Disney invented two colors (2022)
insidethemagic.net
insidethemagic.net
More accurately this is a color design strategy to use muddy greens to blend/hide equipment/fences/buildings, and sky blues to make buildings seem shorter and less obtrusive.
You can see stuff painted dark green in any state park, so I doubt Disney "invented" that strategy. The sky blue technique is interesting, though -- this is the first time I've heard of or seen something like that.
What did I come in expecting? A specific shade that was A/B and panel tested and perhaps shown in eye-tracking studies to minimize the attention drawn to objects painted in that particular shade. A family of colors makes more sense (because there isn’t any one right answer for all scenes), but it’s still not an “invented color” - and notice that I’m not quibbling about the “invented” bit by saying it’s been used before or it was always there but they just discovered/names it.
I think it might be important not to assume that everyone thoughtfully scrutinizes the details in publications.
But this touches on something I now notice daily on HN and elsewhere that “smart” people congregate: a dangerously weak empathy for what’s actually “typical.”
Guess I'm not smart too.
But what you're replying to isn't talking about whether colours are "invented," just whether Disney did it. It also discusses the article, with its full nuance, not just the headline.
So what exactly are comments for, if discussing aspects of the submission are off-limits?
While colors are not "invented", there use and application is material/situationally dependent. Vantablack is absolutely an invented "color" since it's use requires both the color and material application. Disney's painting of these buildings with a specific color, finish, and properties is not much different.
I just can't make my brain accept that vantablack is an "invented" color. It's not even an unusual color. It's black.
It's the other material properties that set it apart and qualify for the term "invented", not the color.
For instance, you can have a flat blue and a glossy blue that are the exact same color.
(Admittedly possibly with a hint of green mixed in as well).
Link: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Supermarine_Spitfire#/media/Fi...
The two main examples of this green are not just different shades, they are very different hues. It seems like the headline is maybe more that Disney strategically uses context-appropriate colors to camouflage certain park elements, and guide the visitors' eyes to what they want them to see. Not that there are two magic colors that they invented that do this in every case.
This is hardly an invention, even if the formulas are a trade secret. We use different colors in everyday activities... Red anyone?
Especially because, in the industrial context, you actually want to see the equipment! (But then, in an industrial context, everything around the equipment is white or silver or black, rather than natural colors, so a drab green does stand out.)
AFAICT from some research, the use of that shade of green to paint industrial equipment, itself originated as a private-sector cargo-culting of what was originally an accident of history in public-sector use: a lot of drab green camouflage(!) epoxy paint was left over from World War I, and worked perfectly well as an industrial one-coat anti-corrosion sealant over bare steel; and large public-works industrial machines like the insides of power plants don't need to be any particular color, but do need to be corrosion-proofed; so the specifiers of these plants went with what was available. (In other words, industrial machines are painted, literally, "armored-vehicle green." Same paint, at least originally.)
If states hadn't had that volume of green paint laying around, I'm guessing they would have just used the cheapest anti-corrosion paint they could lay their hands on... which would very likely have led to industrial equipment painted red-barn red. Farmers paint that color because it's the cheapest anti-corrosion paint to buy, in turn because it's the cheapest anti-corrosion paint to produce, in turn because the red is literally just "iron, powdered, and left out in the sun to rust." (Thus the name of the paint brand Rust-o-leum!)
https://www.halsall-electrical.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2021... https://www.logisticsmanager.com/wp-content/uploads/2018/03/... https://www.winvic.co.uk/wp-content/uploads/2019/01/RDP_8670...
#9eaa8c and #b2d6f1
You can have colors as trademarks (UPS brown, for instance), but that's entirely different and doesn't prevent others from using that color.
You can have proprietary methods of creating a color, but that's about the method, not the color itself (Vanta black, for instance).
My skepticism threshold went way up on reading that bit of geography. Four Corners is 5 miles from Disney World, Orlando 20 miles, JAX 200 miles.
The content isn't as interesting as the title makes it seem.
i remarked earlier living there on how ugly those colors were. few army vehicles, hummers strewn about. did not look like a happening or exciting place. ugly colors.
it wouldnt be until much later passing through i thought about the color scheme.
and it clicked - i never paid real attention to the place. at all. plaza, sports center. it was invisible! the ugly green and maroon combo - like freddie kreugers sweater - made you not want to look at it, or hurt your eyes trying to process information - on purpose.
now i look for people who paint their houses in those colors, and i understand.
about the part of matching the color of the sky - i find across the country the blue color of the sky varies. im sure the lighter blue sky of florida differs from the darker, almost greyer blue above nevada (the blue on their license plates)
So for a period of time trees are actually blue.