all the reds you go through the colors and those colors go in the Red Bull, then any colour you like, but usually black because it's the highest score. Right. Once you've cleared all the reds, you go through the colours, and those colours go in the order of yellow, green, brown, blue, pink, black. Yes. I remember watching television before there was, I mean,

colour TV was actually invented in 1954 by RCA. Oh, how long ago was that? Quite a long time ago. It was very crude. But before colour TV really started to come in, I remember watching Snooker. And the commentator said, for those of you watching in black and white,

the blue is just behind the pink. Brilliant. What a useless comment to make. So, Simon, so simon i i can't believe that there are actually any guinness records about colors oh crikey bruce you you would be um very wrong about that there are way too many records about colors really that is to say there are lots of records that involve colors okay um i mean there are records about what is the blackest shade of black and the whitest shade of white, and what is the brightest red, and all that sort

of stuff. But that's all a little bit boring for my liking. So I found a couple of colour-related Guinness World Records. Right. One of them, you talked about how sensitive humans versus animals are to seeing colours.

It turns out the creature that has the widest range of ability to see the most number of colours is called the stomatopod crustacean. Of course it is. Of course it is, which I rather like, because it contains the word tomato in the middle, just for fun. Is it a crab? Well, it's a group of creatures that includes mantis shrimps and various other things. And they have the greatest extent of colour. So most mammals contain two types of colour photoreceptor in the eye.

Humans and other primates have three. Most birds and reptiles have four. These stomatopod crustaceans have eight different photo receptors in their eyes and they can just see colors that we can't even imagine so this is in the infrared and ultraviolet spectrum and and beyond there are there are colors that haven't even been discovered that can't quite be named or described they just see them all they can see colors existing within the electromagnetic spectrum, let alone the visible colour spectrum.

Can you imagine if we could do that? Oh, you'd be on a trip the whole time, wouldn't you? Another colour-related world record, the national flag with the highest number of colours in it. Oh, gosh. Can you take a punt? It's going to be either something African. Right.

Or something Asian. Okay, good. So, of the two. Of the two, which one do you want to go for? I'm going Asian. Oh, so close. Oh, no. It was the other one.

So, the flag of South Africa. Oh, right. Contains six colours, which doesn't sound like a lot. But, you know, when most other countries have two or three, that's quite a few. Yeah. And the South African flag is the combination of red, white and blue taken from the Boer Republics. Yeah.

And the yellow, black and green, which are taken from the African National Congress. And those are splatted together on one flag so they have six colours. And the last one I've found, again, it's related to colour, it's not about colour. Okay. The highest number of contributors

to a paint-by-number painting. So if anyone's unfamiliar with it, paint-by-number is this system where you get a black and white picture each little part of it has a number in it that number relates to a color you pick up that color and you paint that section um in abu dhabi in 2021 ferrari decided to have a mass paint by color day right they created a they created a picture of um of a day at ferrari world which i didn't even know was a thing oh yeah i've got mugs have you got ferrari world mugs yeah great well in 2021 ferrari made a paint by number painting of ferrari world and over the course of

of 24 days 4 826 individuals came along and painted just a little blob on this picture. Wow. So they hold that record. Not really about colour, but it was fun. So I thought I'd throw it in. Thank you very much. And it's about cars. Hey, there you go.

Ticks all the boxes, doesn't it? I've kind of, my palette is now dry. Yes, my colours have faded. We've done all white. And we'll be black next week. Marvellous. Well, thank you all for coming along and listening to us chat about colours

for the last half hour or so. Yes, thank you very much. We have some requests for you you we do um stay healthy yes always please don't forget to brush your teeth those those kind of requests kind of more kind of like the the ones that podcasters ask you to do oh those ones sure yeah yeah yeah what are they well they they consist of the following please like this, assuming you have done so. If you hated it, then don't bother. And give us a five-star review. That goes without saying.

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