Saturday, March 5, 2011

Needed: New Colors

Being in the environmental consulting business, I’m well familiar with being “green.” The Ecology Flag for the first Earth Day was green. A natural association. But before that event we of course referred to money and most anything financial as green, a reference to the color of U.S. currency.

And then there’s St Patrick’s Day coming up soon with shamrocks and that green beer stuff. Local auto dealers in my area combine two greens for sales promotions: “Save green on St. Patrick’s Day.” If they were selling Toyota Prius vehicles they could advertise a triple green play (as a bonus working in the concept of Red Sox spring training which is a popular daily news item hereabouts).

Not to be left out, there’s old adages like “green with envy” referring to a sickly skin tone brought on by a negative emotion. And so on.

This is all too confusing and duplicative. Come on people – this is the 21st century. Surely we can come up with some new colors to represent this digital brave new world we’re in? It’s pitiful to have to use the same terms we did a century ago. Somebody needs to work on this.

7 comments:

james said...

Someone suggested UV, but I just don't see it.

Sponge-headed ScienceMan said...

Great suggestion - surely you must be a scientist. I used to work for a science-based consulting firm whose internal (employee only) newsletter was the "Ultraviolet." But the external (client) newsletter was called the "Spectrum."

Assistant Village Idiot said...

Sponge, gotta tell Tim that one.

james said...

Aye. Particle physics at Wisconsin. And you?
I like those names.

Sponge-headed ScienceMan said...

Environmental geochemistry.

Vennessa James said...

Nobody ever said it was easy being green.

(low hanging fruit)

Sponge-headed ScienceMan said...

Hannah - Right - the low hanging fruit is likely green because it's not ripe yet.