Red. Orange. Yellow. Green. Blue. Indigo. Violet. From left-to-right, top-to-bottom, outer-to-inner, this is the color spectrum of the rainbow. Roy G. Biv is the acronym art teachers use to help children remember the sequence of hues that make up the rainbow.
Mnemonic devices aside, Roy G. Biv and primary colors have given way to a new era of color-naming beyond what we could have imagined when 96 crayons represented the outer limits of our imagination.
Roy G. Biv was a fine learning tool until you reached indigo and violet. What are those? Oh, just purple.
Indigo and violet were the first in what would become generation after generation of creative color names. While the spectrum of colors themselves has synthesized and grown exponentially, we are quickly running out of logical names to associate with those colors.
Our color palettes are changing and the thesaurus is already stretched. Have you read the descriptions in your favorite home décor or textile catalogs lately? Those aren’t colors. They are exotic spices or a new species of Amazonian tree lizard.
New variations of color, hue, saturation and tone put tremendous pressure on copywriters, especially those who craft home design and sportswear catalogs. In an effort to inspire and motivate our fellow writers, especially those laboring over next season’s ad descriptions, we offer our own color naming chart.
Like our style? If so, we’ve made it easy for you to download your own copy of the EAG Color Naming Chart.
