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That’s enough by way of introduction. Here are some facts about yellow.
Yellow Spot (macula lutea)
This is the point in the human retina at which our sense of sight is at its most acute. The name comes from special pigments that are particularly concentrated at this point: the cartinodes lutein and zeaxnthin.
”Tie a yellow ribbon”
A yellow ribbon is tied around a tree in America to welcome someone home who has been far away and was gone a long time – and at the moment, of course, to welcome members of the forces home from Afghanistan or Iraq.
“Yellow”, Arthur thought
The word “yellow” went around in his head and looked for a mental connection. Fifteen seconds later he was outside, lying in front of a big yellow bulldozer that was coming up the garden path to his house. (Douglas Adams: “The Hitchhiker’s Guide to the Galaxy”).
Saffron adds spice to the advertising
A wide variety of effects are ascribed to yellow plants. Whilst saffron in a TV spot is only meant to make the pan of rice look a little more “Indian”, arnica is (was) supposed to ward off lightning strikes. In the Middle Ages a pound of saffron, used in those days both for flavouring and colouring, was worth as much as a horse. For one whole pound, however, even now it would be necessary to pick tens of thousands of saffron blossoms. And in those days, of course, some people even falsified or thinned it – but if they were caught, in some parts of Europe they ended up being burnt at the stake.
Colorants
The ancient Egyptians initially extracted the colour yellow from ochre, and later from the poisonous arsenic sulphide. Painters used pigments from other toxic substances, lead chromate and lead antimony, and in ancient China the emperor's yellow clothes were dyed with saffron.
Venus in yellow
In ancient German colour symbolism, yellow symbolised giving. The bride wore a yellow veil, possibly derived from the yellow dress of Venus, the Goddess of Love.
Nuances
In the complex colour theory of the Middle Ages, on the other hand, yellow stood for fear, the pale hue of death, falseness, envy, and treachery, but also for the fear of God and the renunciation of worldly things, for abstinence and asceticism, all according to the nuance and the colour intensity. Medieval artists used this colour in their pictures to emphasise the characters of the people they were depicting: Judas wore yellow (for the Last Supper), and so did hangmen, soldiers, whores, and heretics, but also kings and saints.
Painting
“Pictures as yellow as a dish of curry” – as a British critic once said of the works of William Turner. Whilst Goethe in his colour theory judged yellow to be a heart-warming colour, Kandinsky regarded (lemon) yellow as disquieting and exciting. Van Gogh for his part loved the colour yellow and used it frequently, together with its complementary colour, blue.
Yellow press
Yellow was the first colour to be used in printing newspapers, and it was of course the popular papers that wanted to draw attention to themselves by using this colour. That is how they came by their name. Also, the first comic to be printed in a newspaper used yellow as an additional colour, and was called: “The Yellow Kid”.
Fleurop
We at Fleurop have been using the combination of black and yellow in our corporate design since 1912. Black, which absorbs all light, offers the perfect contrast to the glowing yellow. Together they make an eye-catching pair; so much so that in Nature it is a warning that a creature is poisonous (or is pretending to be). Black and yellow are now used all over the world to indicate danger...
…but we aren’t dangerous. You just need to cast a glance at us: www.fleurop.com
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