Articles
Essays and explainers on colour. How hex works, why systems disagree, what accessibility really means, and what "colour of the year" is actually selling.
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April 21, 2026
'Colour of the Year' is a marketing exercise
Pantone, Benjamin Moore, and Sherwin-Williams each pick a Colour of the Year and generate a week of free press. Here is who actually picks, how, and why you should ignore it.
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April 18, 2026
Cultural colour meanings, and the brand mistakes they cause
White means purity in Europe and mourning in China. Red means prosperity in Beijing and debt in North America. Global brands get this wrong constantly. Here is a short field guide.
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April 15, 2026
Standardised colour systems, Munsell, NCS, Pantone, and the rest
Before anyone could argue about colour over email, they argued about it over phone calls, and before that, over letters. Colour standards were invented to end those arguments. Mostly they didn't.
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April 12, 2026
Why colours have weird names
Crayola, Pantone, X11, and the British Admiralty all disagree on what to call a specific shade of pinkish-orange. There is a reason, and the reason is older than you think.
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April 9, 2026
Colour accessibility, WCAG, colour blindness, and the 4.5:1 rule
Eight per cent of men and half a per cent of women see colour differently. Your design either accommodates them or doesn't. Here is the math, the law, and the workflow.
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April 6, 2026
Dark mode isn't just black
Good dark themes are not built on #000000. They are built on a ladder of warm near-blacks, a contrast budget, and a careful restraint on pure saturation. Here is the ladder.
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April 3, 2026
Monitor colour ≠ print colour
The colour on your screen and the colour on paper come from opposite physics. RGB adds light, CMYK subtracts it, and the gamut in the middle is smaller than either side promises.
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March 31, 2026
Hex vs HSL vs OKLCH, when to reach for which
Three ways to write the same colour. The one you choose changes how easily you can think about the colour, how accessibly it renders, and how well your design system ages.
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March 28, 2026
Why there are 16,777,216 colours
The number on our homepage is a precise maths result, not a marketing round. Here is where 16,777,216 comes from, why the web settled on it, and what your eye can actually perceive.
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March 25, 2026
How hex colour codes work
A six-character hex code is one of the shortest useful strings in tech. Here is exactly what it means, why it looks the way it does, and what every pair of digits is up to.
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