Tribute to an Iconic Designer

Original Album

Storm Thorgerson, graphic designer and childhood friend of the legendary rock band 'Pink Floyd' sadly passed away this week.
Thorgerson was best known for his iconic design of Pink Floyd's music album cover 'The Dark Side of The Moon'. This simple graphic has over the last four decades come to symbolise Pink Floyd and their music genre. As of 2012 the album has sold approximately 50 million copies worldwide and according to the Pop History Dig the album was featured in the top 200 for 741 consecutive weeks  from March 1973 to April 1988.   

Anniversary Album

Storm Thorgerson, was not reponsible for  discovering the colour prism but he can be celebrated for the wide appreciation of Sir Issac Newton's discovery of the refraction of light through a prism. As a tribute to Thorgenson’s lifetime of work in graphic design for Pink Floyd let us look at the colour prism in more detail.

How Is it That We See Colour ?

It was in the 1600's that Newton pioneered experiments with sunlight in his laboratory and discovered that it is light that allows us to see colour. By directing sunlight into a prism he observed that the ray of light was bent – refracted, resulting in an the rainbow of colours each with different wavelengths. The most prominent colours appearing in order from the longest wavelength to the shortest; red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo and violet.The spectrum appears continuous with no boundaries between the colours as we see in Thorgenson's graphic.

Light being broken down into colours

When we see the colour of an object it is because the light has been either absorbed or reflected depending on the wavelength of the visible light. White light is the total of all wavelengths of visible light. When light strikes a surface some wavelengths are absorbed and others are reflected or bounced back by the pigment or colouring  agent giving the surface of objects their colour. 

So, if we see red then only red wavelengths have been reflected off the surface and the remaining wavelengths are absorbed. When all wavelengths are absorbed the resulting colour is white.  Therefore our colour perception is the result of the light source interacting with the objects we are looking at. When there is no light hence an absence of colour we see black. Newton added the visible light spectrum to a circular shape so that artists could see the complementary colours to red, blue and yellow.
Johannes Itten, Albert H Munsell and Johann Wolfgang Von Goethe continued to develop and experiment with colour and vision, their work forming the basis of our understanding of colour theory today.

It is 40 years since Thorgenson designed the 'Dark Side of the Moon' album cover and we thank him for heightening awareness of the colour spectrum in popular culture.  
Join me in my next post on "Colour Trends and Forecasting"    Cheers Diyu                                                                                  

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

(With the exception of the  Images)

© The Avatar image is copyright to Ramneek Narang All Rights Reserved 2013

Many thanks to Ramneek Narang, Pink Floyd Official Site  and Web Exhibits for the images on this post.

       

Why Choose Colour ?

Colour is all around us; it is an intrinsic part of life that we may take for granted until we attempt our daily colour choices. What shirt to wear? What coloured shoes? A new toothbrush!  A new car! What colour will I choose?

I have always loved colour, I have painted, cooked, eaten, read and studied colour in textiles, cooking, design, art and architecture. 

I haven’t however had the opportunity or good fortune to work with colour colour design for long or to run my own colour business  due to having a large family and the all - encompassing nature of raising children and involvement in a family business.

I did however take the opportunity when my youngest son went to high school to focus on learning more about colour and being creative which led me to the International School of Colour and Design in Sydney. I thrived in this environment for three years among an enthusiastic and inspiring group of people with a like-minded interest in colour and design

I thrived in this learning environment for three years among an enthusiastic and inspiring group of people with a like-minded interest in colour and design.

I came away from my colour study with three diplomas and an 'Award for Excellence in Visual Arts'. I acquired a wide range of skills from artistic abilities, knowledge of colour theory and psychology, colour palette design, colour-mixing techniques to the broader field of styling, interior design, surface design and colour consulting for architectural developments and real estate.  As often happens in life I was unable at that time to pursue my own colour design business and went off to work in business management in a large public company in Sydney, colour still remaining my true passion and way of viewing the world.

The launch of the  ‘Tickled Pink - Colour Design’   is a new opportunity for me to combine the skills I have learnt over the past ten years in management, with my underlying passion for colour and design.  My involvement in the blogging platform has also provided me with a sort after role in the public sphere that as Jill Walker- Rettburg describes as an opportunity to not only articulate and learn but allow our internal self to be more predominant (  Walker - Rettburg, 2008 )

My aim is to expand my online writing from Kitchen Heirlooms  to  ‘Tickled Pink -Colour Design  a long-held dream and aspiration that I envisage being engaging, thought provoking and informative.
Join me next time for an Introduction to Colour In Web Design  Cheers  Diyu

Attribution Non-Commercial No Derivatives

(With the exception of the Avatar and Parrots Image)

© The Avatar image is copyright to Ramneek Narang All Rights Reserved 2013

© The Parrot  image is copyright to Mike Jones All Rights Reserved 2013

                            Many thanks to Ramneek Narang, Mocha UK and Mike Jones for the images on this post.

       

       

The Blue Bird

I spent the last week or so on twitter and being visually minded my first task was to upload and link photos from Pinterest and my blog then to update my profile. I then tweeted, retweeted, made some mistakes, organised my followings and added my avatar.

So, what did I think?

My experience has been one of intrigue followed by a sense of fun that would be easy to turn into obsession. Scrolling through and sorting the promoters from the real deal I found an eclectic assortment of items to read, view, save and comment on.

I had not used the hashtag before and after reading an article by academic danah boyd and discussing twitter with communications students I concluded that I am not alone in this or in not knowing exactly the correct way to use it. There appears to be a tendency not to bother with hashtags and varied often conflicting use of retweeting techniques abound (boyd, Golder and Lotan, 2010). I also found that although twitter is popular and very wide-spread I have yet to find one real person in my life who is using it as most of my immediate circle prefer Instagram. I heard from close family and friends that twitter was considered to be for old people and marketers and no longer cutting-edge !

Not to be distracted from my task I persevered and each day have added new followers from 1 to a 13 people in a week so I considered this a promising start.

My topics were colour and design so I added the # tag to Colour, colour design, colour in web design and I also looked for technology, #web design, #new media, #writing, #creativity and #art. Although I observed that many posts I read I had seen via blog feeds or were redirected from Pinterest and facebook. I came across quite unique charity drives such as ‘own your own colour’ for UNICEF .

Diyu Anand ‏@diyu1088 May

Tickled Pink #own a colour# a fun way to promote a great worthy cause http://www.ownacolour.com/share/f91e9d 

I have kept fairly minimal in my #tags and retweets usually by just adding a few words and deleting unnecessary text. I am according to danah boyd fairly typical of a twitter   user in that I often retweet to amplify or spread tweets to new audiences, to make my presence as a listener visible, to publicly agree with someone or to validate by drawing attention to an article.  Also I may retweet to save a tweet, to   support someone or purely for self gain to find followers (boyd, Golder and Lotan, 2010). An example of highlighting a favourite blog or supporting someone else is this tweet for Design Seeds.

Diyu Anand ‏@diyu108

8 May

Another design seed# colourscheme # to adapt to web designcolours # http://design-seeds.com/index.php/home/entry/summer-citrus

My conclusion is that it is a fun way to keep up to date quickly on topics that are of interest, an opportunity to comment on just about anything and a fabulous way to while away time if you need to and be engrossed in uncovering new interests.  Even without personally knowing my followers there is a definite sense of shared value and engagement. A feeling develops of wanting to keep people in the loop to highlight what you are uncovering. The nature of the tweets being so short is, that the topic stands alone and does not require much input which is an added advantage and helps to make it fast and diverse in nature. Since linking twitter to my blog along with other social media platforms I have had 800 hits to Tickled Pink over the last month, so the value speaks for itself.

Join me in my next post as I uncover from the experts some great tips on tweeting. Cheers Diyu

Red Rag To A Bull As Authorities Turn Beige

In response to

http://www.watoday.com.au/entertainment/about-town/transperth-not-so-tickled-pink-over-perth-color-run-20130214-2efmp.html
Colour has been the hot topic of the week across the Nation as thousands enjoy the Swisse Colour Run in Perth. Over east in Sydney the colourful footpath rainbows are being chalked up in local communities as protest agaisnt the removal of the Darlinghurst Rainbow crossing. 

Yes colour colour is everywhere in our news, yet not everyone is bright eyed and bushy tailed with the colour revolution. Local authorities are being party poopers about the recent colour extravaganza and rapidly washing the chalk drawings off.

Whilst a Perth bus company is refusing to allow travellers from the Colour Run to hop on the bus unless they wash or change their clothes first.

I saw red when I heard this!  Do we stop landscape gardeners, builders and painters from travelling on the bus? What is next I ask ? An inspection on boarding public transport perhaps,  to deem if we are suitably dressed and clean enough or perhaps they could keep the plastic covers on the seats as my Aunty Beryl does!

Overall these two stories make for a very beige week and got me thinking about when it was that the world got so dour and we couldn’t enjoy fun. More and more we see that the Government and corporate business think that there is only one agenda –theirs! Are we all to feel forever like delinquent teenagers, that every time some delightful diversion from day to day life comes along; a chance to break the boundaries of our routines and have fun, it is crushed by the oldies?

What ever happened to that sense of exhilaration at seeing people enjoy life? Is a bit of free expression with chalk drawn on the footpath or road such a bad thing?

Is this a sign of things to come? Is fun and spontaneity in our community a thing of the past and are we doomed to a life of control and measured moments of distraction.

I fear not, as rather than dimming our colour sense the effect has brightened it and added an unforseen political hue.  The coloured rainbows have gone viral on social media and are popping up across the world. So rather than stopping the enthusiasm its spreading like wild-fire. I for one think it’s a win agaisnt the beigist’s.

Ever since The Wizard of Oz the rainbow  has come to symbolise the fulfilment of dreams and search for the intangible pot of gold. In more recent times it is a familiar symbol for human rights, equality and peace by the gay and lesbian community. Whether you appeal to the original idea of the rainbow or want to stand up to support the gay community lets get together and have a colour spree.

Life is short and enough distressing events occur daily that we can’t turn a blind eye to a bit of colourful fun and enjoyment even if we end up a bit dirty…it will wash off after all.