Color is a vital aspect of the Cal Poly Pomona visual vocabulary. It connotes power, evokes emotion and establishes overall brand uniformity. The Cal Poly Pomona color palette consists of a primary color and secondary or accent colors.
Color is a vital aspect of the Cal Poly Pomona visual vocabulary. It connotes power, evokes emotion and establishes overall brand uniformity. The Cal Poly Pomona color palette consists of a primary color and secondary or accent colors.
Palette
Ratio of Use
Primary Blue, Green and Gold/Yellow are meant to be used more than any other colors in the palette. The secondary colors are meant to act as complements to the main color palette.
Color Equivalents
CPP family of colors should be used consistently in all communications. The visual appearance of these colors may vary slightly when used in different media, materials and surfaces, however an effort should be made to color match as closely as possible through a proofing process. We have provided basic color formulas as a guide. Please choose the color formula that best suit the media. When printing, please match to PANTONE® colors, match to (C) swatches.
HalGlicksman
White is Green
Background
The original impetus for my researchwas to make the RGB and CMYK systems of color understandable and usefulto art students. I created a color wheel of the RGB system on thecomputer and on paper with Windsor-Newton cyan, magenta and yellow inks.I created gradations of cyan, magenta and yellow ink mixtures in tinyflasks counting the drops with chemist’s pipettes in geometricprogressions. I made the cyan, magenta and yellow inks into solidwatercolor blocks with gum arabic and gave them to artists and studentsto try. Even though I could demonstrate that RGB/CMYK color could createmore colors than the red, yellow and blue (RYB) artist’s color wheel,artists were uncomfortable with these colors without being able to tellme why. Students were unable to complete satisfactory complimentary andtriad color exercises with either the inks or the watercolor blocks.They also could not produce satisfactory compliments and triads in RGBon the computer.
I reread books of art instruction looking for theprecise place in the text that physics and art diverge. This is atypical example from Craig Denton’s1 otherwise excellent essay on colortheory:
Color circles or color triangles are graphic vehicles usedto organize colors. We will be using the artist’s color circle, whichrelates to pigments because graphic designers generally follow itstraditions and rules. There is another color wheel, composed of lightprimaries and their subtractive color complements, which we will discusslater. But, subtractive colors are obscurely named and physicallytransparent, designed to be overlayed in printing, and wind up lookingunpleasantly acidic by themselves. A subtractive color circle isn’taesthetically pleasing so it doesn’t help you understand how to bestcompose colors.
Luigina De Grandis, in Theory and Useof Color, summarizes the frustration of reconciling artist andscientific color. She defines magenta as “a red tending toward purple”and then says: “…the artist, not bound to the industrial primaries,may continue to use the reds, yellows, and blues of his or her choice.”2
Johannes Itten’s statement 3 is important because his work isconsidered authoritative by artists, and because he studied and wroteabout Ostwald in an attempt to reconcile art and science:
One essential foundation of any aesthetic color theory isthe color circle, because that will determine the classification ofcolors. The color artist must work with pigments, and therefore hiscolor classification must be constructed in terms of the mixing ofpigments. That is to say, diametrically opposed colors must becomplementary, mixing to yield gray. Thus in my color circle, the bluestands opposite to an orange; upon mixing, these colors give gray. InOstwald’s color circle, the blue stands opposite to a yellow, thepigmentary mixture yielding green. This fundamental difference inconstruction means that Ostwald’s color circle is not serviceable topainting and the applied arts.
In the RGB system yellow andblue subtracted does make gray and totally subtracted makes black. TheRGB System should satisfy Itten’s requirement. This observation led meto concentrate on how the hue of blue differs in RGB and RYB systems,and why RGB color did not yield harmonious compliments.
Experiments
I scanned manufactured color wheels, colorwheels in books, as well as paint sample color cards into the computer.I asked students to duplicate their RYB color wheels from 2D designclass in RGB. On the computer I simulated the subtraction of yellow froma range of blues using a ‘difference’ algorithm. In the RGB color wheel(color picker) cyan is at 180° and blue is at 240°. Halfwaybetween is a blue at 210° that will produce a green of precisely50% value. It is this darker green that is on artist’s color wheels. Themost prevalent mechanical color wheel is the “Artist’s Color Wheel”©1989 by The Color Wheel Company. On this wheel the blue is206°, slightly closer to cyan than blue. In most texts on color theblue is close to the 240° blue of the computer and would not yielda green if mixed with yellow.
I then set about understanding whatwas ‘right’ or useful in the artist color wheel, rather than dismissingartists as merely obdurate and stubborn. What I noticed primarily wasdifferences in value between the same hues in the RGB and RYB systems. Inext measured the hues and values of the scanned color wheels andentered the hues and values on a spread sheet. These measurements wereused to generate radar (circular) charts of the hues and values. Thehues, measured in degrees in the RGB color picker, were plotted on thediameter of the chart while the values were plotted as distance from thecenter.
In May of 1995 I posted the results of this study on theWorld Wide Web as “Computer Color and Artist’s Color” I listed fourgeneral differences between the RYB and RGB system. The most importantdemonstration in this study was a figure showing the RYB and RGB colorwheels transformed to gray values. 
In the RYB system, green and red areequal in value. There is an even gradation of values from yellow as thelightest at the top to purple as the darkest at the bottom. Left andright halves of the wheel are almost identical in value. The RGB colorwheel shows no such symmetry or evenness in value, green of coursebeing much lighter than its opposite red in RGB. I concluded that theartist’s color wheel was skewed primarily to reduce the difference invalue in opposite colors. Understanding what was correct and useful inthe RYB system still did not create a tool for managing the larger gamutof colors available in RGB, nor did it create an RGB color wheel withharmonious opposites and triads. I then tried to reinvent the colorwheel by various combinations of gradations and layers on the computer.I created radial gradations of red, green, blue, cyan, magenta andyellow in which the diameter corresponded to the value of the color andthe placement of the resulting circle was determined by the value on theY axis and the hue on the X axis. I was hoping that the overlapping ofthese circles would produce a complete range of possible hues and valuesin a useful juxtaposition.
Conceptually, a spectrum of all the huesof RGB arrayed on the X axis combined with a gradation from black towhite on the Y axis should produce all the possible hue/valuecombinations. I discovered that the pasting and layering algorithmsavailable on the computer did not produce even gradations or completesets of intermediate colors. This led to a long series of experimentswith layering, pasting, and opacity algorithms.
One of thealgorithms I used produced a dominant peak of green in relation to redand blue and distorted the spectrum into what looked like a mountainrange. I initially thought this algorithm distorted the hue/valuerelationship of RGB. In fact it was the value of the RGB colors thatwere distorted, and this chart put the hues back into their correctvalue relationship.
Now, instead of having a system thatwould reconcile artist’s and RGB systems, I had found a system alien andantithetical to both. The chart of the hue/value relationship that Iproduced further showed that green comprised more than half of the totalbrightness of RGB and that white was therefor the highest value ofgreen.
My chart of hue/value relationship of color also correspondsto the dominance of green in the spectral luminosity curve in Richard L.Gregory “Eye and Brain” Fig 6.4 and 6.5. Of this he says “Theluminosity curve tells us nothing much about colour vision.” becauseanimals without color vision show a similar luminosity curve. P.94.Luminosity is discussed in the chapter on brightness and not mentionedagain in the chapter on color. This to me is like the Wizard of Ozsaying “Pay no attention to that man behind the curtain.”
Results
I did not wish to draw the conclusion thatwhite is green, but the idea kept reasserting itself. Several phenomenathat had been a puzzle to me now made sense, especially Goethe’sexperiments with the prism. Looking through the prism at a whiterectangle of paper, Goethe saw cyan gradating to blue on one edge andyellow gradating to red on the other edge. If you shine a beam ofsunlight through the prism and place a white surface close to the prismyou will see a white band with this same phenomenon. As you move thetarget surface away from the prism, the cyan and yellow color bands willenlarge and the white center band will get narrower. When the cyan andyellow overlap, green will appear in the place of white. At a greaterdistance the cyan and yellow bands get narrower and red, green and bluepredominate. The diagram of this phenomena also makes sense as a chartof basic color organization.
Further evidence seems to reinforce mypremise: Because green carries most of the value information in RGB andin video, the most advanced single-chip color CCD has 3 green sensorsfor each red and blue sensor. In the Kelvin temperature of light, lowerK° numbers represent red light increasing to yellow followed bywhite and finally blue at the highest temperatures. White occurs betweenyellow and blue in this progression, in the same place as green in thespectrum. Green is even more predominant in the curves that representthe sensitivity of grayscale CCD video chips such as the Sony ICX038DLA(chart available on the Internet5). The development of grayscalesensitivity in film and video has a long history partly based onempirical data from luminosity curves with some adjustment for aestheticpreference to arrive at the current characteristics of black and whitefilm and video. The algorithm that translates RGB to grayscale on thecomputer yields brightness percentages that total more than 100% but therelative percentages approximate the percentages of RGB in NTSC videoquoted in Gregory6
The greyscale conversion algorithm is a usefultool because it allows a dramatic visualization of the relation of hueto value. Red, green and blue must be balanced on computer and videoscreens to produce white and shades of gray. Because the hue/valuerelationship is empirically derived from measurements of humanperception and carefully adjusted and calibrated, it follows thatinformation about human perception of color is imbedded in the RGBsystem for it to work.
Conclusion
A color that is 30% red 59% green and11% blue has an underlying hue of 101° green, close to the hue ofchlorophyll. I therefore conclude that if white in the RGB is derivedfrom empirical data from human perception, then white in humanperception has the hue of green as well. This corresponds to whatappeared to Goethe in the prism. New physiological evidence aboutperceptual mechanisms is not needed to draw this conclusion, although itmight suggest lines of inquiry for scientists, possibly even areconciliation of tricromat and opponent process theory.
I would like to propose the usefulness of “White is Green” in explainingthe hue/value relationship of color. RGB color space is a distortion ofthe hue/value relationship in the same way that Mercator’s projectionmap of the globe onto a rectangle is a distortion. Every pure hue in RGBis defined as having a brightness of 100% when in fact every hue has adifferent brightness. The artist’s red yellow and blue color wheelcreates harmonious colors only in a limited range of hues and values.Artists argue that harmony is subjective and culturally determined. Evenso, once a convention or style has been established, only very specificcolors will fit within that convention. Matching colors and creatingvariations within established limits requires careful control of hue andvalue, a task that I hope to make easier.
References
1 Denton, Craig, Graphics for VisualCommunication, Wm. C. Brown Publishers, Dubuque, Iowa, 1992. p108. 2 De Grandis,Luigina, Theory and Use of Color, Arnoldo Mondadori S.pA., Milan, 1986.p 18. 3 Itten, Johannes,The Art of Color, Reinhold Publishing Corp, New York, 1961. p23. 4 Gregory, Richard,Eye and Brain, Princeton University Press, Princeton, New Jersey, fourthed., 1990. pp 92-93. 5Internet address-http://www.sel.sony.com/semi/ccdarea.html 6 Gregory, Richard, Colour Vision. The OxfordCompanion to the Mind, Oxford University Press, New York, 1987. p151. Hal GLICKSMAN
Department ofArt, California State University, Long Beach
1250 Bellflower Blvd,Long Beach CA 90840
Whether or not you agree with the ideas in this paper, please let me know how you found this site.glicksman@hotmail.com
Toyota UK has added a new Yellow Bi-Tone Edition to the Yaris’ range.
The bodywork of the Japanese supermini is now finished in yellow-black scheme, making it look a lot like a certain Camaro from the movies – or a Beetle, if you’re old school.
Toyota says it’s the first Yaris to come painted in the Yellow Burst color, with the roof, front pillars, grille and side sills finished in black. There’s also rear privacy glass and a set of black and silver 16-inch alloys to match its bi-tone looks.
The same color pattern continues inside, with Yellow Burst trim details found in the gear shift, air-vents and surrounds for the black mats. The seats are finished in a new black-grey cloth design with ribbed cushion and shoulder sections.Unfortunately Toyota didn’t provide any photos of the interior to really see what these changes are like.
The new Toyota Yaris Yellow Bi-Tone Edition also comes with features such as DRLs and LED rear lights, a Touch2 infotainment system with DAB radio, cruise control and Toyota’s Safety Sense array of driver assistance systems.
Customers will be able to choose between the 110hp 1.5-liter VVT-iE petrol and the hybrid powertrain. Prices start at £17,595 for the petrol and £19,845 for the hybrid, with both models going on sale now.
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