On Thursday, April 24, 2003, at 05:18 PM, Rocky Entriken wrote:
> Actually, no. Both red and the patriotic blue (which is a dark blue)
> would
> be very difficult to see on black cars. We tell people all the time,
> red on
> black is NOT contrast (nor black on red). Both are chromatically dark
> colors.
While I will agree that red on black (and the reverse) is not good
contrast in general, I have to disagree with this statement. "Red"
covers a lot of ground; from somewhere north of 'pink' to crimsons with
so much blue in them it seems like they should be purple. Some of
those shades do have good contrast on black, some don't. But the
assertion that red doesn't have good contrast with black is a
relatively recent one; until, oh, the 11th or 12th centuries it was
pretty much accepted that it did, and even afterwards in some areas;
you will find German coats of arms through 1600 that use red-on-black
(and vis versa). I would strong recommend against it (the English and
French of the same period rarely used those two colors alone together,
because they didn't consider them to have good contrast), but it can be
done so it works.
> Some shades of blue -- baby blue, sky blue, day-glo blue, etc. --
> work on black but not the deep blue as seen in the union of the
> American
> flag. Put that on a car and try to discern it 100 feet away as it goes
> by at
> 50 mph at an oblique angle and it is well nigh impossible. You wanna be
> patriotic? Put a flag sticker on the car, but don't cut the flag up to
> make
> a number out of it!
Blue is a bigger problem, unless you lighten it up so much it is
essentially a tinted white.
I know. We could require everyone to use the national country
coloring for race cars. So almost all the cars at national events
would have to be white with blue chassis and blue numbers... But it
would solve the contrast problem, at least until they got dirty.
David
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