Color: Is the Medium the
Message?
William J. ‘Bill’ McCalpin, EDP,
CDIA, MIT, LIT
General Manager
Xplor International
Xplor International
Xplor International is the worldwide
association of the users and suppliers of the
products and services that create, modify, and
deliver customized information using a
variety of document technologies.
See www.xplor.org
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Life Was Simple
• In 1980, “life was simple”
• Transaction printing was free of color, free
of graphics, and often limited to 4 or fewer
fonts on a page
• Printing an inverse font was considered
high art!
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Things Have Changed
• Now
transaction
print is full of
color
• …and variable
data, too…
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color Communications
• We in transaction printing tend to think of
color as an eye-catcher, not a vehicle for
communication
• But what happens when we communicate
information with color?
• Some unforeseen results…
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color and Your Body
• All humans react to
certain colors in the same
way
• For example, there is
virtually no food in nature
that is blue
• In fact, blue, purple, and
black often occur on
poisonous foods
• Hence, blue light or blue
dye or even blue plates
suppress the appetite
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color and Culture
• Color is often a non-verbal method of
communicating something within a culture
• For example, the color green:
– is a sign of spring and fertility in the West – so much so
that the early Christian church banned green as being
pagan
– is the symbol for Islam in much of Africa, the Middle
East, and Asia
– “Green is bad. When Chinese says a person is wearing
a green hat, it means that his wife is having an affair.”
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color and Culture
• Just think:
• If your company is red-hot, that’s good, but
if your company is in the red, that’s bad.
• If your thumb is green, that’s good, but if
your face is green, that’s bad.
• If you’re true-blue, that’s good, but if you’re
just blue, that’s bad.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color and Culture
• In the U.S., yellow stands for cowardice, but in
Japan, yellow stands for courage.
• In the U.S., boys and girls are “blue” and “pink”,
but in China, they are “black” and “blue”.
• In the U.S. and Europe, black is for mourning, but
in China and Japan, white is more commonly used
for mourning….and in Egypt and Burma, yellow
is for mourning!
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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The White Feather
• A White Feather –
what does it mean to
you?
• Giving it to someone
was formerly a gross
insult in many
English-speaking
societies
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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The Yellow Ribbon
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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The Story of the
Yellow Ribbon
• This story was an oral tradition in the
1950s. It was a story about a convict
returning home, who asked relatives to
place a white ribbon in an apple tree if they
wanted him to return.
• In 1971, this story was written up in the
New York Post, but the ribbon was yellow,
not white.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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The Story of the
Yellow Ribbon
• In 1972, this story was printed in Reader’s Digest
and was the subject of a movie shown on ABCTV.
• Shortly thereafter, the song “Tie a Yellow Ribbon
Round the Ole Oak Tree” was registered for
copyright.
• In January 1975, Gail Magruder, wife of Jeb
Stuart Magruder of Watergate fame, decorated her
front porch with yellow ribbons to welcome her
husband home from jail, which was nationally
televised.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
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International
The Story of the
Yellow Ribbon
• In 1979, the use of the yellow ribbon mutated to
express the desire for the return of the imprisoned
hostages from the American embassy in Iran.
• This spread throughout the American
culture…until the First Gulf War in 1991, in which
yellow ribbons were used to signify a desire to be
reunited not with convicts, nor with hostages, but
with any American soldier serving overseas.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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The Story of the
Yellow Ribbon
• So, in the US, the symbol of a yellow ribbon has
changed from the hope to see a returning convict
to a returning hostage to a returning soldier – in a
way, a complete reversal.
• And today in Japan, there is a movement (see
http://give-peace-a-chance.jp/eng/) which uses
the yellow ribbon as an anti-war symbol, in part
because yellow is a symbol of peace in Japan.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color On A Bill
• A company
added red
text to a
bill, in
order to
catch the
eye
• But the
customers
saw “red”
instead!
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Color But
No Communication
• About 8% of all males and about ½% of all
females have some sort of color deficit.
• This translates to more than 11 million
Americans, and more than a quarter billion
people worldwide.
• Thus, a company that is sensitive to its
customers with disabilities must consider
colorblindness whenever it uses color.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Ishihara Test
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Using Color
• A person with color
vision sees hats with 5
separate colors:
yellow, red, green,
magenta, and blue
• Suppose as part of
your color marketing
piece, you asked the
customer to pick the
red hat?
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Deuteranopia
• A person with
deuteranopia (the most
common red/green
colorblindness) may
see: yellow, brownish,
brownish, dark
brownish, and blue
• If you asked your
customer to pick the
red hat, what would
he/she do?
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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“Daltonize”
• Stanford University came up with a way to
enhance photos for (some) colorblind –
especially those with deuteranopia.
• This process is called to “daltonize”.
• “Daltonize” was named after John Dalton,
the person who first wrote about
colorblindness in 1794.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Full Color
• The photo on the right
shows a merchant with
5 colors of produce in
front of him and to his
left.
• The produce is orange,
yellow, red, green, and
red.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Deuteranopia
• However, someone
with deuteranopia
cannot readily discern
the red and green
produce.
• If the shape does not
provide enough of a
clue, then it appears
that there are only 3
types of produce here.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Daltonize
• Using the Stanford
algorithms, the red and
green objects are
altered so that there is
a noticeable contrast,
and 5 different items
reappear.
• You can do this by
visiting
www.vischeck.com
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Standards
• In the Spring 2000 issue of Xploration,
Elisabeth Gooding of APT noted that one of
the differences between print and the Web
was that the Web had “ability to extend
brand with color, sound, animation.”
• But now, print has the ability to match
brand color, even with variable data.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Standards
• Thus, print people can learn from Web
people the best practices for print and color
• For example, there is a W3C standard “Web
Content Accessibility Guidelines 1.0, which
become a “Recommendation” (i.e.,
standard) on 5-May-1999.
• One guideline is to never rely on color
alone to communicate information.
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Standards
• 2.1 Ensure that all information conveyed
with color is also available without color, for
example from context or markup.
• 2.2 Ensure that foreground and background
color combinations provide sufficient contrast
when viewed by someone having color deficits
or when viewed on a black and white screen.
• For example, when asking for input from
users, do not write "Please select an item
from those listed in green."
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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US Government
• In 1998, Congress amended the
Rehabilitation Act to require Federal
agencies to make their electronic and
information technology accessible to people
with disabilities.
• This is covered under Section 508
• See http://www.section508.gov/
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Footnotes
• “White Feather” photo from
http://www.viparagliding.com/
• References to green on “Color and Culture” from
http://www.colormatters.com/
• Photo on “Color and Your Body” from J.L.
Morton at www.colormatters.com, and references
on slide from same site
• Photo on “The Yellow Ribbon” from
http://www.fhp.state.fl.us/html/TroopA/even
ts.htm (Florida Highway Patrol)
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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Footnotes
• “The Story of the Yellow Ribbon” based on work
developed by the late Gerald E. Parsons at the
National Folklife Center, part of the Library of
Congress
(http://lcweb.loc.gov/folklife/ribbons/ribbons.html)
• All the slides related to colorblindness including the
photos are from www.vischeck.com
• The information on the W3C (World Wide Web
Consortium) on standards can be found at
http://www.w3.org/TR/WAI-WEBCONTENT/
William J. 'Bill' McCalpin, Xplor
International
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