Take Your Time.
|
April 12, 2004 I grew up watching reruns of ‘The Andy Griffith Show’ — which was not uncommon in North Carolina. But perhaps unique to me was that until 1984 I thought the television show was filmed only in black and white. That was the year my parents finally gave up their Zenith black and white television. Mayberry’s cars, phones and clothes appeared to me for the first time in glorious color. |
||
|
My assumption that the show was made without color wasn’t far from the truth: the first five seasons were in black and white before moving to color in 1965. Our experience with Andy, Opey and Aunt Bee is not specific to Mayberry. Color often lags behind black and white, both in function—mobile phone displays, computer monitors, newspapers—and in aesthetics—telephones, automobiles.
Black and white is similar to the binary language of 1s and 0s. On and off, yes and no, visible and invisible. It is a system that is more effective in clarifying than in disguising. Black and white, when monochrome, is more functional than decorative. Color is not so objective, introducing subjectivity and interpretation to whatever it covers. For example, green and blue are not even differentiated in certain languages. At times the word used relates to its purpose or surface. Black and white are defined in all languages.1 It is simpler to define the extremes, and to leave color as more ambiguous. Artist David Batchelor writes in his book Chromophobia: “Figuratively, colour has always meant the less-than-true and the not-quite-real. The Latin colorem is related to celare, to hide or conceal; in Middle English ‘to colour’ is to embellish or adorn, to disguise, to render specious or plausible, to misrepresent.”2 A monochrome design reduces the possibility of confusion or misrepresentation. With new inventions, it is best to focus the attention of the consumer on the device’s function rather than its aesthetic. In the early days of the telephone, not everyone knew how it worked. “[The farmer] rolled up a sheet of paper and tried to push it in the aperture in the transmitter. Failing in his attempt with his finger, he took his lead pencil and jammed it in, destroying the vibrating plate. With an air of satisfaction he took his seat and awaited a reply.”3 Although society has come a long way with adapting to new technology since the 19th Century, the credibility of new technology is still relevant. Black and white is seen as more serious than color—more true to function. Newspaper design consultant Mario Garcia led The Wall Street Journal’s recent move from black and white to color: “The more classic and serious newspapers, as The Journal and The New York Times, still believe that color as decoration, whether in typography, boxes or backgrounds is not what a serious newspaper utilizes as a design technique.”4 He continued to state that The Journal welcomed color on its front page, but that ten years ago color was a more difficult selling point for newspaper editors. The skepticism at The Journal lagged decades after color was commonplace in news magazines and other daily newspapers. The perception that color is less serious may be because it is difficult to produce. This may explain also the substantial lag in color photography behind black and white. Tom Kennedy, director of photography at National Geographic in the 1980s and now at washingtonpost.com, explains further. “Color palettes, response to light conditions, and the organization of color within in a scene all introduce variables that add complexity to an activity that requires tremendous visual acuity and nimble reflexes already under normal conditions. A lot of photographers might prefer not to have to encounter that complexity because it distracts from their focus on catching the ‘decisive moment.’”5 The required level of craftsmanship needed to make a color image as convincing as its black and white counterpart may indeed account for its perception as less serious. The relatively long history of black and white photography established in part by Eugene Atget and Henri Cartier-Bresson created a precedent for photographers to follow. The relatively short history and complexity in producing quality color images has bred the perception of color as adornment. This may explain why photographs taken in color are converted to black and white on some Internet news Web sites. Not only is it a attempt to identify with a more serious time in documentary photography, but it is a means to simplify the image by removing the complexity of color. When color lags too far behind black and white, people grow attached to the object as black and white. Color seems to be added on, superfluous. Garcia explains that nostalgia plays into the perception of credibility. “For historical reasons, black and white photos have a certain retro look that evokes the past, and, in that sense, perhaps the old idea that ‘anything that was’ could be more credible might be there.” The simplicity of black and white feeds this nostalgia. By converting the color world into shades of grey, it reminds people of the assumed simplicity of the past. Since the prevalence of color in newspaper publishing is relatively new, perhaps benchmarked by the introduction of USA Today in 1982, it has to compete with the history of black and white. Can you imagine pining for the old days of black and white mobile phones? Since we lived with black and white for less than ten years, we never became nostalgic for it. The Model T Ford is etched in our minds as a black-only automobile. Henry Ford was not just interested in aesthetics when he proclaimed that people could buy his cars in any color as long as it was black. In keeping with the efficiency of the assembly line, black paint dried faster, allowing production to move quickly. Marketing and competition caught up with Ford, giving way to the Model A’s color car body. The speed to market and the overall speed of the device are large factor in new product design. A monochromatic display is fast. It requires one third of the time to deliver the required data to display one color than it does three. Color fax machines, although introduced in 1989, have not become popular because they take three times as long to send and receive documents as their black and white counterparts. The lag color adds to technology influences its perception as gratuitous and slower than black and white. Dr. Henry Petroski is a professor of engineering at Duke University and author of an examination of the most iconographic monochrome tool, The Pencil. “Overall, color is secondary to designers as far as function goes, but that is not to say that they do not consider color when they think about their designs as used in context.”6 Choosing an exterior color in an appliance requires such contextual considerations. Bringing durable goods into the home or office used to require a long-term commitment to the object, and color fads played a small part in the decision of what to buy. A lime green shirt can be discarded when it is out of style, but not lime green dishware. Industrial design was colorfully conservative before World War II, but after, the demand for goods, and the introduction of plastics, created a color boom in the home. The post-war explosion of color has matured by now; too many objects compete for visual attention on the countertop. Just as black and white photographs stand out in glossy fashion magazines, many home appliances and objects today are steel, white or black. Perhaps color, after it finally arrives in an invention, eventually loses its appeal. After the colorful cars of mid-century America, the majority of car buyers today prefer grey to any other color. This fits with a PC World survey of computer buyers in 2000. Three out of four readers said they paid no attention to shape and color when buying a machine.7 This survey was taken after Apple released its colorful set of iMac computers in 1999. The hallmark line of tangerines, limes and blues, was phased out, and the iMac is now only available in white. Although televisions, photographs, cell phones, and other devices are now standard in color, new technologies are still black and white. Apple Computer sold 730,000 iPod MP3 players in the last quarter of 2003. All units use a monochrome display. With a society that values speed, inventions will continue to start as monochrome. Our nostalgia of Mayberry pushes the myth of black and white into the past. However comforting that vision may be, black and white will also be firmly rooted in the technical inventions of the future. References 1 “Colour.” Encyclopædia Britannica. 2004. Encyclopædia Britannica Online. 27 March 2004 2 Batchelor, David. Chromophobia. London: Reaktion Books, 2000, p 52. 3 Marvin, Carolyn. When old technologies were new. New York: Oxford Univ. Press, 1988, pp 20-21. 4 Garcia, Mario. “Re: Color and credibility.” E-mail to the author. 10 March 2004. 5 Kennedy, Tom. “Re: color and grey6 and grey6.” E-mail to the author. 19 March 2004. 6 Petroski, Henry. “Regarding color.” E-mail to the author. 02 March 2004.
7
McKean, Kevin. “What’s the Proper Look for a PC?” PC World. October 2000, p 21.
See next essay |
|
 . . . This essay appeared in the book Multi-purpose, published by Winterhouse and the Yale School of Art. . . . See the design for this project Buy the book Multi-purpose. . . . |
Master's Thesis,
Yale University
. . .
John Caserta