round hole-punched bits

to go right along with my recent(ish) slew of refurbished draft posts, I offer the following string of paragraphs, which have been tacked on to a lonely, almost-forgotten quote-within-a-quote which has been saved here since the day friend Chris turned a whole eighteen years old. that was sort of a long time ago.

the quote is this:

"Mere colour," wrote Oscar Wilde, "unspoiled by meaning, and unallied with definite form, can speak to the soul in a thousand different ways."

and the quote from which I extracted that quote is this:

Unallied with form it may be, but when color connects to an institution, a purpose or a cause, something extraordinary takes place. It goes far beyond branding, because it hints at the emotional degree to which we respond to something that transcends language. To speak to the soul may seem a lofty goal, but it is by no means an impossible one.

I had to dig around for a while on Design Observer to find the article again. the link I had saved five years ago was broken.

Ms. Helfand was talking about the branding of colors. businesses or causes that use colors to mean something specific. brands that connect a color to an idea. when I first read the piece, it reminded me of Dr. Shook, who taught a few of the more designery tech writing classes in college. he told us once that color will have emotional, personal meanings before it has symbolic or cultural meanings. there are colors we like. colors we don't like. colors we like together and colors we hate together.

so what dear Oscar Wilde said about pure color speaking to the soul? is that true?

I don't know. maybe my soul is not a very good listener. or maybe it just listens in a language that isn't color. or maybe the colors, unspoiled by meanings, can't help but mumble incoherently.

{ image borrowed from this kind soul on flickr. }

speaking of colors... there is a wonderful book called Shades of Grey, which I read a long while ago when it was fairly brand new. I like to think of this book as a paint-by-numbers-esque version of 1984, with a much less depressing ending. you can read a bit about it here (there are a few excerpts, if you can find them) on this almost charmingly-old-school website. Mr. Fforde calls it 'vintage HTML.' isn't that cute of him?

anyway, the novel is brilliant and intriguing. there is this whole society built up around a hierarchy of color. a Colortocracy, in fact. everything revolves around which colors your eyes are sensitive to. marriages are arranged with the goal of producing children who can see lots of Purple, Green, or Blue, for these are the highest classes of citizens. our main character is a Red called Eddie Russett, and his father is a sort of color-doctor--what they call a Chromaticologist. in this very unusual dystopian universe, swatches of certain colors can make you feel better or give you a bloody nose. some might even kill you if you stare at them too long. such a great story, it was. there's going to be a sequel someday. soon, I hope.

I am glad that unlike most of Fforde's characters, I can see more than just one or two colors, and that I don't have to constantly guard my spoons from spoon-thieves or watch out for violent giant swans. I'm also glad that certain shades of purple do not cause instant heart attacks. it is enough that burnt sienna reminds of a headache and titanium white of watching art shows on television as a lazy child.