Visual Language: 3rd November

Taken from Ambrose & Harris 'Colour': Every colour corresponds to a unique light wavelength, but a list of different wavelength values does not provide a particularly useful description of a colour.

In todays visual language session we where dealing with a new subject area: colour. In the weeks previous we where told to collect items of a certain colour, I was assigned purple. In this session everybody that collected purple items where put together and told to arrange our items in a certain way. We decided using the colour wheel as reference and go from Secondary Blue, to Tertiary Red Purple, then to Primary Magenta and onto Tertiary Red Orange. This proved quite difficult as there were different shades of the different hues and therefore some items may have appeared out of place but we fulfilled the task to the best of our ability.

After arranging all the objects in this order we where then told to pick out the ten objects that best emphasise the variety of different purples we had. We picked: a toy car, a bracelet, a glove, a perfume bottle, a phone, a stapler, a flower, a plastic bag, a cadburys container and post-its. We where then given Pantone swatches and had to find the exact colour from the swatches corresponding to the items. At first we where overwhelmed by the variety of purples and thought we would never find the correct colour, but with a little perseverence we completed the task. To the left are all ten post-its with the pantone information on each one.

Below are five examples of the ten different Pantone colours we found.