Name That Color

It recently came to my attention that my non designer friends are able to describe the shade and hue of a color better than I can. When I complimented someone on her 'mint green' blouse, my friend asked, "Isn't that 'seafoam'? I thought you of all people would know." Why would I know common names for colors? -- I use hexidecimal and RGB values. Especially working off-site, I communicate colors in terms of #000 and #FFF, not "black" and "white." But it got me thinking. By nature of being hired as a designer, I should be able to communicate colors to non designers -- what if a client asked if I could make the background "isabella"? But who determines the non-technical names for colors? Popularity, one of the factors of usability, comes into play here.

While I am in the middle a few color studies to develop a palette for interactive programs requiring low-vision accessibility (which I also will soon publish), I have come across many online tools for sight simulation.  Firefox's Addon Colorzilla and ColorSchemeDesigner3 are among the most helpful. But the most interesting I found was ColBlinder.

With this little tool you can either enter RGB (Red-Green-Blue) values, HSB (Hue-Saturation-Brightness) numbers or a hexadecimal code for a color, to find its closest match of a named color and its corresponding hue. It is also possible to just use the sliders to see how color hues are changing. The list of colors comprises 1640 different color names extracted from several sources on the web. This algorithm and design is copyrighted to Chirag Mehta.

Just a tip with abiding by non-exact descriptions -- I have referred to colors by name to designers, non designers, and clients, and I can't think of a situation where I didn't have to pull out a Pantone book or provide a hex code anyway.

Me ke aloha,
~*d