Color in industry

Consider, for a moment, a red bed. Red is a common color and a bed is a fundamental article of furniture. Yet the combination of the two had, until very recently, almost a startling effect. Grandmother, perhaps, would have thought a red bed immoral. Mother would have considered it at least peculiar. Nearly anyone in, say, 1920, would have expected to find only a Red in a red bed.

Yet, within the past five or six years, thousands of red beds have blossomed in corresponding thousands of American bedrooms. Also have arrived blue beds, green beds, yellow beds, purple beds, mauve beds, and blue, green, yellow, purple and mauve bedspreads to cover them. There is now nothing startling about color in the bedroom—although architecture remains drably monotone. For during the past few years a great pail has up-ended itself over the American scene, has splashed our household goods and gods with a rich, warm stream of flat, bright color.

Remember, for contrast’s sake, the home of 1920 and of 1925. Here there were chiefly natural colors. Kitchen and bathroom were a porcelain and surgical white. Furniture was in natural wood tints, surfaced with colorless finish. The stove was black. Faucets were metallic. Things were, so to speak, as God made them—each object deriving its color from the material of which it was fashioned. Even the family car was black, or some dull, dark color allied to blackness. In the nursery, perhaps, Junior possessed and treasured a blue horse. Only in the nursery, however, was such a contradiction of nature permissible.

Turn now to the thoroughly painted home of 1928. Here so utilitarian an object as a sink was purchased from a color range of T’äng Red, Orchid of Vincennes, Royal Copenhagen Blue, Ivoire de Medici, St. Porchaire Brown, Rose du Barry, Ionian Black, Clair de Lune Blue, Ming Green and Meissen White. In the cellar stood a Redflash Boiler, more crimson than the flames in the adjacent furnace. On the door of the orange refrigerator was perched a bright green parrot. Not only the dishes, but the pots and pans were decked in bright gay tints and tones. A green-tiled bathroom was set off with green tub, green towels and, monstrously enough, green toilet paper. For afternoon tea there were blue glasses and a yellow cloth. A yellow alarm clock—a cherry garbage can—a scarlet typewriter—surfaces had turned suddenly into palettes. Nor had such staples as chairs, desks and tables missed submergence in color’s rising tide. As for automobiles—the autumn woods showed no more varied or more brilliant plumage.

The aesthetic value of all this decoration was, in many instances, open to question and, in its more extreme vagaries, color suffered from the fevered and fleeting qualities of a fad. Yet in a country so long committed to the proposition that where there is beauty there is decadence, the acceptance of color was undoubtedly significant from the standpoint of old traditions being abandoned and old suppressions being released. Turning from color in the home to color outside the home—from color domestic to color industrial—it is easy to see how in the past, and even in the present, industry has used color chiefly for some utilitarian purpose. Identification, attention, and standardization—these have been the trinity of causes on which the use of color has been based.

As long ago as the days of the Civil War, when the first Atlantic & Pacific grocery store was opened in New York, a shrieking red set it off from neighboring emporiums. Perhaps it is from this precedent that chain store units have so generally adopted a distinctive decorative effect—certainly all the Great Atlantic & Pacific Tea Company’s stores are still as red as their first parent; red, too, are the stores of Woolworth and of Kresge. A more unusual instance of color identification is the blue coal of the Delaware, Lackawanna & Western Coal Co. Gasoline and motor oil makers have produced the yellow of Texaco, the red of Socony Special, the blue of Sun Oil Co., this last effort having partially failed of its purpose when Pure Oil also marketed a blue gasoline. In full page newspaper advertisements Sun Oil complained: “Is it not a fair assumption that no other refiner would follow our lead and market a blue gasoline except with intent to deceive?”

Violet, ivory, & gold

Allied to the use of color as a means of identification is the use of color as a means of securing attention. Conspicuous, for example, are the planes of Colonial Airways Corp.—their bright blue bodies and bright orange wings standing sharply clear against the blue and grey of the sky or the brown and green of the earth. In a similar manner many of the railroads have designed special colors for their crack expresses. It is a long time since the old New England Railroad ran its gleaming white Ghost Train between Boston and New York. Today, however, America matches the PLM’s Train Bleu (Paris to the Riviera) with the Blue Comet which makes its profitable daily run from New York to Atlantic City for the Central R. R. of New Jersey. We have also the Chicago Great Western’s Red Bird (Minneapolis and Rochester, Minn.), the green, gold-striped locomotives of the Southern Railway, and the red-and-maroon engines which pull the Chicago & Alton’s Alton, Ltd. between Chicago and St. Louis. Soon we shall have gorgeous, glittering things like the Rheingold Express, which streaks its violet, ivory and gold from the North Sea to the Alps; like the Golden Arrow Express, which carries trippers from Calais to Paris at 60 miles an hour, in amber and cream cars, for $3.35 extra fare. Indeed, the Iron Horse has become most piebald on the Denver & Rio Grande Western Railroad, which, running through the Grand Canyon, has decorated its cars in colors “symptomatic of the Grand Canyon at sunset”. There are occasional backslidings, of course—a conspicuous example being the unaccountable reversion of the Chicago & Northwestern from lemon yellow to “Pullman green.” Meanwhile, as the railroads have taken to color, so also has the railroads’ sleeping partner, the Pullman Co. “Color,” believes James Keeley, Pullman’s Assistant to the President, “is becoming more and more of a selling urge.” The urge has resulted in a variation from the standard mahogany and walnut graining with green and black carpets in favor of flat tones of grey, buff and blue.

As color for identification and color for attention are both susceptible of classification under the broader heading of color for advertisement, a discussion of these types of color would hardly be complete without reference to advertising color in the more technical sense of colored advertising pages. Charles Daniel Frey notes that on October 18, 1924, the Saturday Evening Post printed its first four-page insert of full color advertisements (Simmons Steel Bedroom Furniture, Whitman Candy, Heinz, Kraft Cheese). In that year the Post scheduled 20 four-color pages at $10,500 a page, netting the Curtis Publishing Co. $210,000. Last year the Post scheduled 1307 four-color pages, at $11,500 each, making gross receipts of $15,030,500. From this expenditure advertising agencies collected not less than $2,250,000 in commissions, while advertisers paid the more popular commercial artists from $500 to $1500, apiece, for washes and oils. One of the most interesting by-products of the four-color advertising era is the commercial artist who, working almost entirely from relatively complete black-and-white sketches prepared by art men in agency studios, can readily secure himself an annual income of $40,000, $50,000, $75,000, and up. Color in advertising had its genesis in the attention value of the color page as opposed to what were then the prevailing black-and-white pages. It received a tremendous impetus, however, from the spreading vogue of colored merchandise, for obviously the manufacturer featuring color in his automobile, his bathtub or his crockery would use color pages for the appropriate and accurate representation of his product.

It may perhaps be argued that in all the color manifestations thus far discussed the element of beauty was not entirely absent. Nevertheless, the element of beauty was certainly (with the possible exception of the renovated Pullmans) incidental. Aesthetic considerations, however, did move the Consolidated Gas Company to paint its waterless gas holders (on Manhattan and Long Island) in from four to fifteen colors, shading from a dark base to a light crown. They are barely visible on the average day. As nearly as any tanks with a capacity of 15,000,000 cubic feet may be made elusive, chameleon-like objects, these examples of industrial camouflage have disappeared into their surroundings.

Custom & rule

There is another large division of industrial color from which aesthetics are entirely missing. This division is the standardization division—well illustrated by the prevailing tendency to make tonics red (perhaps through the suggestion of the red-blooded results) and indigestion remedies green. Violet-scented soap, candy and perfume are usually violet in color; synthetic cherry jam and orange drinks are generally closer to the natural fruits in color than in taste. Quintessence of standardized color is found in the Bureau of Standards in Washington, where a colorimetry laboratory fixes standard colors for such commodities as tobacco, bricks, chocolate, flour, meats, honey, false teeth, tomatoes. In each of these cases, it is custom which dictates color and standardization which turns custom into rule.

It will therefore be observed that color in industry did not reach and has not reached the proportions of an epidemic, even though the dots of color on the American scene are undoubtedly increasing. Color in the home, however—color as applied to the daily life of the normal citizen—was unquestionably a vogue and has continued to exert a definite and a powerful influence. The young housewife of today is called upon to pronounce aesthetic judgment upon such varied and extraordinary objects as wheelbarrows, washstands, stoves and ice cubes. It has become possible for her to say: “I hate that double boiler”, or “I think that bathtub is beautiful”. It is perhaps true that an object such as a garbage pail should not appropriately be tinted like the flowers of the field and it is perhaps peculiar that bathrooms should be so reminiscent of Solomon in all his glory. On the other hand, there is in color a warmth and a vividness, a suggestion of life and movement, a variation from drabness and monotony. Certainly color has fitted the tempo of the times. Striped tables were appropriate to short skirts. Yellow desks had an affinity for bobbed hair. Nearly everyone likes bright colors. And, in this post-war period of broken precedents, of weakened traditions, it is not surprising that old chromatic inhibitions should be shaken off and that the American people should gratify its instinct for color by bathing itself in a torrent of brilliant hues.

Fords & towels

Meanwhile, aside from cultural considerations, the color movement produced a notable economic activity. The most dramatic example of the economic strength of the color trend was of course evidenced in Henry Ford’s futile opposition and ultimate capitulation to the movement in which General Motors did much to lead the way. Out of the war sprang one of industry’s most ardent colorists, G. M.’s able Capt. H. Ledyard Towle. “I can make a stubby car look longer and lower,” he announced. Other manufacturers, willingly drifting with the color stream, adding, indeed, the power of advertising to its velocity and energy, profited notably. For a long time the plumber had been selling mere sinks. Now he was selling Beauty. For a long time the maker of towels had dealt in a product standardized in white. Now he was able to attract the eye, and the pocketbook, with towels of every hue. In countless department stores countless salespersons explained that this yellow pot, that purple pan, were indeed essential ingredients to the contemporary home. In a suddenly kaleidoscopic world, color had become a master salesman, a distributor extraordinary.

Particularly active were the paint makers. Already E. I. du Pont de Nemours had developed Duco, a quick-drying lacquer which supplied the finish to almost all General Motors automobiles and many cars of other makes. The same qualities of easy application, fast drying and the formation of a hard, brilliant surface which made Duco so useful to the automobile maker recommended it also to the home-decorator. Therefore not only the du Pont company, but Sherwin-Williams, Devoe & Raynolds, and many a smaller paint-maker began pouring lacquer over the suddenly color-conscious world. Paint-advertising, indeed, developed a vigorous “paint your home” movement. Sherwin-Williams looks forward to the time when each year will see two paint jobs on the walls of the house, bright colors for winter and cool colors for summer. Booklets on interior decoration were widely distributed; interior decorators were employed to design kitchens and bedrooms and dining rooms in the new bright colors; housewives everywhere were urged to secure a supply of lacquer and try their hands at revivifying the old homestead. Perhaps not many color neophytes were sufficiently enthusiastic to attempt a complete redecoration, but no doubt a large number of individual pieces of furniture went through the lacquering process. Duco contributed a generous share to the du Pont 1928 net profit of $64,097,798; Sherwin-Williams discovered that reds, blues and greens had become sales leaders in place of the standard and traditional whites and greys.

Staples v. style

It should be added, however, that a considerable portion of the color sound and fury signified not very much in terms of ultimate profit, particularly for the small dealer. Whenever a staple goes in for style, the ancient problem of novelty versus standardization immediately asserts itself. If a product formerly manufactured in three colors is manufactured in forty colors, total sales of that product are doubtless increased by the color variety. Yet, even if sales in the three original colors are not injured, the dealer has forty additional lines to complicate his turnover. Some of the colors may be partial failures, some may prove to have practically no appeal.

All such ugly ducklings exercise an extremely unhealthy influence on total profits an influence which ultimately reacts on the manufacturer’s sales. Makers and sellers of women’s shoes went through the same process of styling a staple when short skirts put both shoes and stockings in fashion’s limelight. The result was an unquestioned increase in unit prices and in gross business, but coupled with a bewildering multiplicity of “numbers” (i.e., styles) many of which were sold, if at all, only at clearance bargains. Staples do profit by the addition of a style element, but not when the style element pushes them too far into the novelty field.

It is for this reason that some of the more weird manifestations of color have already disappeared and that there is a present emphasis upon the scientific approach to color.

Minor examples of the application of accurate (as opposed to haphazard) color may be observed in objects as disparate as oil tanks and hospitals. Petroleum, gas or liquid, expands with heat; light colors prevent heat absorption; hence tanks painted with white or aluminum paints prevent evaporation, preserve almost intact their allotted quotas of petroleum. The Department of Commerce reports the widespread adoption of colored textiles for hospital decoration (incidentally providing a new use for cotton), while the walls of one Chicago hospital have been painted green in an effort to rest the surgeon’s eyes as he looks up from the wound before him.

Hue, value, chroma

But science has come to the aid of color in a manner much more significant and inclusive. Through the analytical color discoveries, about 1900, of A. H. Munsell of Boston, we have learned to describe color in terms of Hue (the color), Value (the amount of light any given color reflects) and Chroma (the intensity of color). By these three dimensions, we reduce a color wave to a definite entity just as the musician reduces a sound wave to a note in a scale. Within the last few months we have gained an instrument called a color analyser, which measures the amount of red, yellow, green, blue and purple in any material and records on a cylinder the wave length reading of each color.

The mechanization of color judgment is no new notion. Colorists for a long time have mouthed such words as spectrophotometer, colorimeter. But most of these instruments depended ultimately on the human eye and were notoriously weak in breaking down the violet end of the spectrum. The latest instruments, perfected by Prof. Arthur C. Hardy, are a complicated system of prisms, photo-electric cells, filament tungsten lamps, flicker discs. Known as the recording photoelectric color analyser, the instrument has these cardinal virtues: it eliminates the human error in reading color, it analyses correctly for any given angle at which an object is usually viewed (roofs as opposed to dresses), for any amount or kind of light to which an object will usually be exposed (dresses by day, dresses by night), it is efficient for reading the violet end of the spectrum, it is quick (approximately 30 seconds to a reading) though it can submit a piece of material to illumination of 150 lumens per square centimeter (15 times more intense than full sunlight on a clear summer day), there is no danger from heat. (Professor Hardy’s own description of his color analyser is printed in the Appendix.)

Case-hardened empiricists may sniff at mechanical color contrivances, but the days of their sniffing are numbered. Both the Armstrong Cork Co., largest of U. S. linoleum manufacturers, and the Mohawk Carpet Mills, Inc., one of the largest rug and carpet makers, pay high retaining fees to Arthur S. Allen, who is perhaps the leading American color authority. When Mr. Allen visited the Mohawk Carpet Mills, Inc., he discovered its designers working empirically and haphazardly with thousands of tufts of wool, each of a different color. Gradually he showed them how just as many and as varied color-combinations could be created from 600 tufts, scientifically selected and arranged. Much the same problems are being met in much the same way, by Mr. Allen, at the Armstrong Cork Co. More obvious examples of the application of science to color are seen in the redesigning (with gratifying sales increases) of packages used by the makers of Lifebuoy Soap, Bokar Coffee, Kotex, Packer’s Pine Tar Shampoo. Toward the tangible statement, the mathematical expression, the scientific colorist now feels his way. Upon his success or failure in large part depends the nature of the future use of color.

Barbaric towers

Inevitably, the color wave must leave its mark upon the customs and habits of thought of a people reticent and suppressed in matters of decoration. It was not long ago that Anglo-Saxon poets sang of the “barbaric splendors” of the East, insinuating notes of virtuous disapproval in faultless hexameters. There was something vaguely shocking about temples and palaces which glittered like prisms in the sun. Yet last fall, at the dedication of Yenching College (near Peking), Anglo-Saxon architects enthusiastically applauded the marriage of Eastern aesthetics (blue-tiled pagoda roofs, red lacquer columns, white walls) to Western structural efficiency. And along the business streets of our (more or less) Anglo-Saxon cities arise buildings of industry which begin to bear a not distant resemblance to the “barbaric” East.

There are differences, of course, both in quantity and in quality. Architectural color still resides chiefly in plastic and non-essential ornament, in friezes and mouldings. That color is itself ornament and may be applied boldly to the very structure of a skyscraper, is still held to be advanced and possibly dangerous thinking. Our materials are not like those of the East. We have no supplies of rubies and emeralds with which to stud our columns. But we do have fixed colors in terra cotta which will outlast the pigments (although not the ceramics) of the East by many generations. Curiously enough, this matter of material has had a close association with the question of “barbarism”. The most timid Anglo-Saxon can view a red brick building without either a moral or an aesthetic flutter. Put the same building in the same shade of terra cotta, and its acceptance will drop. Put it in some new plastic such as casein (as Mr. Buckminster Fuller would do), and the building will be dismissed as a stunt. The distinctions are absurd, but they have emerged from long familiarities and long distrusts.

The result is that America has not yet seen a major architectural effort in which color has been unreservedly and intelligently used. The office buildings of New York and Chicago and Detroit are flecked with brilliant (and not always attractive) patches; gold-and-black has been exploited in marble façades and over entire exteriors (the dramatic American Radiator Co. building in Manhattan); colored terra cotta appears on markets (Torrance Market Building, Los Angeles), on warehouses (Reebie Bros., Chicago), on restaurants (Coney Island). But nowhere has a great skyscraper risen, full-bodied, gleaming with color. In spite of Yenching, in spite of beautiful and durable materials, in spite of color-drenched interiors, no builder has been willing to gamble the future of a $15,000,000 building on the conviction that the color wave also scales its outside walls.

No colored skyscrapers in steel and cement, but many in drawing-paper and water-color. Students at art schools submit them as theses; the National Terra Cotta Society reproduces them in workmanlike booklets; architects design them in their spare hours. FORTUNE prints, upon a preceding page of this article, a picture made for a practical businessman by a practical architect who believes it can be and should be translated into fact. To Architect William Bergen Chalfant of Pittsburgh went Mr. Amos Parrish, New York fashion analyst. He asked for a design for a skyscraper to be dedicated to Fashion. A highly practical and profitable building, faced with standard-sized terra cotta blocks, rising 720 feet above the street, this skyscraper would be the first to discard colored ornament—discard ornament altogether—and rely upon honest color itself to create its emotional effects. It is hard to exaggerate the importance of Mr. Chalfant’s practical study for a practical purpose. If the Fashion Building does arise, if it is commercially successful, New York may yet challenge the magnificence, if not the tranquillity, of the New Jerusalem.

Alone among the arts which serve industry, architecture lags behind in the rush to know and use color. When at length it comes into its stride, it can make the most spectacular exhibition of all. The splendid Jain temples of Jaipur, gorgeous with their emeralds and rubies and sapphires, will pale beside a green and orchid tower, vaulting a fifth of a mile into the air. We shall outdo the barbarians. And our poets will applaud.