Design transformed by color

Image done by Zotus Design.

The Macintosh Corporation was recognized in the film Objectified as being one of the few companies in the world who take design seriously. However, this has not always been Apple's legacy. One way that Steve Jobs and the rest of the design team at Mac were able to take their product design to the next level was with the use of color. In 1997 when the choice of computer color was either white or off-white, Apple came out with a sleek new design for their imac. These featured rounder monitors with clear plastic parts that came in a variety of colors. This use of color really set the apple brand apart and gave it big appeal to a younger up and coming market.While it's possible that someone on the design team might have just thrown out this idea while brainstorming, no doubt there was some serious research into color and the theories surrounding it.

Color theory is a vast subject that can go from strict laws of science to existentialism in no time. There is a psychology behind color and the way people interact to them. Red for example may give some people feelings of anger and violence while others feel romance and love from the same red. Colors have been assigned to represent genders, ideas, and even sexual orientation. Colors have been found to interact with each other in ways that can trick the eye into seeing change within their physical properties such as hue, and saturation.  Color and light are very directly related, in fact  color is absent without light because the parts of our eyes that receive the frequencies that transmit color need light to function. Light with respect to color has a different set of primaries and sometimes interacts in an almost contradictory way  to their cousins of pigment. A good example of this is what happens when you mix all the colors together. In pigment, the result is a muddy dark gray. I liken this to the taste of all the sodas on the fountain mixed together, undefined. In light on the other hand, the mixture of all colors gives pure white light. That would be like mixing all the sodas on the fountain and getting pure, clean water.
Weather the complex theories behind color were at the forefront of Apple's choice in the 1997 imac, or the obvious aesthetics drove the decision to diversify using color, Apple hit the nail on the head leaving behind the competition and convincing consumers that the whole rainbow was the "New Black".