When it comes to Pantone + COLOURlovers, you could say we both love color... but I think of them more as the parents from the 50s who live long happy lives together but sleep in separate beds... as we might be more of the free-lovin hippies of the 60s... not that there is anything wrong with that. All kidding aside Pantone does a pretty crazy job of allowing people to translate colors across industries. If you want the yellow of your website, to match the yellow of your car's paint to the yellow of your favorite yellow speedos... they've created color software and specifications to make sure you always get the perfect hue.

Thanks to Tina at SwissMiss I found a wonderful photo of leaves matches to their pantone colors and sought out to find more photos of people comparing colors in their real lives to their pantone cousins.

Chris Glass is a creative guy who takes lots of fun photos... one I particularly love is one he took back in Oct. that showcases the range of colors a single tree can produce as the seasons change.

"I’m obsessing over all the maples that are turning slowly this season–their tops red, fading to green. So much that I felt compelled to collect samples from a single tree."

by chrisglass

Pantone Matching Photoset by RIVET sf

Linked from Chris' page was a Pantone Matching Photoset with lots of fun office color finds.

by mdsf_gone_wild

Humans have been fascinated by white horses for millennia. Geneticists have now pinpointed the "genetic architecture" that connects blonde manes in people and equines. The study of white horses goes all the way back to ancient Rome, where depigmented horses were identified as "candidus" (white) or "glaucus" (gray). The PLoS Genetics journal notes that two thousand years ago, the white horse was held sacred by the Saxons. It served as an augur for the German tribes, its behavior considered a sign of divine approval or disapproval. The white horse was so revered that it featured on the flags of Lower Saxony and North Rhine-Westphalia. Even earlier, white horses were celebrated by the Celts in Great Britain. The White Horse of Uffington (Oxfordshire, England) is Bronze Age hillside artefact, dating back approximately 3,000 years. The figure of a 374-foot long horse (perhaps representing the Celtic horse goddess Epona) was cut into the soil, its white coat naturally pigmented by the chalk beneath the turf.

by cwalker71.

The PLoS Genetics journal points out that most white horses carry a "graying-with-age mutation." They are born with a solid-coloured coat which turns white by age of four to six. However, occasionally a pony is born with a solid white coat. Take, for example, the solid white mare named Cigale, born in 1957 out of solid brown parents from the Swiss Franches-Montagnes Horse population. Geneticists have studied all of Cigale's white-born descendants and isolated an inherited mutation in their pigment forming cells. Different horse populations, such as white Thoroughbreds, Arabians, and Camarillo White Horses, reveal independent pigmentation mutation events. In other words, the white horses in each equine family exhibit their own special brand of mutation leading to their white coats. But the common chromosomal factor appears to be what geneticists call the KIT gene, responsible not only for white horses but also for blonde people.White horses appear in the religious literature of many lands. Here's a small sampling:

• In the New Testament's Book of Revelation, one of the four horsemen of the Apocalypse rides a white horse.
• In Japan, the white horse is a Shinto symbol of purity and divine authority.
• In Islam, the Prophet ascended to heaven on the back of a white horse.
• In Hinduism, the god Kalki rides a white horse while brandishing a comet-like sword.
• In Nordic lore, the god Odin rises a white horse named Sleipnir.
• In Greek mythology, the white and winged Pegasus sprang from the blood of Medusa when Perseus decapitated her.

Here is some blonde ponytail inspiration from the COLOURlovers library: Cover by superdove.

About the Guest Author, Craig ConleyWebsite: http://www.OneLetterWords.comCraig is an independent scholar and author of dozens of strange and unusual books, including a unicorn field guide and a dictionary of magic words. He also loves color: Prof. Oddfellow

Whether celebrated January 1st or the Lunar New Year (February 7, 2008), New Year’s Day (seol nal ) ranks high in Korean culture. It’s a celebratory family affair with the exchange of gifts (usually money), games, lots of food, wishes of fortune, and blessings.

It is also one of the special occasions when Koreans dress in the hanbok, the traditional Korean dress and pay respect to their elders (sehbe) with a deep bow and the greeting, “seheh boke mahnee pahdtu sae yoh”.

by bebouchard

As another year closes, many bloggers are creating their Best of 2007 lists. My top choice in color this year isn’t a specific hue, palette, or pattern. The most vibrant example of a color community I experienced in 2007 was the Bonnaroo Music & Arts Festival in Manchester, Tennessee.

by muzikspy

The photo above is of The Flaming Lips’ midnight-performance on Saturday of Bonnaroo, where super-heroes passed out piercing, red lazer-pointers to nearly 10,000 eager fans. The crowd was sea of bizarre costumes, balloons, bodies, and sweeping alien-blue lights, all crossed and marked by thousands of brilliant red lines. On stage, the equipment was painted bright orange, with outlines of yellow. A gang of fuzzy, red suit Santas cheered on the right, while on the left a group of green-headed aliens kicked and danced from the bottom of their white, feminine stockings to the top of their short, purple skirts.

Insane Amounts of Celebration

Although Bonnaroo has gotten too crowded, too publicized, too expensive, and unfortunately branded as a drug playground, the festival still beckons some of America’s youngest artists to celebrate the power of music.

by joshunter

Nestled in the Tennessee hills, Bonnaroo doesn’t give artists a chance to present their work, especially now that RV campers are excluded from the regular campers, as much as it gathers artists to remind them that there are thousands of like-minded individuals scattered all over the greater midwest, and even the world.

Typography is a significant issue for designers. On many projects, finding just the right font, size, spacing, etc. can require considerable time and attention. In addition to typography, color is also a major factor in the success of the design. What is sometimes overlooked is the combination of color and typography and the effect that it has on the overall project.

Font Size, Line Height & Contrast

Before we even get to the color and contrast elements of typography, we first should look at how dramatic a small font increase and line height increase can improve readability and reduce eye fatigue. The first example below uses 11pt font with matching 11pt line height. The second example uses 12pt font with 13pt line height. Example two is significantly easier to read.

Example 1: (11pt Font, 11pt Line Height)
The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

(12pt Font, 13pt Line Height)
The next moment a hideous, grinding speech, as of some monstrous machine running without oil, burst from the big telescreen at the end of the room. It was a noise that set one's teeth on edge and bristled the hair at the back of one's neck. The Hate had started.

Even with well sized type and line heights, choosing a font color and background color with low contrast can make reading difficult and stresses the eyes of the reader.

(12pt Font, 13pt Line Height - Low Contrast)
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours.

More Bad Contrast Examples:

Example 2: (12pt Font, 13pt Line Height - Low Contrast)
The hallway smelt of boiled cabbage and old rag mats. At one end of it a coloured poster, too large for indoor display, had been tacked to the wall. It depicted simply an enormous face, more than a metre wide: the face of a man of about forty-five, with a heavy black moustache and ruggedly handsome features. Winston made for the stairs. It was no use trying the lift. Even at the best of times it was seldom working, and at present the electric current was cut off during daylight hours.

Hair color has long affected humans' social perception of each other, so it's no surprise that people have gone to great lengths to alter their hair color throughout history – from putting red earth in their hair to risking scalp burns from peroxide.

Natural Hair Colors

Two pigments give hair its natural color - eumelanin and pheomelanin. Eumelanin can be black or brown, and determines the darkness of hair color. Blonds have low concentrations of brown eumelanin, while brunettes have a high concentration of the pigment. Black hair contains more black eumelanin, while a low concentration of black eumelanin results in gray hair. The second type of pigment, pheomelanin, is red. Redheads, of course, have hair containing more pheomelanin than those with other hair colors; however, all human hair contains pheomelanin in varying concentrations.

Black Hair
By far the most common natural hair color, black hair occurs in people of all backgrounds and ethnicities.

by athena.

Brown Hair
Brown hair is also found all over the world, and is popularly associated with intelligence, trustworthiness, and success.

Blond Hair
Natural blond hair is relatively rare, due to its association with recessive genes. It can range in color from pale platinum to a dark golden shade, and occurs in approximately 2% of the world population, with the majority of natural blonds being of European descent. Since early Christian times, blond hair has been associated with being angelic and youth. Today, it is also associated with glamour.

Is it humanly possible to invent a new color? Rochester Institute of Technology Professor Mark Fairchild says "yes"! In fact, he suggests that all observant people invent new colors at various times of their lives.

Dr. Fairchild explains: "As a color scientist, I think of colors as perceptions, that is things that we see. Of course those perceptions are not just caused by our brain (except when we are dreaming); they are caused by how our eyes and brain respond to the world around us. For color it is the light and objects that we are responding to. Most people would take this question to mean 'has anyone invented a light or object of a new color?' Personally, I have not, but I have invented new ways to understand and describe how we perceive and produce colors in places like the movies. Other people certainly have invented new materials that produce colors that people couldn't make before. Things like new paints, new inks, new kinds of televisions. That has happened often through the history of science. But, if we come back to color being a perception, then it is even easier to say that we invent new colors. I think we all do it quite often if we pay attention to the world around us. Have you ever had a time when you looked at something and it seemed like a totally new experience? Maybe a special rainbow, or a peculiar bird, or a strange way the light bounces around your room? If you have noticed a new experience like that, then I think you could say you have invented a new color. That is because color is truly a perception that is unique to you and any new color experiences could be considered 'inventions.' I like to just think of them as interesting parts of our world that make it fun to study science; in my case color science."

Intense moments in life can bring tears of both joy and pain. There can also be tears of something that transcends bodily feelings and emotions. These are tears of realization, when a union of some sort transforms into communion, or a passion transforms into compassion. "Bliss" might be the best word for this tearful state of being, though words are too limited. One way to inspire such tears is to look deeply into someone's eyes and to hold the gaze.

A friend once shared the insight that teardrops are prisms, reflecting and refracting angles and colors of life that can't be seen with dry eyes. Mozambique author Mia Couto suggests that tearful eyes are liquid conduits to the world of the unconscious, and that through the prism of a teardrop you can see visions of things not as you wish they were but as they really are. It's as if teardrops dissolve away one's defensive walls to reveal the archetypes dwelling in the background, the mythology taking place beneath the surface of the workaday world.

Throughout the ages, the joys, pains, and revelations of life have invited artists to gaze through teardrop prisms and to share their visions. Following is a small sampling of teardrop-inspired color palettes from the COLOURlovers library.

v3 launched with a major new section... Patterns. We knew that you loved finding great colors and arranging them in color palettes... so we guessed that you might want something to do with those palettes (Seeing as you've already created more than 3,400 different patterns in 2 days, I think we guessed right). We launched with just a couple dozen patterns to color but hope to add hundreds more over time. Create a Pattern or Browse the Patterns that have already been added.

Use Our Patterns

Desktop Wallpaper, Website Background, Virb Profile, Myspace Layout, Etc... All of our patterns can be freely downloaded or used, but a link back to COLOURlovers is always greatly appreciated and please no commercial use or selling of our patterns. Not sure if how you want to use the pattern is commercial? Let us know how you want to use it.

Share Your Patterns

If you are the creator of a seamless pattern, Let us know and we'll happily add it to the site. The patterns need to be able to tile, be 5 colors or less with no gradients and preferably in .svg format. Tell us how you want to be credited and we'll add your link.

Some Pattern Color Inspiration and Examples:

The first color wheel (a.k.a. color circle) has been traced back to Sir Isaac Newton, who in 1706 arranged red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet into a natural progression on a rotating disk. As the disk spins, the colors blur together so rapidly that the human eye sees white. Artists have been experimenting with colour wheels ever since, finding inspiration in everything from cocktail umbrellas, river rocks, autumn leaves, pencil shavings, to juggling.

The Happy Hour color wheel consists of exotic cocktail umbrellas. It was created by Bright Lights Little City:

The Rocks color wheel is a collection of stones from Salmon River, Idaho. It was assembled by Purl Bee:

This Yarn Skeinlet color wheel features dyes made of cochineal (ground up cactus-eating scale insects), osage orange, chamomile, indigo and logwood. It was created by Sarah of the Blue Garter blog:

The Circle of Life color wheel was created by Thalandor as a tribute to the artist Mother Nature:

This Kusudama (Medicine Ball) color wheel was created by Origami artist Vanessa Gould:

The Pencil Shavings color wheel was photographed by Myruby:

And a full pencil color wheel was taken by ERK_

This Garden Blossom color wheel is the work of Tiny Haus:

The Juggler color wheel was painted by Kenneth Callicutt:

The Chalk color wheel was photographed near Parc De La Villette, Paris, by Jacobz:

Another chalk color wheel was spotted in Paris by seanhabig:

Cover by Claire L. Evans.

About the Guest Author, Craig Conley
Website: http://www.OneLetterWords.com
Craig is an independent scholar and author of dozens of strange and unusual books, including a unicorn field guide and a dictionary of magic words. He also loves color: Prof. Oddfellow