Negotiated brief Research

So, I'm designing typefaces around the colours of the spectrum so I thought it was first important to understand what the spectrum is:
"The visible spectrum is the portion of the electromagnetic spectrum that is visible to (can be detected by) the human eye. Electromagnetic radiation in this range of wavelengths is called visible light or simply light. A typical human eye will respond to wavelengths from about 390 to 750 nm.[1] In terms of frequency, this corresponds to a band in the vicinity of 400-790 THz. A light-adapted eye generally has its maximum sensitivity at around 555 nm (540 THz), in the green region of the optical spectrum (see: luminosity function). The spectrum does not, however, contain all the colors that the human eyes and brain can distinguish. Unsaturated colors such as pink, or purple variations such as magenta, are absent, for example, because they can only be made by a mix of multiple wavelengths." In other words, colours of the spectrum are produced by the different wavelengths of light, when they're all added together they make white light.

The colours are; Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet. It's important to understand the connotative, cultural and social understandings of each of these colours to make the typefaces really appropriate and interpretable by other people. Indigo is debatable as a colour of the spectrum 'The human eye is relatively insensitive to indigo's frequencies, and some otherwise well-sighted people cannot distinguish indigo from blue and violet. For this reason some commentators, including Isaac Asimov, have suggested that indigo should not be regarded as a color in its own right but merely as a shade of blue or violet' with this in mind and limited time to create these typefaces, I think I'm going to exclude indigo.

As well as finding basic facts out about each colour,I have asked people to give me words that spring to mind when they think of that colour.

Important facts about the colour Red:
-'Red is used as a symbol of guilt, sin and anger, often as connected with blood or sex.'
-'Another popular example of this is in the phrase "caught red-handed", meaning either caught in an act of crime or caught with the blood of murder still on one's hands.'
-'Red catches people's attention, and can be used in a negative way to indicate danger and emergency'
- Mars is called the Red Planet because of the reddish color imparted to its surface by the abundant iron oxide present there.[12] Astronomical objects which are moving away from the observer exhibit a red shift. Jupiter's surface displays a Great Red Spot, a football-shaped area south of the planet's equator. Astronomers believe the spot to be some kind of storm

Words people assosciate with the colour Red:
-Anger
-Blood
-Sharp
-Aggressive
-Warning
-Violent.
Most people responded with anger, aggression or blood, giving me a key indicator that I have to make the typeface indicative of these things. I will use my sketchbook work to develop how to visualise anger and aggression.


Facts about Orange:
-Orange is the national colour of the Netherlands, because its royal family of Orange-Nassau used to own the principality of Orange
-Orange in general represents Hinduism.
-The colours orange and black represent the holiday Halloween (31 October) because orange is the colour of pumpkins and black is the colour of night and is associated with doom, despair and darkness.

Like Red, I don't find these facts much to work with visually, and would rather go off of the interpretations of other students.

Words people assosciate with the colour Orange:
-Vibrant
-Summery
-Citrus
-Tangy
-fruity
I personally agree with the words citrus and tangy the most, so I'm going to work on visually interpreting that.

Facts About The Colour Yellow:
-In the English language, yellow has traditionally been associated with jaundice and cowardice.
-Yellowcake (also known as urania and uranic oxide) is concentrated uranium oxide, obtained through the milling of uranium ore. Yellowcake is used in the preparation of fuel for nuclear reactors and in uranium enrichment, one of the essential steps for creating nuclear weapons.
-The March 1967 album by Donovan called Mellow Yellow was very popular among the hippies. The featured song on the album, "Mellow Yellow", popularized during the Spring of 1967 a widely believed hoax that it was possible to get high by smoking scrapings from the inside of banana peels

Words people assosciate with the colour yellow
-Mellow
-chilled
-yellow-bellied
-coward
-smooth
-bananas
I think that with yellow, the idea of making it look cowardly seems much more appealing than the facts about nuclear bomb making and less cliche than the idea of yellow as mellow or cheesy as using bananas to make a figurative illustration of the letters. So yellow is cowardly

Facts about Green:
-In many folklores and literatures, green has traditionally been used to symbolize nature and its embodied attributes, namely those of life, fertility, and rebirth. Green was symbolic of resurrection and immortality in Ancient Egypt; the god Osiris was depicted as green-skinned.[29] It is often used to describe foliage
-Green is also used to describe jealousy and envy.
-Green is also known to have signified witchcraft, devilry and evil for its association with faeries and spirits of early English folklore. It also had an association with decay and toxicity
-A physically-ill person is said to look green around the gills.
-In areas that use the U.S. Dollar as currency, green carries a connotation of money, wealth, and capitalism, because green is the color of United States banknotes, giving rise to the slang term greenback for cash.


Words people assosciate with the colour Green:
-Nature
-Trees
-Envy
-Sickness
-Gooey
-Poison
I'm torn between the idea of poison/gooey which go together quite nice and nature. I think nature is quite predictable, but theres the possibility of creating something really ornate and interesting. I have to weigh that up with the purpose of what I'm doing, I have to say that it's more likely that people will understand nature, but gooey could also be really intersting and a lot less cliche, for now, although I may hcange my mind Green is Poison/Gooey.


Facts about the colour Blue:
-In the English language, blue may refer to the feeling of sadness. "He was feeling blue". This is because blue was related to rain, or storms, and in Greek mythology, the god Zeus would make rain when he was sad (crying), and a storm when he was angry.
-In German, on the other hand, to be "blue" (blau sein) is to be drunk. This derives from the ancient use of urine (which is produced copiously by the human body after drinking alcohol) in dyeing cloth blue with woad or indigo. It may also be in relation to rain, which is usually regarded as a trigger of depressive emotions.
-Blue is commonly used in the Western hemisphere to symbolize the male gender in contrast to pink used for females.
-Dark blue represents knowledge, power, integrity, and seriousness.[citation needed] In Western civilisation, those in the upper classes in high places of political or economic power often wear dark blue suits. Ordinary members of the working class (especially those who work in the computer industry) often refer derisively to these management functionaries as the suits. This terminology is also used in the television industry--the network executives are often referred to by the creative people


Words people assosciate with the colour Blue:
-sadness
-melencholy
-depression
-rain
-the ocean
-the sky
-jazz (the blues)
-flowing
I think I like the challenge of making the type appear sad and melencholy, as a pose to making it ocean-like, like i did in the book project.


Facts About The Colour Violet:
-In the United Kingdom it is traditional to package chocolate in violet colored packaging because of the association of the color royal purple with luxury
-Psychics who claim to be able to observe the aura with their third eye report that those who are practicing occultists (magical thaumaturgists) often have a violet aura
-In Japan, purple is known as the color of death.

There wasn't a lot on violet, though I'm fascinated by it's connotations with the occult. Whilst this might not be what people commonly assosciate it with, I think it would be interesting to explore this.


Words people assosciate with the colour Violet:

-Royalty
-ornate (in connection with royalty)
-Chocolate
-delicate (shrinking violet)
Whilst the idea of occult does interest me, I can't pass up the chance to create something really ornate to do with royalty, so violet is royalty.

Now I've done this, it's important to look at these traits and identify the way that they may be represented typographically i.e. through the use of coutners, ascenders, descenders, uppercase/lowercase etc.