[ubuntu-studio-devel] Default Wallpaper Design, WAS: Re: ubuntu-studio-devel Digest, Vol 106, Issue 15

[Ralf Mardorf]

>>> Purple is a mix between red and blue, just as video is a mix of
>>> audio and graphics. Orange is not red, but close enough. Pure red
>>> may be too aggressive. On top of that, both orange and purple are
>>> used a lot of Ubuntu vanilla, so there's that too.

Actually what humans usually consider as being "red", already is an
"orange" tone.

In design the complementary colours could become important, regarding
interaction of foreground and background, resp. the so called
colour-in-itself contrast, enhanced by the complementary contrast.

purple, aka violet - yellow
blue               - orange (some people, perhaps Kandinsky, at least I,
                             prefer blue - yellow instead of orange,
                             theory of colours isn't objective)
red/magenta - green         (actually what we call red isn't red, red is
                             an orange tone)

It differs for technical systems (RGB), but that's unimportant
regarding the sentiment, while OTOH issues with colour rendering could
become important, at least for television "red" is a critical colour.

However, yet the above is unimportant.

Important is that the idea of "video is a mix of audio and graphics"
needs to work for the viewer.

What we humans usually call "red"    and "blue" becomes "violet", but
what we humans usually call "orange" and "blue" doesn't.

If you consider "red" as too aggressiv and perhaps too dominating, then
replacing it by "orange" breaks your idea of "video is a mix of audio
and graphics".

You could solve it by not replacing "red" by "orange", but instead by
giving the colours a pastel shade.

IOW instead of

       "Blue -        violet -        orange" consider to use
"pastel blue - pastel violet - pastel red"

so the viewer is able to follow the idea of "video is a mix of audio
and graphics". The "pastel blue" isn't the Ubuntu Studio logo default
colour, but that doesn't matter and anyway wouldn't make sense, since
Ubuntu Studio isn't = audio, audio is just the most likely most
important domain of Ubuntu Studio, which is good represented by a
different shade of blue.

You not necessarily need to follow the idea [1] "video is a mix of audio
and graphics", but if you do so, it needs to "add up", you also could
mix "blue" with another colour, but then the result needs to be
plausible for at least one, additive mixing of colours or for
subtractive mixing of colours.

[1] Actually video not necessarily is a mix of audio and video, keyword
    "silent movie", OTOH the idea to mix colours for the design is a
    good idea, makes sense, but it's not absolutely correct, video and
    audio always are two separated things, even while film comes with
    analog optical sound,
    https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sony_Dynamic_Digital_Sound#/media/File:35mm_film_audio_macro.jpg
    we usually often can't mix optical impressions with audio
    impressions, especially for digital television that often isn't
    lip-sync :D.