Metafilter Colours. August 25, 2015 10:49 AM   Subscribe

(Or, "colors", if you prefer..) While wearing my standard-version MetaFilter t-shirt a few days ago, I offhandedly commented to my husband that I liked the sort-of lime-ish green colour of the "Filter" portion of text. He was totally perplexed because, apparently, the colour is NOT green it's yellow. WHAT??

According to him, the same "yellow" applies across the entire MetaFilter site - on the old theme - in the "filter" of MetaFilter, the "talk" of MetaTalk, the "Fan" of FanFare, etc. To me, all of those are a shade of green - not a lime green, but a yellow-y-green.

Can someone please confirm that one of us is right? Does the logo/text always look yellow/green for you on all your various screens?

(Disclosure: one of us - specifically me - may or may not have some "colour seeing issues", but is still totally positive that she's right on this one.)
posted by VioletU to MetaFilter-Related at 10:49 AM (65 comments total) 3 users marked this as a favorite

It has always read as yellow to me, but now that you mention it it does have a greenish tinge, rather like baby shit.
posted by Steely-eyed Missile Man at 10:55 AM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


I've always thought it was chartreuse. Or, yes, baby-shit yellow.
posted by Lyn Never at 10:57 AM on August 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


It looks like puke green to me. Like the color of split pea soup.
posted by bondcliff at 10:58 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ask him what color peanut butter is. And then please report back.

Not kidding.
posted by zarq at 11:05 AM on August 25, 2015 [12 favorites]


I always used to think of it as yellow, but I think the colours in the modern theme are not the same as the colours in the classic theme. It used to be yellow. Now it is green.
posted by jacquilynne at 11:07 AM on August 25, 2015 [9 favorites]


Old color was #CBCC06 (ish) new color is #9CC754
posted by togdon at 11:13 AM on August 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


For me, it's:

T-shirt: yellow
Classic: brownish-yellow
Modern: lime green
posted by zombieflanders at 11:13 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


following on from togdon above: old colour was yellow, new colour is greenish (CB and CC are about the same in old colour, so R=G so yellow, roughly, while in new colour, C7 > 9C so there's significantly more green).
posted by andrewcooke at 11:15 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Color Picker says that the “Filter” color is FDFB93, which puts it somewhere in the area around “lemon” in the xkcd color survey. (Adobe Kuler’s list of related monochromatic colors)
posted by Going To Maine at 11:25 AM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


It's blue and black.
posted by Kutsuwamushi at 11:25 AM on August 25, 2015 [20 favorites]


(sorry if i was mansplaining above.)
posted by andrewcooke at 11:26 AM on August 25, 2015


Yeah, old theme was blue and yellow, new one is (subsite color) + green.

Ask him what color peanut butter is. And then please report back.

Oh god, I may regret this, but: what color do you think peanut butter is? There is actually debate or ambiguity about this?
posted by Joey Buttafoucault at 11:32 AM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


zarq, my husband reports that, "Peanut butter is a light yellow brown. I dare say light golden brown."
posted by VioletU at 11:37 AM on August 25, 2015


Oh god, I may regret this, but: what color do you think peanut butter is? There is actually debate or ambiguity about this?

Apparently peanut butter is green to some colorblind people.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 11:39 AM on August 25, 2015 [6 favorites]


What brand?
posted by Going To Maine at 11:40 AM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Oh god, I may regret this, but: what color do you think peanut butter is? There is actually debate or ambiguity about this?

Apparently peanut butter is green to some colorblind people.

Bingo. I only learned it wasn't green earlier this year.

What brand?

Skippy. Jif. Probably all of them.

My kids think that's hilarious.

zarq, my husband reports that, "Peanut butter is a light yellow brown. I dare say light golden brown."

AH HA!

Actually, now that I think about it, this isn't proof of anything other than he isn't colorblind the same way I am. :P
posted by zarq at 11:50 AM on August 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


That's a new one on me, zarq. Peanut butter is tan - what do other tan things look like to you? Like, tan leather shoes - do they look green too?
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 11:53 AM on August 25, 2015


Peanut butter?

Ecru.
posted by notyou at 12:00 PM on August 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


(according to every daily crossword ever)
posted by notyou at 12:01 PM on August 25, 2015 [8 favorites]


Just think, if I were colour blind, peanut butter could be a vegetable. What else is a vegetable when you're colour blind?
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 12:01 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]




LM, either tan, beige, brown, or green. Depends on the shade
posted by zarq at 12:04 PM on August 25, 2015


What else is a vegetable when you're colour blind?

Donald Trump?
posted by taz (staff) at 12:07 PM on August 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


Vegetable oil maybe
posted by prize bull octorok at 12:12 PM on August 25, 2015


Don't mean to interrogate you, but two general questions about your colorblindness, Zarq: How does yours work? It's something about rods and cones, right? And dudes having fewer?

The second one is if there are any general webdesign tricks that make things easier for you to read? I know to avoid green/red contrast on active stuff, but I'm wondering what else I might miss. (Is there a web tool that can evaluate this stuff automatically?)
posted by klangklangston at 12:14 PM on August 25, 2015


My kids think that's hilarious.

As the child of a colorblind person I can confirm; this is in fact hilarious. Asking my dad what color things are? Hilarious. Watching him walk around complaining that the power company hasn't come and marked where the lines are because they did it in red on grass? The best.
posted by Bulgaroktonos at 12:19 PM on August 25, 2015 [7 favorites]


As I'm Mr. VioletU, I'll report back that I was considering Jif/Skippy for the brand. Costco natural peanut butter is multicoloured because of less blending; the base is the light brown (on preview, tan! Thank you LobsterMitten), the specles are a darker brown with a slight red tint.

At Science North I passed the coloured peg ordering test while VioletU had an ordering that I considered ... interesting.

Wait, people eat green peanut butter? What shade of green are we talking, brown with a green hue, or more green than brown?
posted by nobeagle at 12:21 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Apparently peanut butter is green to some colorblind people.

My brother took a psychology course in college and they were looking at those colorblindness tests where you try to make out a number in one color among dots of another color (like this). These were all going fine until he got to one and and was like "no, except there's no number here. Seriously, there's no number here. Why isn't there a number in this one?" because it turns out he is red/blue colorblind.

And this is the story of how my brother figured out why no one wanted to be on his team in Halo.
posted by Mrs. Pterodactyl at 12:35 PM on August 25, 2015 [42 favorites]


Klang, my maternal grandfather was color blind. The trait is sex linked to the X chromosome, so my mom is a carrier and I have it. I have some degree of deuteranopia, protanopia and tritanopia. This is my breakdown, from a quick test that was posted to Metafilter a few years back.

Cones are photoreceptors inside the retina, that are sections of nerve cells in the eye that help perceive color. There are three kinds of cones, one each for short, medium and long wavelength colors. Cones work best in daylight. People who inherit colorblindness are (to my understanding) born with a lower amount of cone cells than normal. You can also acquire colorblindness, through physical trauma to the eye, disease or drugs.

Brightness is always up all the way on my monitors. I spend more time on websites that have high contrast between text and background. Black text and white background are preferable. So here, I use professional white or the light modern theme. If I happen upon a site without much of a contrast difference, I usually enlarge and highlight text in my browser to try and make it visible. That doesn't always work tho.

Designing a website to account for colorblindness is difficult. There can be a large difference between what two different colorblind people see -- and it's possible to include things on a page that we can't see at all. For example, I have a great deal of difficulty discerning dark red text from black. So if a design highlights hyperlinks in red without an underline, I won't detect them. Similarly, I can't really see purple. It appears blue. All of these things are subjective to me. Not every colorblind person has those problems.

Tools
I think the Colorblind web page filter still works.
Also see Coblis and
Color Oracle.
Vizcheck and Daltonize

Info
Zing Design suggests looking at images in greyscale mode in photoshop, to determine if anything in them gets lost to someone with normal vision.
Designing For, and As, a Color-Blind Person
posted by zarq at 12:36 PM on August 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


As the child of a colorblind person I can confirm; this is in fact hilarious. Asking my dad what color things are? Hilarious. Watching him walk around complaining that the power company hasn't come and marked where the lines are because they did it in red on grass? The best.

:)

"Are you sure you meant to post this to Metatalk? I don't see how this is Metafilter-related."
posted by Horace Rumpole at 9:53 AM on September 28, 2009 [52 favorites −] [!]
posted by zarq at 12:44 PM on August 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Metafilter: I am a nightmare walking, psychopath talking King of my jungle just a gangster stalking
MetaFilter: Colors
posted by maxsparber at 12:59 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


SquidLips and I tend to disagree on how blue something is or isn't. He referred to the grey towel and was talking about the (to me) light blue towel.
posted by soelo at 1:12 PM on August 25, 2015


notyou: "Peanut butter?

Ecru.
"

More like, YUM!
posted by Splunge at 1:12 PM on August 25, 2015


when can we order more shirts again
posted by boo_radley at 1:14 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Speaking of which, why do I get different colors for Mefi on safari & firefox?
posted by smidgen at 1:17 PM on August 25, 2015


ok peena batta now scary
posted by Foci for Analysis at 1:33 PM on August 25, 2015 [2 favorites]


Klang, as a colourblind person the only thing that ever annoys me with computers is using red and green as the only clues to distinguish between good and bad. As in "click the red circle if you agree and the green circle if you disagree" or "Shoot the red guys, they're the enemy. Make sure not to shoot your green allies". When I play Mario Kart I never know what my shells are going to do until I use them.
posted by Ned G at 1:40 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


Red and green indicator lights on chargers, mobile devices, etc. "When the light turns green, your device is fully charged."
posted by zarq at 1:42 PM on August 25, 2015 [1 favorite]


Peanut butter?

Ecru.


Roman peanut butter is Ecrubrute.
posted by Celsius1414 at 1:59 PM on August 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


My son is red-green colorblind. His grandfather, my father-in-law, was as well. My wife has a picture of him from the 70s, wearing red and white pants patterned like the back of a playing card with an electric green golf shirt. It is the greatest thing ever captured on Kodachrome film.
posted by double block and bleed at 2:07 PM on August 25, 2015 [11 favorites]


You are both right. It is a yellowish green, it is. I'd call it a neon version of that pale fresh shade leaves are when they first emerge in the spring.

Your beloved is also spot on about the color of peanut butter.
posted by bearwife at 3:07 PM on August 25, 2015


Steely-eyed Missile Man: It has always read as yellow to me, but now that you mention it it does have a greenish tinge, rather like baby shit.

Just compared. Not baby-shit yellow.
posted by Kattullus at 3:23 PM on August 25, 2015 [5 favorites]


Yeah, for me metatalk is the brown.
posted by frecklefaerie at 4:15 PM on August 25, 2015


The Filter's yellow. Dark yellow, but yellow. Red 204, Green 204, Blue 0. Compare pure yellow: Red 255, Green 255, Blue 0. Balanced red and green, no blue. Yellow.

One thing that might be causing some screwiness is if you're viewing it on an LCD screen, since the logo's at the top and that might mean you're viewing it at a slightly off angle that makes it seem darker and consequently read as less yellow. Or, you know, if your whole monitor is just calibrated a bit bluey.

(And MetaTalk is grey, btw. Red 102, Green 102, Blue 102. Don't get no greyer than that.)
posted by Sys Rq at 6:15 PM on August 25, 2015


Yeah, but zarq, do you actually like peanut butter? And if so, do you feel differently now that you know it's not green?
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 7:14 PM on August 25, 2015


So chips are basically a lighter-shade of peanut butter. Are plain-flavoured chips vegetables if you're colour blind? I might give up purple if I could live off chips and call it healthy, and purple is my favourite colour.
posted by If only I had a penguin... at 7:20 PM on August 25, 2015


♬And so it was that later
As the miller told his tale
That her face, at first just chip-py,
Turned a lighter shade of peanutbutter

posted by Going To Maine at 8:04 PM on August 25, 2015 [4 favorites]


I have only ever seen peanut butter green on the way out, not the way in.

If you see peanut butter as green, what color is brown rice?
posted by AugustWest at 8:28 PM on August 25, 2015


My dad is colour blind, and it has made for some amusing moments, like the day that he got home from work quite angry, because when hurriedly cleaning, I had tossed all his shoes into a pile, and he'd been wearing one brown shoe and one burgundy shoe all day. He didn't even know that he had a burgundy pair of shoes, he'd thought they were both brown. So, he gets home fuming, wanting to give me and my mom hell, and not being able to because we couldn't stop laughing.
posted by 5_13_23_42_69_666 at 11:52 PM on August 25, 2015 [3 favorites]


It has always read as yellow to me, but now that you mention it it does have a greenish tinge, rather like baby shit.

hey
posted by greenish at 2:40 AM on August 26, 2015 [16 favorites]


baby-shit yellow

That would be bottle-fed baby shit. YBSMV but while mine were breast-fed it was orange all the way.
posted by Segundus at 4:51 AM on August 26, 2015


I still miss the yellow.
posted by Rock Steady at 6:29 AM on August 26, 2015


I can get you some yellow.
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 6:31 AM on August 26, 2015


Segundus: That would be bottle-fed baby shit. YBSMV but while mine were breast-fed it was orange all the way.


Ah, my control subject is breastfed. So my experiment is worthless. Though given what we've learned about science journals lately, I could probably get that shit published.
posted by Kattullus at 6:45 AM on August 26, 2015


Eponysterial, VioletU.
posted by carmicha at 8:01 AM on August 26, 2015


Yeah, but zarq, do you actually like peanut butter?

Yep.

And if so, do you feel differently now that you know it's not green?

Nope.

If you see peanut butter as green, what color is brown rice?

Light Brown Rice: Beige-ish. Sometimes gray.
Medium to Dark Brown Rice: Brown or sometimes Green-ish.

Wait...what color is poop to you?

Usually brown.

MetaTalk is grey

That dark gray in the modern theme is one of those colors I find impossible to identify. I'd probably guess brown before gray, even though i know it has to be gray.

FanFare is supposed to be purple, right? I see the top and bottom bars as definitely blue and the middle one I'd have to guess at. I see it as blue, but in the right light it might be pink. Which I guess makes sense since purple = blue + red.
posted by zarq at 8:10 AM on August 26, 2015


The Fanfare bar is three stripes of purple, which I'd describe as:

Concorde Grape - Dark "dusty" purple
Violet - Medium Purple
Lavender - Light purple.

They're all fairly blue toned. The alternate non-white text is bright green.
posted by the uncomplicated soups of my childhood at 8:55 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


This discussion is weirdly similar to debates going on in the sports world about the exact correct color of maize. Where MetaFilter and Michigan football collide!

Go Blue!
posted by Existential Dread at 11:02 AM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


It looks like puke green to me. Like the color of split pea soup.

Q. How does conversation start between two LISP programmers at lunch?
A. (split-p soup) => t
posted by plinth at 11:25 AM on August 26, 2015 [3 favorites]


Now I'm kind of at a loss as to what colours I ought to use to make the MeFi hoodie I'm planning on making. Should I lean towards an old gold or a yellowish lime green?
posted by orange swan at 9:17 PM on August 26, 2015 [1 favorite]


Ice cream!
posted by Brandon Blatcher at 5:09 AM on August 27, 2015


The gorilla appeared 8 times.
posted by Smart Dalek at 6:01 AM on August 27, 2015


One discovery I just made, the configurable site colors are configurable by browser (Mefi leaves a cookie). That's why my FF and safari colors were radically different. Although, even after choosing the dark theme for both, I still see a slight difference. Probably FF does the wrong thing WRT graphics (yet again -- they need real graphics programmers on that project).
posted by smidgen at 2:51 PM on August 29, 2015


kanata, are you possibly set to a different theme on your desktop? Because the Modern theme is probably showing up for you on your phone, and it has different colors from the Classic or Plain themes. You can change which theme you're using on your Preferences page. (And yeah, you can pick a different theme for different browsers and devices.)
posted by LobsterMitten (staff) at 2:54 PM on August 29, 2015


Peanut butter?

Ecru.

(according to every daily crossword ever)


That is a lie, a crossword would never say peanut butter was ecru, stop defaming crosswords, img.

It would say taupe.
posted by maryr at 9:59 AM on August 31, 2015


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