Every year a small group of people from around the world come together in Pittsburgh USA to pick the PPG Paints Color of the Year, which will appear on products ranging from phones to aircraft, refrigerators to hotel doors. PPG Paints is the largest manufacturer of coatings in the world, and its headquarters is in Pittsburgh. Though one color will have particular prominence, they’ll decide upon entire palettes of as many as 120 colors to be showcased in the coming year. 

Click here for a peek into the process of picking the color of the year.

 

Research at Delft University in The Netherlands shows that background colors affect the attractiveness of vegetables.

Five different vegetables were presented on four different background colors. The researchers found that their attractiveness varied with the backgrounds. But there's no rule of thumb: quite different backgrounds proved optimal for the various vegetables. The outcomes suggest that it will be difficult to find a background color on which a large number of vegetables can be presented in the best possible way.


When you are designing a brand logo, you want to create a logo that can easily be remembered. When judging print, you want everything within tight tolerances, to preserve that unique brand color. But our color memory seems to think quite different about unique colors…
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Definitely worth sharing: the new year's resolution of Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten, another Amsterdam based entrepreneur, founder and ceo of The Next Web.

Lets fix this shit!
I’m dyslectic. I more than likely have ADD and a mild form of autism. I’m also a perfectionist and I’m often accused of suffering from OCD. Apart from all of that, I’m doing just fine. No, actually, because of all of that I’m doing great.
See, as you progress in life, you adapt to what’s different about you. That’s why someone who’s over 20 years old rarely suffers from the effects of dyslexia any longer. People – like myself – take what makes them different and turn it into what sets them apart from the rest.
It’s called living. That’s what we all do. All day, every day. Nobody’s normal and we’re all uniquely screwed up in our own, special way. It just takes a while to realize what sets you apart actually, well, sets you apart. And that it is a good thing.
This doesn’t just work for your personality, it also works for the world around us. Every threat is an opportunity. Every downside, market inefficiency, stress point or friction area is something that you might be able to create a solution for.
If you’re worried about 2017, and I know some people are, then think about this: How are we going to adapt to these new circumstances? What are the friction areas where you could play a role, where you can improve things? What personal traits were once a handicap and now are your competitive advantage?
When there’s chaos or uncertainty, you feel numb and powerless at first. But then you pick yourself up and start fixing shit. So let’s do that! Get ready for 2017. The world needs your imperfect, different and special skills.

Boris Veldhuijzen van Zanten


“Normally, you’d think that colors are just something that are out there in the world, right? No matter who you are, that thing over there is red,” said Simon Greenhill, a senior scientist at the Max Planck Institute for the Science of Human History. “That’s not the case — not all languages have categorized these things, and not all languages care about these distinctions. ”
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