There's a word for that.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Cracked is much more thought-provoking than it once was, just saying.

Here's a question that has bothered me for some time, only tangentially related to this topic, so feel free to ignore... but who decided which colors match with other colors?  Are these matches universal, or culture based?

You mean, what colors go together, aesthetically?

That's completely made up. Not only is it made up, but there is an organization which makes up new color combinations every year and then tells the fashion world what to think. So yes, in a sense it's culture-based.

That's kind of what I figured, thanks.

It actually kind of weirded me out when I learned about it... I'd always sort of imagined that color trends happened organically, like designers in Paris, Milan, and New York looked around and took note of what the fashionable ladies were wearing, then designed their lines to follow suit.

Nope. Once a year the "color report" is issued forth, and it isn't a report, it's an instructional manual.

Here's the 2011 report: http://www.pantone.com/pages/Pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20747&ca=4

[Jenne]

What about made up but widely used words. Are they words if used often enough?

Thing-a-ma-bob for example.

Yes. As soon as enough people recognize the word as having a common meaning, it's a word.

This.  And depending on who uses it, it may stay within a certain subset of speakers or carry itself quickly throughout the larger lexicon.

A lot of phrases from the "rap" or "youth culture" as it was called back in the 90's when I was studying this at UCLA have now become everyday household expressions through media proliferation.

[LMNO]

A lot of phrases from the "rap" or "youth culture" as it was called back in the 90's when I was studying this at UCLA have now become everyday household expressions through media proliferation.

Word.

[Jenne]

Cracked is much more thought-provoking than it once was, just saying.

Here's a question that has bothered me for some time, only tangentially related to this topic, so feel free to ignore... but who decided which colors match with other colors?  Are these matches universal, or culture based?

You mean, what colors go together, aesthetically?

That's completely made up. Not only is it made up, but there is an organization which makes up new color combinations every year and then tells the fashion world what to think. So yes, in a sense it's culture-based.

That's kind of what I figured, thanks.

It actually kind of weirded me out when I learned about it... I'd always sort of imagined that color trends happened organically, like designers in Paris, Milan, and New York looked around and took note of what the fashionable ladies were wearing, then designed their lines to follow suit.

Nope. Once a year the "color report" is issued forth, and it isn't a report, it's an instructional manual.

Here's the 2011 report: http://www.pantone.com/pages/Pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20747&ca=4

They alluded to this in the book AND movie The Devil Wears Prada.

[Epimetheus]

Cracked is much more thought-provoking than it once was, just saying.

Here's a question that has bothered me for some time, only tangentially related to this topic, so feel free to ignore... but who decided which colors match with other colors?  Are these matches universal, or culture based?

You mean, what colors go together, aesthetically?

That's completely made up. Not only is it made up, but there is an organization which makes up new color combinations every year and then tells the fashion world what to think. So yes, in a sense it's culture-based.

That's kind of what I figured, thanks.

It actually kind of weirded me out when I learned about it... I'd always sort of imagined that color trends happened organically, like designers in Paris, Milan, and New York looked around and took note of what the fashionable ladies were wearing, then designed their lines to follow suit.

Nope. Once a year the "color report" is issued forth, and it isn't a report, it's an instructional manual.

Here's the 2011 report: http://www.pantone.com/pages/Pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20747&ca=4

WOW.  

[Jenne]

A lot of phrases from the "rap" or "youth culture" as it was called back in the 90's when I was studying this at UCLA have now become everyday household expressions through media proliferation.

Word.

Yo, holla!

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Cracked is much more thought-provoking than it once was, just saying.

Here's a question that has bothered me for some time, only tangentially related to this topic, so feel free to ignore... but who decided which colors match with other colors?  Are these matches universal, or culture based?

You mean, what colors go together, aesthetically?

That's completely made up. Not only is it made up, but there is an organization which makes up new color combinations every year and then tells the fashion world what to think. So yes, in a sense it's culture-based.

That's kind of what I figured, thanks.

It actually kind of weirded me out when I learned about it... I'd always sort of imagined that color trends happened organically, like designers in Paris, Milan, and New York looked around and took note of what the fashionable ladies were wearing, then designed their lines to follow suit.

Nope. Once a year the "color report" is issued forth, and it isn't a report, it's an instructional manual.

Here's the 2011 report: http://www.pantone.com/pages/Pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20747&ca=4

WOW.  

Yeah, I'm already sick to death of honeysuckle.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

Also, seriously, "regatta"? Fuck you, Pantone!

[Jenne]

PINK!  I mean HONEYSUCKLE!  I love that color. 

...but yeah, it gets old to see the same colors over and over again out in the world.

[Mesozoic Mister Nigel]

By the end of summer I will have sold approximately 4000 honeysuckle & regatta beads, and I will never want to use those colors ever again.

[The Johnny]

Cracked is much more thought-provoking than it once was, just saying.

Here's a question that has bothered me for some time, only tangentially related to this topic, so feel free to ignore... but who decided which colors match with other colors?  Are these matches universal, or culture based?

Its aesthetically pleasing? Certain combinations rather than other, its a matter of dissonance or not.

[The Johnny]

And since im not yanking the dogs chain (i just caught up with reading) it is also very culture related.

But theres certain combinations that theres a high consensus of "pleasantness", just look at flags.

[Triple Zero]

Cracked is much more thought-provoking than it once was, just saying.

Here's a question that has bothered me for some time, only tangentially related to this topic, so feel free to ignore... but who decided which colors match with other colors?  Are these matches universal, or culture based?

You mean, what colors go together, aesthetically?

That's completely made up. Not only is it made up, but there is an organization which makes up new color combinations every year and then tells the fashion world what to think. So yes, in a sense it's culture-based.

That's kind of what I figured, thanks.

It actually kind of weirded me out when I learned about it... I'd always sort of imagined that color trends happened organically, like designers in Paris, Milan, and New York looked around and took note of what the fashionable ladies were wearing, then designed their lines to follow suit.

Nope. Once a year the "color report" is issued forth, and it isn't a report, it's an instructional manual.

Here's the 2011 report: http://www.pantone.com/pages/Pantone/Pantone.aspx?pg=20747&ca=4

I knew that this is the case, but just for colour trends, as your link shows.

But afaik, which colours actually match, clash, contrast or otherwise combine in certain ways and evoke certain (sort-of) feelings also depends on colour theory, complementary colours, the colour wheel, angles on it, etc. Kind of like chords and intervals in music. It might not be a coincidence that the visible colour spectrum spans nearly an octave in frequencies, which is why it makes sense to picture the colours in a circle, connecting red and violet/purple (which are actually on oppose sides of the spectrum), angles of 180 are considered "complementary" and angles of 120 "harmonious", is based on interactions of physical frequencies of light, and the frequency responses of different types of cones on our retina.

Additionally, there are certain colour combinations that evoke biological responses in humans, which are stronger than the yearly/seasonally fashion trends.

For example red/white/black, or yellow/black are both "warning" colours.

Also I don't think the ubiquity and pleasantness of the combination red-orange and turquoise-blue (movie-posters were pointing out to me a while ago) is a cultural thing, but also appeals because of it being the 180 degrees complimentary pair that sits at 120 degree in the colour wheel without wrapping over the octave-boundary, and our biological/psychological associations of warm-cold.

[Telarus]

The first one was a Cracked article, but the second one was interesting, even though any conclusions about how people perceive color based on language seem spurious in comparison to the more obvious conclusions about how culture and language affect how people organize and categorize color.

Organizing and categorizing color is a kind of a big deal in my field, as a real-world problem that each of us is forced to solve, and I would love to see these same researchers study how colorists categorize, because it often makes no sense at all to non-colorists who are used to a system of categorization that is largely based on their cultural norm, perhaps the Crayola box. I have known people to rearrange their glass completely, moving hundreds of colors around, because they had an epiphany that required a complete reorganization, with many colors moving from one category into a completely different category.

Even among English speakers, disagreement about what category a color belongs to is common. Is chartreuse a yellow, or is it a green?  

Is brown a kind of purple? Is pink a kind of brown? Do yellows go with pinks, or browns, or greens?

What is red?

We can all SEE the differences between the colors, but we don't all use the same names or even the same categories for them.

Yeah, you basically need to pick a model before you can meaningfully categorize color.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Color_space

And not all of the "combinations" are arbitrary, but they are "fuzzy". If you paint a predominantly orange painting, you can draw attention to specific parts of the picture by putting some blue next to it. This is because our eye actually gets drawn to areas of high-contrast first. For the purely visual artist (i.e., you don't need to know the RGB code for HTML design or anything), I recommend HSV, which is an RGB color model, but describes things in terms of Hue, Saturation, and Value (Brightness), which is very very close to what our eye does when it processes visual images before sending them to the brain. That said, you will get different "complementary" colors if you work in different color-spaces.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/HSV_color_space

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Complementary_color

In color theory, two colors are called complementary if, when mixed in the proper proportion, they produce a neutral color (grey, white, or black). In roughly-perceptual color models, the neutral colors (white, greys, and black) lie along a central axis. For example, in the HSV color space, complementary colors (as defined in HSV) lie opposite each other on any horizontal cross-section.

[BabylonHoruv]

What about made up but widely used words. Are they words if used often enough?

Thing-a-ma-bob for example.

By the American definition yes they are.  Words are "official" if they are widely used by English Speaking Americans.

By British and Commonwealth definition only if they are included by Oxford College, so British English has an Ecole.