Why is the world losing color?

The data in the article is either not representative or didn't go back far enough.

The best example, cars, only goes back to 1990. And the museum objects are objects a science museum happened to keep, that go back to 1800? Hardly representative of consumer objects in general. There isn't even a single chart about clothing.

Glancing through historical clothing and car magazines from the past century is going to tell you a lot more.

If you look closely, there's actually an increase of red, green, blue, etc. at the same time as the increase in black and white, and it's the brownish colors of undyed organic materials that are decreasing. (Or maybe they were originally dyed and the color faded over the last 200 years.)

Whereas before you might've been limited to a choice of lighter or darker wood for your furniture, now you can have it in any synthetic color you want, including pure black and pure white.

> You would expect an explosion of color in the 1960s and then a decrease

The data shows an explosion of "new" colours in the 1960s, although the trend never stopped. Technology is still no doubt the answer – including the explosion in the black to white spectrum. We aren't limited to natural colours or colours, period, like we once were.

> You would expect an explosion of color in the 1960s and then a decrease

What happened was a lot of muted colors, earthy yellows, browns, and oranges in the 70s followed by an insane amount of the brightest colors possible in the late 80s and early 90s where fluorescent blues greens and pinks were everywhere. It seems like everything got a lot more bland after that and we've never recovered to happy medium.

The big difference between 1800s and the 1960s is that oil paints were mixed “onsite” for color and the the 1960s had the commcerialization of latex paints and Pantone colors.

I should mention that the Bauhaus (1920s)broke out color theory as separate from graphics representation.

Geocities were explosion of color.

Also, pop art.

I'm going to change your first example. Can you see what stands out?

"00000000qq000000000I0000000"

Now I'm going to change your second example, also by three characters. Can you see what stands out?

"H90F3iJsjo$(4ORma1sSKX@)!2k"

Is that a clearer example of what I'm trying to say? In the second example, because every symbol stands out, no symbol stands out. Or to put it more technically, noise has overwhelmed any signal.

I would describe it more as noise... When there are loud, clashing color patterns everywhere, it all turns into noise and nothing really stands out. It's like watching analog TV with poor reception... there's stuff there, but really hard to make out or focus.

I'm with GP on this, I'd prefer most things be somewhat subdued and letting key pieces come out. The subdued doesn't have to expressly be a shade of gray or brown/tan either.

> Its a sentence that seems meaningful, but actually is not.

It's perfectly meaningful. When everything is colourful you can't use colour to stand out. It's very simple. Obvious even.

The drained-color thing is exclusive to a certain type of TV/movie drama, and then also a serious technical problem involving HDR device-side (which is a whole other story).

But if you watch any comedy, or reality show, or plenty of "normal" dramas, on a regular TV, the color is normal.

However, yes, there has been a certain trend involving Christopher Nolan, "gritty realism", and legal-political-military-crime themes, to do color grading to massively reduce saturation and aggressively push towards blue. I don't like it much but you can also just not watch that stuff. It's stylistic the same way film noir was. Some people hated that back in the day too, now it's just seen as a style of the time.

> color grades the shit out of color

Color grading itself isn't the problem. It's just a creative tool that can be used well or poorly. The problem is the intentional stylistic choices being made with the tool. I don't have strong opinions about TFAs arguments re: color in general but as someone deep into cinema production technology, there's a troubling lack of visual diversity in modern cinema and it's not just color, it's dynamic range and texture too.

It's crazy because this is happening in an era when digital cinema workflows from cameras to file formats to post-production allow everyone to capture, manipulate and distribute visuals with unprecedented levels of fidelity and dynamic range. Even DSLRs down to $3000 can capture full frame 4k camera raw with >14 stops of dynamic range which is insane. The great cinematographers of the past needed incredible skill to capture dynamic range from deep shadows to punchy highlights on film and it was always a risk since they had to wait for dailies. And they had little latitude to manipulate the image captured on the camera negative in post.

Today's imagers, formats and tools make capturing immense dynamic range not only fast and easy but cheap and virtually risk-free yet so much cinema looks flat and boring - and there's no technical reason for it. This video shows compelling examples contrasting recent movies with those shot on film in the 90s but also movies shot on much less capable digital cinema cameras in the early 2000s proving it's not digital or grading that's driving this. "Why don't movies look like movies any more?" https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=EwTUM9cFeSo.

According to Hollywood cinematographers in the video it's partly intentional artistic choices, part the impact of composing and lighting for HDR, part lack of creativity and production skill and a big part over focus on flat lighting for VFX shots (because the more expressive the digital camera negative is, the harder it is for VFX teams to match with CGI). I'd add another factor which is that younger cinematographers, LDs and camera ops who learned on high dynamic range digital cinema cameras have been trained to shoot a flat LUT. While this technically maximizes the latitude available for color grading in post (which is generally a good thing), the issue is that many extend this to composing and lighting shots that have virtually no expressive look in the captured digital negative at all. Color grading in post should be for small tweaks, conforming shot-to-shot variance, mastering and, occasionally, saving the day when something goes wrong with a shot. While modern editing and grading tools are immensely powerful, re-framing and grading in post cannot substitute for creative on-set lighting, lensing, composition and exposure choices. Great cinematographers still create their looks with lighting, lens and camera as if there were going to be no grading in post. Unfortunately, this seems to increasingly be an under-valued skill.

The requirements of modern VFX also contribute in an indirect way as well. It takes on-set time and energy for the camera teams to capture and check the increasingly complex list of clean plates, reflection map spheres and color/contrast references with specialized LUTs and metadata at a variety of apertures for every shot. This takes time away from traditional lighting and composition and ultimately producers don't budget enough time. When something has to give - it's not going to be the VFX plates. In modern effects-heavy productions, the VFX director always has a team on-set for every shot verifying they're getting what they need. While this is necessary and understandable, unfortunately, the reverse is rarely true. The cinematographer is not supervising the lighting and composition of all the major VFX elements because they are being produced by a dozen different vendors over a year-long post-production cycle. This can still work when you have a director like a James Cameron who's hands-on throughout the process and has top-notch VFX director and cinematography skills. But that's not the norm. This creates systemic incentives for directors, cinematographers and LDs to lens flat, unexpressive shots. Because if there's not consistent, hand-on creative direction over the whole process, the editor and colorist are left trying to stitch together a bunch of shots and elements that weren't created to exist cohesively in the same frame. I suspect not managing this complexity is how visual disasters like Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania happen.

Sadly, there's no reason it has to be this way. Technically, it's entirely possible to create a VFX-heavy movie that looks like every part of every frame was lensed by a master like Bernardo Bertolucci. There's nothing required that's even that hard or expensive compared to modern VFX blockbuster complexity or budgets. I think the reason we haven't seen it yet is two-fold: today's top producers, directors and cinematographers rarely have the new and diverse skill sets required in one person and none of the few with the skills and experience has had both the creative intention and budget to do it. I'm actually hopeful that maybe in the next few years someone like a Nolan or Cameron will decide to try to take it to this level as an aspiration. Currently, many of those with the budgets and cred are choosing to address the challenge by reverting to creating effects with practical sets and in-camera techniques. This can avoid the problem but it's looking backward instead of embracing the challenge and doing the pioneering work of figuring out how to push through and solve it. Whoever does it may discover all-new creative and expressive capabilities.

> we're all just cognitively exhausted?

If you include electronic media as a source of this cognitive exhaustion, then I'm with you. If greyscale dominates the physical environment, then it's a reaction to something equally pervasive.

I think the sensory load idea is productive, but I'd add a related idea of drawing attention to key things only.

I don't care if my kettle looks "professional"; one is pink, another is orange.

But I prefer walls around me to be white or very lightly colored, not, say, intensively red. That would constantly distract me.

Code in my editor is colorful like a Christmas tree, bur most of the interface is muted beige and green. This is about certain things requiring my attention, and others sparing it.

When everything is loud, nothing is, nothing stands out. Bold colors often work better as accents.

(Sometimes it's about non-aesthetic considerations. I prefer my car to be approximately white to soak in less of the hot summer summer sun.)

> cognitively exhausted?

i find it cognitively exhausting to watch movies that are so dark that most times i cannot even see the eye color of the cast

I don't hate the wall art in your example... it's not quite my taste, but it doesn't make me pull my hair out. If you look at something like the link below, I'd hate having to be anywhere near it. Busy patterns and mixes of color just feel like noise and give me (sometimes literally) a headache.

https://www.apartmenttherapy.com/vintage-bathroom-makeover-p...

> I wish the inflationary trend in linguistic overstatement did the same.

Nowadays literally everything I read is the most egregious overstatement I've ever seen.

> I bet one of those color comparison graphs of the average website in 1998 through today would show the same trend.

    <marquee><blink>Indeed</blink></marquee>

Pretty much every retail store is like this. I mean, it's been this way for a while, but there is so much loud colorful advertizing that having a quiet place to live in feels much better.

> If the environment is continually shouting at you it's hard to hear the whispers, where the meaning is.

So do we currently live lives completely devoid of meaning? That's certainly what it feels like. That's certainly what the color schemes available to us connote.

So much fear of meaning we remove all meaning from our environment....

Isn't all that art faded out, though? I wouldn't be surprised if Baroque period art was originally painted with riotous color first and then faded over time to where it now looks merely like an "opinionated use of color".

In a similar vein, all those old grey marble statues the Greeks and Romans made used to be bathed in riotous color before the paint flaked off.

I'd say farm equipment has embraced the same "meaner" trend, but has also doubled down on bright, vibrant colours.

Noticeably, though, the colours don't date the equipment. 20 years ago the colours were the same, and 20 years from now it is very likely that the brand new ones will still feature the same colours still.

That hasn't been the case for passenger vehicles. They are famous for having a colour available this year and gone the next, so if you have one of those no-longer-available colours it sticks out like a sore thumb as looking old. Which is what I believe the consumer truly fears – owning a car that looks old and dated.

The blacks and whites have remained consistently available, so it is far less risky.

Something I found myself paying attention to as I was getting tired of cars and looking towards training for a motorcycle is what colors stand out, not just high-visibility clothes but the vehicle too because you want to be seen. Once you've tuned your eyes into looking it's shocking how many riders are pure black when they're more vulnerable on the roads. It's an interesting exercise when you're walking around a city onto a new street with cars parked up to see how quickly you can count how many there are, I found it can be difficult to separate out cars with how common black is now, and the less common brighter colors really stand out.

Mercedes lead with "silver" cars decades ago such that the color itself meant luxury. Other car manufacturers (and car buyers) then followed.

Literally every vehicle seems to have that diagonal line incorporated somewhere. I mean the one generally near the windows that slopes downward as it moves towards the front of the car, regardless of the general shape of the car itself.

I think the generations below boomers prefer non-chrome options. The blacks and dark accents add to the meaner look.

It's fun watching Marvel's catalogue from start to current. They really went all-in early on, then the mode-du-jour changed and it's almost obvious how hard they avoid it (a lot of red and green lights for example). Interfaces, weaponry and engines are always egregious in that franchise.

I remember Midsommar being another particularly bad example - the entire apartment set in the opening scenes is dressed in orange/teal. Down to book spines, vases and light fittings.

It's interesting to see films that don't use strong grading at all. I think Star Wars wasn't too bad here because the whole visual language was set up in the 70s and everything now tries to reflect it (lots of primaries in control panels because those were the lamps they could use back then). They do have "planet" grades but it's not too bad.

Ditto.

Maybe we should be more blissful, not sure what leads to bliss....

Almost all car makers offer bright colours by default. In my driveway is a bright blue Subaru (it was hard to pick between the blue and eye-searing orange) and a bright copper coloured Suzuki. Mazda is becoming famous for their innovative colour options. Google "Nissan Micra colours" to see what even Japan's most conservative carmaker offers to those who care to look.

awesome insight. i've heard this referred to as the "site merchandising" problem. There are some products that are there to attract people / give them a choice, but they don't sell themselves.

Cars are not buy it for life items. I generally buy a 3 year old car because it is about half the price of a new one - but I'm limited to what color I can find. If I bought new cars I could get whatever color - except that new car buyers won't be seen in a 4 year old car, and they can only afford to upgrade (to the extent they can) if the car has resale value so they care about what color they (the dealer) thinks will sell.

When we bought our current house it was perfect except the colors were an awful neutral grey - I had a hard time convincing my wife despite the otherwise perfection, and only did because we spent several thousand dollars getting it repainted before we moved in. I'm sure the sellers realtor thought the neutral colors were a great idea, but they almost cost several thousand dollars (there was a bidding war when we bought the house, we almost didn't bid and so the sellers would have lost).

The important point is if you like color make sure you pay for it, and reject things if they don't have the color you want.

It makes sense, doesn't it?

When computers were beige, they went all in on color to stand out. When everything started being more colorful, they moved to white and then grey/silver. Now that everything is grey/silver, they're moving to gold/rose.

I specifically bought a "millennial gray" apartment and put bland furniture: it's mostly white, black, and brown. The twist is that I'm putting colorful decorations, so that when you enter my living room, your eyes ignore all the "functional" items, and focus on decorative items, because these are colorful. It's like those video games where environment is grey but interactive objects are lit.

Only the living room has any colors. Bedroom and bathroom are as boring as can be, so that you do your shit, don't get distracted, and get back to the living room.

It may be called the "brown era", but it had more to do with desaturated, monochrome palettes in general (to this article's point) and muddy textures.

Ironically Quake was like that in 1996, and, partially, Deus Ex.

Well hey, if that's his style, and he can find the confidence to "own" it, the right kind of girl will appreciate him for it.

(As long as it's not too outlandish of a sock combo, ha)

Or he thinks girls like it. That he looks more cool than other boys like that.

With Romans, at least, the typical (and incorrect) popular narrative is that they were initially austere - and that period is when their civilization achieved its peak - and then became decadent and ruin followed.

I think you really start to see the fetishization of the Greeks and Romans in the Neoclassicism movements in the 18th century as an aesthetic, and I'm actually not sure how much was known about the actual Greek and Roman lifestyles (Roman, in particular - a big lot of this is tied up with the notions of Empire) at the time.

Maybe not “the Greeks” broadly, but Spartans specifically are equated with austerity to the extent that “spartan” is adopted as an adjective meaning “showing indifference to comfort and luxury”.

Heh, not in Southern Europe. They are like the spark of the Western Civilization from Law to Arts to Mathematics and Science.

Kids are taught about them as about super serious no fun civilizations. Then I associate it woth fetishisation of military conquest and such.

I would see God's as hedonistic but not greeks. Honestly, my bias is that they were very boring amd sort of artificial.

Last night I watched Erin Brokovitch (2000) and it was like looking at film that had been partially sepia-processed with the heavy handedness of the grading.

The Matrix was a year before that, but they had a narrative reason to use grading, and did so quite well.