MathWorks Blue Meets Air Force Academy Blue
I have always been fascinated by the names that are used to describe colors. There are dozens of web sites with lists of color names. I was surprised to discover that the shade of blue we use in MathWorks logo is almost the same as the one used by the United States Air Force Academy.
Contents
MathWorks logo.
Here is the "official" type font and color for a MathWorks® logo.
clear
M = imread('MW_logo.jpeg');
M = imresize(M,1/6);
imshow(M)
Let's retrieve the red, blue and green components of one pixel in the logo. This is MathWorks blue.
mw_blue = double(squeeze(M(25,168,1:3))') show_rgb(mw_blue)
mw_blue = 1 86 150
It's a medium blue with a bit of green and hardly any red.
Martin Krzywinski
Martin Krzywinski is a biologist, mathematician and artist at Canada's British Columbia Cancer Agency, Genome Sciences Centre. As befits his name, he maintains a crazy web site, chock full of all kinds of science and art. In particular, he has collected a list of 9,284 named colors from dozens of sources. The list includes 940 Pantone Colors, a standard in the printing industry, with "names" like PMS2945-C.
I won't display all 9,284 entries in his collection. Here is a sample of just a few of them from near the middle of the list,
load krzy krzy names rgb k = 5000:5020; sample = krzy(k,:)
sample = 21×4 table r g b name ___ ___ ___ ___________________________ 164 66 160 "ugly_purple" 164 90 82 "redwood" 164 97 58 "footloose" 165 0 85 "violet_red" 165 101 49 "mai_tai" 165 101 49 "style_pasifika_shore_sand" 165 105 79 "sepia" 165 107 109 "PMS4995" 165 11 94 "jazzberry_jam" 165 110 117 "turkish_rose" 165 113 100 "blast_off_bronze" 165 126 82 "puce" 165 139 111 "mongoose" 165 149 120 "triple_sisal" 165 149 145 "triple_milestone" 165 150 146 "asteroid" 165 151 132 "malta" 165 153 130 "routeburn" 165 154 168 "siesta" 165 155 145 "zorba" 165 156 85 "gingko"
I'm going to compute the $l_1$ vector norm of the differences between all the rgb triples in Krzywinski's list and MathWorks blue. This norm isn't exactly the best way to compute the distance between colors, but it's good enough here. (Notice the singleton expansion, a 9254-by-3 array minus a 1-by-3 array.)
e = sum(abs(rgb - mw_blue),2);
Let's say that two colors are close to each other if this distance is less than 20. Here are the nearby colors.
f = (e < 20); nearby = names(f) show_rgb([mw_blue; rgb(f,:)])
nearby = 7×1 string array "usafa_blue" "PMS2945" "endeavour" "PMS301" "peacock_blue" "bahama_blue" "medium_electric_blue"
The closest is usafa_blue, from the United States Air Force Academy in Colorado Springs. I didn't expect this.
usafa_blue = rgb(find(f,1),:) distance = e(find(f,1))
usafa_blue = 0 79 152 distance = 10
Dodger Blue
I actually got started looking for these color matches by using the Krzywinski color lookup web service.
query_url = 'http://mkweb.bcgsc.ca/colornames/namethatcolor/?'; query = [query_url 'rgb=' sprintf('%d,', mw_blue)]; web(query)
Here are the nearby colors, according to whatever criterion this service uses.
type response.txt
dodger_blue (3.7) dusk_blue (4.4) bedazzled_blue (4.9) cyan_cobalt_blue (5.0) medium_electric_blue (5.5) lapis_lazuli (5.5) yale_blue (6.3) azure (6.3) st_tropaz (6.5)
I was intrigued by the appearance of dodger_blue and yale_blue on this list. In case you haven't heard of them, the Dodgers are one of the best U. S. baseball teams not in Boston or New York City and Yale is one of the better U.S. universities not located near Boston or in the San Francisco Bay Area.
There are five dodger_blue on the list,
f = (names == 'dodger_blue');
show_rgb([mw_blue; rgb(f,:)])
There is only one yale_blue.
f = (names == 'yale_blue');
show_rgb([mw_blue; rgb(f,:)])
xkcd
xkcd is a brilliant web comic strip that Randall Munroe started almost 15 years ago. One of Munroe's more serious projects was the xkcd color model. He surveyed over 220,000 people, asking them to name colors. This produced these 954 named colors.
You can download the list.
load xkcd names rgb
Which colors are close to MathWorks blue?
e = sum(abs(rgb - mw_blue),2); f = find(e < 72); nearby = names(f)
nearby = 23×1 string array "deep_turquoise" "deep_aqua" "dusk_blue" "deep_sea_blue" "petrol" "twilight_blue" "dark_aquamarine" "deep_teal" "peacock_blue" "light_navy" "light_navy_blue" "prussian_blue" "darkish_blue" "denim_blue" "teal_blue" "ocean" "bluegreen" "dark_aqua" "dark_cyan" "cobalt" "dark_turquoise" "ocean_blue" "sea_blue"
How close are they?
show_rgb([mw_blue; rgb(f,:)])
Not so close. Actually the xkcd list is already included in the Krzywinski list.
usafa_blue
The closest I found was usafa_blue
mw_blue usafa_blue show_rgb([mw_blue; usafa_blue])
mw_blue = 1 86 150 usafa_blue = 0 79 152
show_rgb
If you want to do this yourself.
type show_rgb
function show_rgb(rgb) if any(max(rgb) > 1) rgb = double(rgb)/255; end n = size(rgb,1); set(gcf,'pos',[500 500 420 100*ceil(n/8)]) clf axis([0 1 0 1/8]) axis equal axis off noticks for k = 1:n patch([0 1 1 0 0]/9 + mod(k-1,8)/8, ... [0 0 1 1 0]/9 - .15*floor((k-1)/8), ... rgb(k,:)) end end
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