2010 Color Trends | Hacker News Reader

2010 Color Trends

colourlovers.com

63 pointsjamesbritt19 comments

I remember when colourlovers.com came out with a similar post a few months back and I said something like this:

http://www.colourlovers.com/business/blog/2010/10/26/color-o...

And so while this is still a nice, shiny piece of infographic eye candy, I don't really see the scientific basis behind any of this. It still seems like cherry-picked data to me. Why does it matter that these companies' colors be analyzed compared to any of the thousands of others that were successful in the last year?

Just pointing out colors in brands that stood out in the last year... I understand you'd like hard scientific data about color associations, emotional and social associations that have impact on the trends... But we're an inspiration company.

And in the end, color has an impact on brands... but it doesn't make a break a brand... Maybe I should write a longer post about this.

But we're an inspiration company.

And what greater inspiration for knowledge is there than properly-gathered statistics? All I'm saying is that you guys could do a lot of interesting things if you relied more on well-selected samples over multiple time series. I don't think your post was at all bad, but it leaves me begging for more information.

And your comment for more information leaves me wishing for more time to gather and share just the kind of thing you're asking for :)

Of course...I don't mean to imply that you could have put together any real meaningful time series data in such a short period of time. I only mean to inspire you to do it in the future ;-)

Yep, I think this is a fairly vacuous article. There's not much that really be drawn from the analysis - other than; there are a lot of colours available and they were used by businesses in various designs.

> I don't really see the scientific basis behind any of this

Are you trying to find the scientific basis of fashion?

Most of these brand decisions were made well before 2010, if not 3 or more years ago... how does the fact that they were big as businesses in 2010 make them "Color Trends" for 2010? Google was really big in 2010 too, does that mean "rainbow" was a trend?

They were standout brands that either made a big impact, or were "hot." A lot of design is just "inspired" from other design, so hot companies in 2010 have an impact on the trends.

blue and red continue to dominate, with a reasonable amount of green. as usual, no pink.

no pink

Flickr?

Five Guys has been around for 25 years with that same color scheme.

Thanks Colourlovers and Bubs, for putting this together. It's interesting qualitative data, and useful in many ways, though not for everybody. Color is more art than science, which probably accounts for some of the negative comments here.

I think the quantitative approach to color is largely a dead end, anyway; remember that Doug Bowman left Google out of frustration, citing their preference for endless color testing as a surrogate for expert design choices.

Alternate title: some random red and blue logos arranged by color. (Does this mean that BofA wins, with a bit of each?)

I was curious about the lack of green and wondered if there's a reason behind it. Came across this website (no clue how accurate it is) that breaks down color meanings across cultures.

http://www.sibagraphics.com/colour.php

I absolutely love Colour Lovers. It's amazing how much time you can waste looking at colo(u)rs and patterns.

And we definitely need more pink/violet company logos.

Your comment reminded me of a job that I had years ago.

I was handed a list of company standard design practices when I first took the job. As I was reading over it, I noticed a line item: "Absolutely no pink dialogs."

How are old color choices, from well established sites considered 2010 color trends? Pandora? Really? Is flash a trend now too?(Pandora is playing now fyi)

it would be cool, if there was a tree ring like structure detailing the year or generation of the logo or year or something

Reply on news.ycombinator.com