Almost 4 years ago I had an idea and threw down some code that would allow people to share colors and rate them… Just a few days ago our 1,000,00th color was named and shared on the site. It was only 10 days ago, but since that milestone color was upload… another 32,000 have been shared. That’s some serious color love!

The names of colors can do funny things, just check the interesting coincidences thread for more examples… but _stefan, unknowing that the color he named Ego would in fact be our 1 million milestone color. Thank you all for sharing so much color love with us. (And now that the Color API is up and running, some creative folks are going to find some awesome ways to play with that color / name data.)

COLOURlovers Major Color Milestones

Every color on the site is special, but here are some extra special milestone colors.

Number of Colors Added Per Month

Color Archive: The Top Colors Since We Started

You can browse the color archives all the way back to Dec. of 04 when we started COLOURlovers to see what the top colors were each month. Here are the top 2 colors from each of the last 12 months.


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Teresa, Teri, Faded Jeans passed away April, 11th… She was a much loved part of our community and she will be greatly missed. A fellow COLOURlover and friend let me know the sad news and I felt it appropriate to let you all know… but, most importantly to share a little of the amazing color love that she left behind with us.

TERESA LIGHT
Germany- Teresa Lynne Light, 51, formerly of Kingsport passed away unexpectedly early Friday morning (April 11, 2008) in Attendorn, Germany.

She was born in Warner Robbins, Georgia and had lived the majority of her life in Kingsport until moving to Germany in 2003. Teresa was a graduate of Dobyns-Bennett High School in 1975. She worked for the City of Kingsport from 1987 to 2003. She was a talented artist.

Mrs. Light is preceded in death by her mother, Betty Light and her sisters, Judith Smith & Vanessa Webb.

Teresa Light is survived by her husband, Dr. Nils Hoffmann; her daughter, Cara Webster & her husband, Barry; a brother, Steve Light.

A memorial service will be conducted on Saturday (May 3, 2008) at 2 p.m. at Carter-Trent Funeral Home, Kingsport with Ed Clevenger, minister officiating.

You can post an online condolence to the family here.

Celebrating the Colors of Her Life

I believe in celebrating a life and what I will humbly attempt to do here is to celebrate the colors of her life that she shared with us. I did not have the pleasure of knowing her in the real world, but I appreciate her very much and feel so very honored and touched to have created a place for her to share her inspirations, passions and her heart… a place that will continue to share that and carry her love forward.


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Since launching the pattern maker four months ago, more than 85,000 patterns have been colored and shared on the site. We’ve been adding more pattern styles as fast as we can and now have 69 different pattern styles for you coloring pleasure. Here are some of the recently added pattern styles and an update for browsing similar designs.

Pattern By: Pattern Head [www.patternhead.com]

Pattern By: designfruit [www.designfruit.com]

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Being nominated for a Webby is a huge honor for any web company, but for our small start-up to be nominated two years in a row makes us proud of our work and very grateful to our members who built the supportive community on the site. With our 1,000,000th user-named color projected to be uploaded sometime later this month, we’re happy to report that the love of color is alive and well!

COLOURlovers : Best Web Community Nomination

From now through May 1st, you can vote for COLOURlovers in The Webby People’s Voice Awards. Make sure to vote and leave a comment to let people know how wonderful our community is. This nomination is as much for us as it is for you.

Click Here to Vote for COLOURlovers

Thank you for all your support and color love!
 
 
(I know a lot of you are members of StumbleUpon & Flickr, I myself am a loyal member of those sites… but it is hard to win a popularity contest when competing with sites that have millions of members, but you all are the most supportive and awesome members around… so maybe we have a chance.)

About the Webby Awards
Hailed as the “Oscars of the Internet” by the New York Times, The Webby Awards is the leading international award honoring excellence on the Internet, including Websites, interactive advertising, online film and video, and mobile Websites. The Webby Awards is presented by the International Academy of Digital Arts and Sciences, a 550-person judging academy whose members include Internet co-inventor Vinton Cerf, R/GA’s Chief Bob Greenberg, “Simpson’s” creator Matt Groening, Arianna Huffington, and Harvey Weinstein.

The 12th Annual Webby Awards received nearly 10,000 entries from over 60 countries and all 50 states. Only 15% of the entries were given an official honoree status and an even smaller number were put on the ballots as official nominees.

In order to support our growth and the costs of maintaining and developing new features for our color loving community, we’ve added some great extended features and are offering them as a thank you to those who support us with a small yearly sponsorship of only $20. Thank you for helping us grow our wonderful community.

To become a sponsor or to give the gift of color love, visit: www.colourlovers.com/lovers/sponsors

Benefits of Being a Sponsored COLOURlover:

- Have Your Love Notes and Subscription Updates Emailed to You
- Download All Your Colors and Palettes in One File
- See More Recent Activity on Your Profile, Colors, Palettes & Patterns
- Customize Your Profile to Show Top, New or Fave Colors, Patterns or Patterns
- See Custom Palette Widths by Default When Browsing
- Choose Your Top Groups and Lovers to Display on Your Profile
- Get Beta Access to New Tools Before They Are Launched Publicly
- Fancy Avatar and Profile Badges to Show Your Sponsorship
- Help Us Continue to Develop a Supportive, Fun and Creative Community
- More to Come Soon!

Have Your Love Notes and Subscription Updates Emailed to You

See More Recent Activity on Your Profile, Colors, Palettes & Patterns

Show Top, New or Fave Colors, Patterns or Patterns on Your Profile

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Colors, like people, tend to mix and mingle according to their inclinations. Sometimes two complementary HEXes will combine to create a new color. Sometimes two similar HEXes will merge to illuminate a more brilliant hue. Is it preposterous to label such unions as “straight” and “gay”? The ColourLovers library is full of colors with orientations identified in their titles. At a glance, can you tell a “straight” color from a “gay” one? Here’s a three-part quiz, each more challenging than the last. In this first quiz, one column features colors with exclusively gay names. The other column features colors with exclusively straight names. Which is which? For the answer, click on any color to reveal the name.

A	B

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COLOURlovers is a welcoming, creative and supportive community and we want to hear you shout your love from the mountain tops for color. We want you to stand outside the tree in the front yard, late at night in the rain until color opens the bedroom window and tells you it loves you too. (Please don’t actually wait outside our bedrooms…)

Did you know that two lovers of color met on this site a couple years ago and are now happily married? It has helped artists find ideas for their work… It has brought family members closer together and given friends and lovers something to share from thousands of miles away.

Profess Your Color Love…

Colors, Palettes and Patterns all tell stories and we want to hear what they are… How did you come to find COLOURlovers? How do you love thee? Why do you love Color so? Why can’t you live without color?

Comment below with a palette, color or pattern badge and a short story as to how you love Color, COLOURlovers.com or a fellow lover… or whatever you feel inspired to share.

Happy Valentines Day

According to the Greeting Card Association, 25 percent of all seasonal cards sent each year are valentines, making Valentine’s Day the second most popular card-sending occasion in the Unites States. Approximately 190 million Valentine’s Day cards are exchanged annually, not including classroom valentines sent between children at school.
[source]


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I’ve always liked the artwork of Mark Rothko. They are simple enough to enjoy with only a passing glance, but powerful enough to absorb large amounts of time considering the emotions and meanings behind the colors and how they interact with each other.

I share a similar appreciation for the hundreds of color palettes that are uploaded to COLOURlovers on a daily basis. They can be quickly appreciated as you scroll by them, but some of will jump out and grab you on personal level. And the ones that grab you could be the ones that another person scrolls on past… These little palettes become mini-artworks that can express emotion and ideas.

As basic as color is, it is a very powerful form of expression.

“Rothko’s work is characterized by rigorous attention to formal elements such as color, shape, balance, depth, composition, and scale; yet, he refused to consider his paintings solely in these terms. He explained: It is a widely accepted notion among painters that it does not matter what one paints as long as it is well painted. This is the essence of academicism. There is no such thing as good painting about nothing.”
  Mark Rothko - National Gallery of Art, Washington, DC

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Located in the City of Lights, the Eiffel Tower is one of the world’s most familiar structures and one of the most treasured symbols of France. Weighing a total of 10,100 tons and rising 324 m (including the flagpole) the Eiffel Tower has survived and been protected through the years because of paint. Paint, it seems, “is the essential element in the conservation of metal works”. [Gustave Eiffel]

Well, I don’t know about you but when I think of paint, I immediately have a coloring urge.

What Color is the Eiffel Tower?

by Bret Arnett

Monsieur Eiffel chose to paint the Tower red after it was erected and since then the Eiffel Tower has changed colors several times transitioning between red-browns to mustard yellows back to red-brown and more recently, variations of brown. According to the official Eiffel Tower website, the most current colour is labeled Bronze though others have labeled the current colour Milk Chocolate Brown or Brownish-Grey. (Left: The layers of paint and colors of the Eiffel Tower through the years. You can find this on the first floor of the Tower.)

Which Color is the Official “Bronze”?

by absolutwade


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Food seems a popular source of color inspiration here at COLOURlovers and one of my favorites types of food is sushi.

So while searching for other COLOURlovers who might also be sushi lovers, I was pleasantly surprised to be in good company after stumbling across subsomatic’s all-you-can-eat-sushi post. And, after a quick keyword: sushi search, I discovered 130+ palettes inspired by sushi!

Raw Fish?

OK, for some, the words raw and fish hardly sound appetizing but fresh raw fish is served in many ways and in many different countries and cultures. Carpaccio, ceviche, poke, tartare, gravlax are just a few.

But, sushi is not raw fish. In Japan, sliced fresh raw fish served alone is called sashimi. Also, sushi can be sushi with fish — cooked or uncooked — or without fish. What makes sushi different from sashimi is the sushi rice (rice with vinegar or shari). Since sushi is created in a variety of ways depending on the combination of ingredients, sliced fresh raw fish prepared with sushi rice is just one variation of this culinary art form.

by ulterior epicure

Fast Food Origins

While often perceived as designer food especially when dolled up and served in upscale establishments, sushi as it is known today, originates from the streets of Tokyo. It all started with one man with a simple stall:

Yohei Hanaya, was the first person to shape vinegared rice with his hands and then crown it with a slice of raw fish - prompted, it’s said, by impatient customers, who couldn’t be bothered to wait for the traditional pressing in a box.

(Source: The Observer Food Monthly)

Apparently his creativity became all the rage simply because of convenience. It was the finger food 1820’s Tokyo. And, even then because of the lack of refrigeration, debate continues about how much of Mr. Hanaya’s sushi fish was actually served raw.

Global Variation on a Theme

Nigiri sushi hasn’t changed much in the last couple of centuries and still remains one of the more popular types of sushi perhaps only second to maki sushi.

For those not familiar with the difference, here’s a quick rundown (with photos) of some of the more common types of sushi:

Nigiri sushi: Prepared with a small mound of sushi rice formed by the hands into an oval shape with a topping such as sliced fish. A small amount of wasabi is placed between the sushi rice and topping. Sometimes it is wrapped with thin band of nori, a type of seaweed.

by kenyai


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