Blurple

- I'm willing to bet that just about everyone remembers being told as a budding juvenile artist that all you really needed was red, yellow, and blue, to make any color in the world. That was a pretty amazing revelation to me at the age of maybe eight or nine. But I also remember the complete bill of goods I believed I'd been sold on when I tried to put it into practice. It may have been my praying watercolors and the fact that this really was a theory and not so much reality. I especially felt badly for anyone that ever tried to build green from a yellow and a blue crayon. Maybe so much colored wax was a bad way to try this. I think Crayola knew it as well. Graduating up to the 24 pack or even the 64 seemed like a penultimate accomplishment. But today, the well-heeled parent sends her child to school with the 152 pack including such consumer recognized colors as Inchworm, Beaver, and Manatee. Let's not even slip over into a conversation about the thousands of color code options we have to work from as designers. Here's the point, in where an abundance of colors run right into identity trends that we're looking at today. Great colors and even great color combinations have pretty much been claimed. Mention orange and Home Depot comes to mind. Magenta, how 'bout T-Mobile? And to really push the point, they've registered the use of that color for their industry. They own it. So let me try another color on you. Who do you think owns this? I know, that's not really a color, or is it? Bet you knew immediately that that belongs to Instagram. And here we find ourself at the front of this trend. We certainly reported on the use of gradation before, but with this report we are taking a different slant as we look at the use of the technique as color itself. Another designer suggested we refer to this as blurple and I think it's a pretty perfect fit. We're not talking about a mix of blue and purple making periwinkle. We're actually talking about this slow and often very subtle transition from one color to another as it drifts across a mark. Anyone of these logos could certainly have functioned in a single color. Look at the almost imperceptible color shift in the flame introduced for Tinder. The blue to green shift in this mark is barely recognizable as it travels across the line work. Maybe the gradation occurring in this new logo for Belfast is a bit more obvious as it transcends from a bright yellow to a warm orange blaze. This color selection is very purposeful and especially topical as it reflects the familiarity consumers have with color transition they see in user interface or app buttons. If all the colors are taken, we are filling in the gaps with gradients. I think there's an argument to be made that the variegated color is possibly the most remarkable thing about a few of these logos. Make sure this is right for your client if giving this consideration. If you anticipate a logo with a gradient, your first detractors will suggest it's an unnatural solution and that it'll take more than a single color print. They are correct and that's about all I can agree with them on. If you have a client that's primarily living in the digital environment, or if multicolor or digital printing aren't hurdles, you may be looking at the right solution. We live in an RGB dominion now and I have many clients that are so digital intensive, they even wince with nostalgia when I ask them about designing letterhead for print. Blurple probably won't make your next box of analog crayons, but I'm convinced in identity, it's here for some time to come.