What grinds my gears? - Color Names!

There are many aspects of being a graphic designer/artist that I must deal with every day. Consistently, however, it always seems like the simplest details become the things I dread so much. Today’s post I will talk about one aspect that really sets me off – The naming of colors!

When I was young, colors were simple. I was never one of the kids with the 64+ box of crayons. No, my color palette was usually limited to the 24, well named, and often unorganized box of colors. It’s pretty easy to name 24 colors; Brown, blue, green, yellow, etc… From those, you can get lighter and darker variations: Light brown, dark blue, yellow-green, and so on. I enjoyed these colors names because they told me exactly what color I was picking up. A “yellow-green” crayon would predictably give me a greenish color with the hint of yellow. A “Light Brown” would yield a tint of brown. Yes, when I was young, the world was my oyster and colors were simple.



Then I realized there were color names that didn’t make too much sense; yet were universally accepted, so I went with it. Such colors are Pink, Mauve, Turquoise, or Maroon. These didn’t fit my normal vocabulary because I had no idea was a “mauve” was, and had never seen a stone of turquoise. But I accepted them and allowed them into my crayon box. After all, these colors were accepted because everyone agreed that “pink” mean light red, or “maroon” meant dark redish-brown.

As I grew up, life became complicated. Everything about life can be complicated, even its colors.

When I finally got my hands on a big box of crayons, I eagerly looked at this plethora of hue options. “Wow,” I thought, “what are their names?” To my disbelief, I realized that the Crayola company seemed to have lost its mind – or at least its sense of reasoning. Rather than describing their colors in a thoughtful and scientific manner, the new colors were given descriptive names from objects that resembled their colors. So, instead of a “light yellow-green” we had “Lime.” Instead of “dark red with hint of blue” we had “Cherry.” Or instead of “Light blue” there was now “Robin’s egg.”

What’s disgusts me about this is not the clever and imaginative use of adjectives; it’s the widespread use of this practice into the industrial world. Pick up any fashion catalog and you are immediately bombarded with passionate adjectives that describe the emotion of their products, yet fail to deliver hard facts. “Deep Forest”, “Sunset”, “Midnight”, “Passion” are all words I’ve seen used to describe the color Blue! I find myself yelling at the magazine “Just say it’s Dark Blue! Don’t make me think!”

The worst color descriptions happen when being associated with foods. A client once instructed me to, “Make a shirt design using ‘chocolate brown.” Immediately, I responded to them, “Do you mean ‘Dark chocolate’, ‘milk chocolate’, ‘white chocolate’, or something in between?”

Chocolate is food, not a color! The same holds for Pistachio, Lime, Aqua, Bannana, and Avocado.

So here’s my advise and conclusion: If you’re going to be picky about colors, please be sure to use good, scientific, and thoughtful descriptive words. If necessary, find a picture of what you’re looking for. I can understand “Starbucks green” because there is only one green in their logo! I can understand, “Dark red with a hint of blue” because that’s being specific. What I can not understand is why people must waste my time describing a color that is ultimately left up to my subjective interpretation.


That’s all for my rant right now. Does anyone else agree or disagree?
Be good!
--Ben