Colour is such an interesting thing. At Cubic Promote we tend to work with the Pantone Colour system, but despite the amazing number of colours there, it’s actually kind of dull looking at a pantone colour chart. Or indeed any kind of digital colour chart. There are no real names for most of the colours. Of course, it’d be hard to name even half of them considering there’s 1000s of shades, but it’s kind of depressing when looking through a chart of colour and just seeing CMYK 45 26 72 97, or RGB 22/51/8, or PMS 317C.

It’s nothing like looking through a paint guide, which has such incredibly inventive names for colours. I remember once a friend of mine who works as a tradesperson. He was complaining about a customer and their absolutely meticulous need for a particular shade of paint which was called whispering wind of all things. A wonderfully poetic name for what was a shade of beige. Still, regardless of how incredibly inventive the process of naming new colours are, it almost pales in comparison to the process of creating new colours, as this interesting, and rather amusing infographic created by Philadelphia based artist Korwin Briggs displays.

A Brief History of Colours

Colours were serious business throughout history.  I imagine part of that was due to how hard it was to create most of the shades we take for granted today. Creating a new shade of colour for use as paint or dye would have sparked new crazes as it probably wasn’t the easiest thing to replicate. The most exotic, esoteric, and borderline insane items would have been used to create new colours. Ultramarine made from crushed gemstones? Mummy brown, which was made from real crushed up Egyptian Mummies? Carmine, that came from boiling thousands of beetles to get that shade of red? Colours such as the exclusive Tyrian Purple that were available only to a privileged few and forbidden to the rest? Not to mention all the colours that were made from dangerous, toxic, and downright lethal materials such as arsenic and lead.

Thankfully we don’t have to rely on crushed beetles or toxic chemicals to create new colours these days. Although it’d seem that people are still as mad about colours as they have been throughout the centuries.

Originally seen on: http://www.veritablehokum.com/comic/mummy-brown-and-other-historical-colors/