Poline – An enigmatic color palette generator using polar coordinates | Hacker News Reader

Poline – An enigmatic color palette generator using polar coordinates

meodai.github.io

291 pointszdw60 comments

To those not into the mythical vibe: I totally get it. I stumbled onto something that looked good by accident and thought it’d be fun to lean into the mystical theme — especially since there’s no real science or theory behind it (that I know of). Mostly, I just wanted an excuse to build a fun website around it.

And to everyone else — thanks for the kind words, really appreciate it!

> especially since there’s no real science or theory behind it (that I know of).

The literature on hue harmony is fuzzy, but there are a few gems.

Check out Matsuda [1] who tracked the colors of what his female students were wearing, and tried to identify any principles informing their color choice. My criticism of him is that he plotted hue distribution on the RGB color wheel. The RYB wheel would have been a far better choice. His paper is in Japanese, but is summarized in multiple places. Below [2] is a link to 2 pages from a lecture I gave which summarizes his findings.

I'm sure you also know of Kuehni's classic tome on color spaces [3]. A fun and informative read.

There has been no research on hue antagonism (which is the idea that underpins complementary pairs). This is crazy, as it would be a very easy subject to investigate. To me it is obvious that there is a special relationship between antagonistic pairs above the fact that they mix to neutral. Supporting this is the fact that Leondro DaVinci documented this relationship even before hue circle was invented [4]!

As for the mystical dimension of color harmony... this has been assumed since the dawn of color science. Newton himself believed that there was seven colors in his hue circle for no other reason than this was a spiritually significant value [5]. Itten [6], Goethe [7] and Kandinsky [8] all absolutely believed in the spiritual dimension of color. Personally, I believe that their work has had nothing but a destructive impact on how artists and designers use color. It is wildly inconsistent, vague and often plain wrong.

[1] Matsuda: Color Design. Asakura Shoten (in Japanese). (1995)

[2] https://www.dropbox.com/scl/fi/4ac93etjyg0z5y2ouq5ge/matsuda...

[3] Kuehni, R.: Color Space and its Divisions: Color Order from Antiquity to the Present. Wiley-Interscience, Hoboken (2003)

[4] Leonardo da Vinci, Trans. J. F. Rigaud, A Treatise on Painting (London: J.B. Nichols & Son, 1835).

[5] Matt Chamings “Why are there seven colours in a rainbow?” New Scientist, Last Word, 2021.

[6] Johannes Itten, The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color (New York: Reinhold Publishing Corporation, 1961).

[7] J. W. v. Goethe, Goethe's Colour Theory, Trans. C. L. Eastlake (London: John Murray, 1840).

[8] Wassily Kandinsky, Trans. Michael Sadler, Concerning the spiritual in art (Penguin UK, 2024), p. 59.

My process was honestly a lot of: “oh, that looks good.” That’s what I meant by “not backed by science” — I didn’t even try to base it on color theory. Thanks so much for the treasure trove of references — can’t wait to sink my teeth into it!

I love the "old internet" vibe with the new internet look. I think it's a very creative idea, I wouldn't mind the haters too too much. I love it!

It's a neat tool but some usability feedback. With third party JS disabled the failure mode is a blank window if any of 3 core domains are blocked. I'm accustomed to a bit of breakage given how I do things but catastrophic failure when any single item is missing makes it needlessly difficult to debug.

Hi OP. I don't know if you'll see this, but the 300 weight text is hard to read on a regular (96ppi) screen. If you're interested, you can use the `resolution` CSS media query to increase the font weight on just low-density devices.

thanks for letting me know

Great work and a wonderful presentation

Indeed. I really like the aesthetics of the site. Clean but retains a character of its own.

>"poline" is an enigmatic color palette generator, that harnesses the mystical witchcraft of polar coordinates. Its methodology, defying conventional color science, is steeped in the esoteric knowledge of the early 20th century. This magical technology defies explanation, drawing lines between anchors to produce visually striking and otherworldly palettes. It is an indispensable tool for the modern generative sorcerer, and a delight for the eye

I'm not totally sure I understand this intro - what's different here compared to normal color science palette makers?

I do like the visual presentation and animation a lot though.

It feels a bit satirical or otherwise done for fun, especially with sections like the following.

"And thus, the tome of "poline" has been written. Its mystical powers, steeped in the arcane knowledge of the ancients, now reside within these pages. May this compendium serve you in your quest for the ultimate color palette."

Either way, I wasn't expecting to encounter Poe's law inside a color palette maker.

What don't you understand? It defies conventional color science and is steeped in the esoteric knowledge of the early 20th century.

It is a very nice palette generator, but I really dislike all the talk of magic/mysticism/sorcery/witchcraft. It's a dang color generator, ease up on the dungeon master language.

on the other hand, i like the "theme" - i'm a sucker for that mix of "wizardry" metaphor with programming stuff.

I'm reminded for instance of this fun little post:

https://aphyr.com/posts/341-hexing-the-technical-interview

It feels a little bit ai generated there, or maybe just padded out marketing copy - more adjectives and superlatives than I'd expect from a technical site at least. Telling you how to call it to get a "mesmerizing" palette for example

I can handle some purple mysticism prose but I did want like a comparison of a few palettes from this polar system vs some traditional plane ones. If the creator reads this thread that's my note

It defies explanation. This is followed up by an explantation.

Defied unsuccessfully.

Why do you feel so strongly that someone shouldn't invent a tool/doohickey/fun experience that isn't purely based around being a utility? The creator of this isn't taking away from the plethora of already available "conventional colour science" orientated tools.

I don't feel strongly about that at all? I was saying I didn't understand from the description what's actually different between this tool and the conventional ones and I wanted some information there about that. A compare / contrast example would have worked nicely.

It's enigmatic, hence you don't understand.

There's no science behind it. You're reading ai generated text.

My guess is the prompt was something like this:

"describe a color palette generating tool that uses the magic of polar coordinates to make pretty color palettes"

It's not AI generated; it's a joke by the creator, as explained here a couple of years ago: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34665584

It is AI-generated. I'm sure the author provided the prompt and liked the result, but it is the output of an LLM.

Evidence for this claim that you're making with absolute certainty?

Evidence from the author: https://x.com/meodai/status/1614612166325272579

Excellent, this is what I was looking for, thank you.

This is HN, if the writing is not complete deadpan with a complete lack of whimsy, followed by a list of citations, it's AI generated.

Ok, so you are both lying about multiple things (the fact that it's AI generated and the way that people interact on HN) and blatantly breaking the HN guidelines. Got it.

That read like sarcasm to me tbh, your parent post.

Ah, thanks for the cite!

Source for this claim?

Source: https://x.com/meodai/status/1614612166325272579

nice find

Previously on HN (2 years ago) with creator’s replies: https://news.ycombinator.com/item?id=34662722

It's cool.

Though I am unsure if I am a sufficiently modern generative sorcerer to appreciate its eldritch, enigmatic nature.

Super cool! If the author/creator happens to be reading, I’d suggest that, when the user is at the top of the page (ie on first load), the default demo wheel’s should animate between a few different curves. At first glance (before scrolling down), it looks somewhat primitive, and less interesting than it really is.

Doesn't seem to work on Firefox - I tried with adblocker and tracking protection disabled. Console complains:

Uncaught SyntaxError: The requested module 'https://cdnjs.cloudflare.com/ajax/libs/highlight.js/11.7.0/e...' doesn't provide an export named: 'default'

Works on my Firefox on Windows.

The website is awesome, however, I am not sure if the palettes are very useful.

Or rather, they're ugly.

Nice. Hard to generate an unpleasant palette with this at all.

I'd like to configure my editor to use something like this to generate a unique color palette for the syntax highlighting for each project so that if I have files from multiple projects open at the same time they look different. Maybe base it on a hash of the git remote.

What a fun project! I feel like you really bury the lede in terms of what kinds of palettes are generateable- the first interactive demo at the top of page mostly only makes bruises, but later on your get full on saturated rainbows!

Wow, I didn't even realise you could scroll down! Much more flexible than I first thought.

I'm impressed by the naming of colors at the very end.

thanks! Collecting them has been my hobby for the past few years: https://github.com/meodai/color-names

Nicely done, but I'm a bit puzzled by all the alchemical stuff (which, to be fair, is probably the point).

On my iPhone the line curves as I move the dots around, but on my laptop (running Arc) the line stays straight. Some bug, or am I missing something?

ETA: okay I can get arcs working by changing the arc settings! Getting different default behavior on the two platforms tho.

Hats off! I never experienced a colorcombo generator that only turned up good palettes.

It makes sense. When you have complementary colors in the palette, you need to include more darks so that in your design you can separate the two. This is achieved because the line has pass near the centre.

This is the most beautiful thing I've seen in a long, long time.

thanks! that means a lot

The favicon updates to match the palette. That's a nice touch.

Why /ˈpɔːlaɪn/ and not /ˈpoʊlaɪn/ or /ˈpɑlaɪn/? Seems like an unnatural way to pronounce it, given the spelling.

Polar Lines -> poline

"polar" is /ˈpoʊlər/. Did you mean to use /ˈpoʊlaɪn/?

ah nice thanks! il change it

What an obnoxiously unclickable interaction on mobile. A very strange choice of ux for something that insists to be so prominent on my screen that follows my scroll, yet clicking on the palette does nothing.