The other day, we asked nearly 300 art university students about their favorite colors using a questionnaire survey. The results showed their favorite colors mostly belong to the spectrum of blue and green. That conformed to a recent trend that favors blue colors tinted with green.

Turquoise blue is a member of this blue-green family. This color, derived from the color of a jewel, is included in the JIS 269 colors (Table of Japanese Industrial Standard’s Colors). Meanwhile, the JIS color classification system classifies this turquoise-blue color as “bright greenish blue.” Suppose you hear someone say, “I got a turquoise-blue T-shirt,” and then another one say, “I got a bright greenish blue T-shirt.” I bet the two cases give you quite different impressions. The former helps you easily bring up the image of the color while the latter provides a useful means of systematically categorizing the color.

In our business of color design, we sometimes deal with colors that change their names as we move forward with the design process. They are like a fish that changes its name as it grows. These colors are given different names as they go through different stages of the design process such as design proposal, design development, and market launch. A color that starts with a fascinating name at the proposal stage sometimes ends up with a lackluster one when it reaches the final stage of the process because of its ease of classification. The opposite is also true. Wouldn’t it be fun to secretly know the names of a color that gave way to the finally approved one?

Kosuke Inoue

CMFG Design Dept.

Senior Director