Graphic design agency Luton, Bedfordshire that provides a personal,
fast & cost effective creative solution across print, press and web.

Sorry, pink just doesn't exist.

Rate this item
(1 Vote)

I was talking to a good friend of mine this week (take a bow monsieur Winter) who informed me that magenta isn't really a colour. We all know about white and I must admit I'd always had my suspicions about K (keyline from CMYK) but surely magenta is a 100% bone-fide colour? Apparently not, and this article is about to blow the lid on this madness right the heck off. Prepare to be aMaZeD.

As professor Sinclair taught us in the 80s, the Spectrum consists of a range of radiation wavelengths (also Hungry Horace and Jet Set Willy). Red is the longest and violet is the shortest and other colours are in-between. What we know as colours are actually these wavelengths being interpreted by are brains. This means that colour really only exists in our brains. I am trying to make this really simple to understand. I am, therefore, typing in really short sentences. Sentences is a word that my brain tells me should be spelt sentances. This, I know to be incorrect.

Anyway, the thing is that a wavelength for magenta simply does not exist - check the image I have made to demonstrate the spectrum if you don't believe me, Magenta isn't there. We may ask what is relevant but anything beyond that is dangerous. He is a liar. Magenta is a liar. He will lie to confuse us. But he will also mix lies with the truth to attack us.

'But, uncle Dave, we can all SEE magenta - so what the Dickens are you talking of, teach?'

Calm children, I shalt explaineth. If the brain receives mixed-up wavelengths it does its best to make up a sum of the input. eg. Red+Green light enter the eye at the same moment the brain sees yellow, because it's halfway between the two in the spectrum.

To quote Liz Elliott for the Neurostimulation Technology;
"So what does the brain do when our eyes detect wavelengths from both ends of the light spectrum at once (i.e. red and violet light)? Generally speaking, it has two options for interpreting the input data:

a) Sum the input responses to produce a colour halfway between red and violet in the spectrum (which would in this case produce green – not a very representative colour of a red and violet mix)
b) Invent a new colour halfway between red and violet

Magenta is the evidence that the brain takes option b – it has apparently constructed a colour to bridge the gap between red and violet, because such a colour does not exist in the light spectrum. Magenta has no wavelength attributed to it, unlike all the other spectrum colours."

This video goes some way to explaining it, they're American - but stick with it. It's educational after all.
http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S9dqJRyk0YM

Last modified on Wednesday, 23 November 2011 17:29
David Smith

David Smith

Andy and I make up 49th Floor Design and Artworking. yeah, yeah this is great, but more importantly; I own the Mysterious Cities of Gold and Quincy DVD box sets.

Website: www.facebook.com/49thfloor

1 comment

  • Comment Link Greg Kirkpatrick Wednesday, 23 November 2011 18:08 posted by Greg Kirkpatrick

    Frankly, this is amazing.

    It also goes a long way to explaining how colour blind people still perceive the light reflect from a colour but not in the same way as other people.

Leave a comment

Make sure you enter the (*) required information where indicated.
Basic HTML code is allowed.

Cost Effective

We are happy to provide a no-obligation quotation for any project you feel could benefit from our involvement. Contact us for more details.
extraMile

49th Floor Design and Artworking have a can-do attitude which minimises the involvement of third parties throughout the creative process. This concept helps keep overheads at an absolute minimum and this cost-saving is passed on to each of our clients without impacting any area of delivery.

Flexible

We are no strangers to staying late, coming in at weekends and doing whatever it takes to push jobs through on time.
coffee

We realise that things don't always go to plan and sometimes things are needed in a hurry, but without a compromise on quality. We are dedicated to always being available to our clients and making ourselves flexible enough to accomodate the most demanding deadlines.

Appropriate solutions

This year we have been mostly using Adobe Creative Suite CS5 (We especially love InDesign and Acrobat) Cinema 4D, Joomla and of Course Spotify to keep smiles on our faces.
cs5

It's important to use the right software solution to achieve your goal and our clients can rest assured that whatever project comes our way, the 49th will utilise the most modern applications and techniques to guarantee a high quality level of finish.

Our latest blog posts

  • 1
  • 2
  • 3
  • 4
  • 5

Print is dead

Print is dead and so is everyone else according to John Cusack... The John Cusack prophecy/future-documentary ‘2012’ promises us some kind of natural disaster related death this year. I haven’t managed to find three hours of my life I am happy to consign to the joy vacuum that ‘2012’ no doubt represents so unfortunately I am unable to furnish you with anyspecifics on the impending fate of the UK and what form that will take although you can glean some clues from the following sentence which I havehelpfully snatched from Wikipedia as part of your apocalypse early warning... ”President Wilson is later...

Poo-sheet chic

This week I decided to treat the mrs by ditching my usual value basics bright white bumper pack of toilet paper from our weekly shop. Instead I opted for the spectacularly pretty bright and bold series from the Andrex limited collection range which is printed on a material that honestly feels nicer than my actual duvet.  I rushed home, quivering with excitement at the prospect of my wife's rapturous, beaming smile as she opened the day-glow orange Sainsburys bag and the joy she would undoubtably display for the next few days as she got a taste of the high life. I...

Firefox and Chrome Magic

Geek alert. This is possibly the geekiest thing you've ever read/seen/done/enjoyed, so if all things bespectacled, pale and pathetic irritate your sensibilities then look away now.

Bacon Ipsum

To the uninitiated, Lorem ipsum is placeholder text commonly used to fill the gaps in a design until the final approved copy has become available. It was specifically created to have no meaning and its passing resemblance to Latin was not intentional. It's also known as greeking deriving from the phrase 'it's all Greek to me'. It's also boooooorrrrrriiiinnnnnng if you use it often enough - even more so if you opt for the 'Placeholder text' from InDesign which doesn't even have familiarity to boost it's profile. So what's the solution to acute Lorem Syndrome leading to boring layouts? Courtesy of Ed...

RSS feeding frenzy - Time for a feed

At the 49th we are naturally curious people who get genuine enjoyment from learning new techniques, software solutions and by striving to stay in touch with modern trends and standards. We pride ourselves on being a very adaptable design service provider and this philosophy has enabled us to benefit from working on richly varied set of projects in numerous fields, for which I am very grateful. We were recently contacted by illustrator and designer extraordinaire @TrulyAceDesign from www.trulyace.com who I respect a massive amount to helpfully point out that when she tried to subscribe to our RSS feed, Google reader didn't...

Share our wisdom

If you can't be bothered to go to Facebook and Twitter to tell everyone how great we are, that's cool - we don't blame you. Just click one of the buttons below - it'll cost your body less than one calorie to do this.


Graphic Designers in Bedfordshire
Leaflets

Monitored by SiteUptime

(Fake) Testimonials

Due to some negatively reported stories of genocide, I had felt that my brand was generally in need of some refreshment before moving on to phase 3 of my Cake business "I'll be Bake". 49th Floor held my hand through the process and offered real value for money. I was so pleased I gave them my clothes, my boots and my motorcycle to say thank you - highly recommended.

The Terminator

I've created worlds but it's really not as impressive as it sounds and what really was impressive was the speed and quality of the on-line promotions 49th Floor did for my wardrobe business. Great work lads.

Aslan the Lion

My son had been dabbling with design for years using MS Word - but the Emperor and I felt that his destiny lay elsewhere and to really get the Dark Side out there to the rest of the Empire in a modern and professional way, we needed to source a supplier with some real force. We called 49th Floor and just a short time later we were overjoyed with some impressive, most impressive new advertising.

Mr D Vader

Scroll To Top