Rustam K. Lead Designer

Pure white: how color affects brand perception

Many people don't consider white as a true color because it has no color tone. But without its own tone, white is made up of color waves of all lengths, that is, it is a combination of all colors at once.

White color in psychology and culture

White has a dual meaning. On the one hand, it is an "airy" color that is associated with purity, simplicity and openness. Lightness, freshness and impeccability are its credo. But an excess of white can tire, cause a feeling of cold and emptiness, loneliness. On an emotional level, it helps relieve stress and irritation, energize and encourage action.

White has always been the color of goodness as light is opposed to darkness, and a good fellow will defeat an evil dragon. White magic is a synonym for magic, a counterbalance to the black magic of evil. The white flag became a sign of reconciliation even before AD, but was especially widespread in two world wars. In the twentieth century, Pablo Picasso painted a dove, and white as a symbol of peace and goodness is still with us.

For fashion, white is one of the basic colors, always relevant and remaining classic. It goes well with all other colors. Previously, the opportunity to dress in white was available only to the rich, since snow-white fabrics, clothes, sheets and tablecloths could only be afforded by wealthy people.

Therefore, white has become a symbol of upper class and power. Today, white is still easily soiled and impractical, but both the technology of washing and its availability have changed. Fashion designers and designers love white because it is like a canvas on which you can draw anything with texture, combinations and accents.

Elegance: Apple

In 1992, Apple hired designer Jonathan Ive, and it proved to be a pivotal decision for the company. It was under his leadership that all the iconic Apple products that influenced the design of three decades were developed. He has created skins for iPods, Macbooks, iPhones, Apple Watches, headphones and the famous one-button mouse. Jonathan worked at Apple for almost 30 years and left the company only in 2019.

After the success of the iPod, Apple began to actively exploit the white and release new gadgets in this color that conquered the world. We can say that Apple introduced a fashion for white technology, after all, everything they released quickly became hits. White became a significant color for Apple and was used as the main color until the early 2010s. Ive thought that white would help to stand out from the competition, and he was not mistaken.

Conciseness: Wikipedia

Wikipedia founders Jimmy Wales and Larry Sangler launched it in 2001 as a side project of Nupedia, an encyclopedia written by visiting experts. The creators admitted that the idea of ​​a collectively created encyclopedia, existing only on private payments, seemed to them utopian. Nevertheless, Wikipedia grew rapidly, and Jimmy Wales founded the Wikimedia Foundation, an NGO that runs on voluntary donations and runs both Wikipedia and its related projects.

The first Wikipedia logo in the form of an American flag was temporary and did not last long. In 2001, it was replaced with the logo originally proposed for Nupedia. It depicted a sphere with a quote from Lewis Carroll from his book on mathematics placed on it. The quote could not be read in its entirety, because only fragments of it were visible due to the projection.

Later, the new logo was supposed to be international and show the availability of Wikipedia in many languages. Paul Stansifer's version won in the form of a three-dimensional globe made of puzzles of different colors with missing elements at the top.

After several iterations, the globe acquired the current form familiar to us: a white puzzle ball. Each piece of the puzzle has a letter or symbol written in black, representing the multilingualism of Wikipedia. The top of the globe is unfinished, signifying a world of knowledge that continues to grow and the ability to add new languages.

It may seem that a white 3D globe with black symbols is boring and nondescript. But the designers of the logo moved away from the idea of ​​a book lying on the surface and created a concise and simple image. The white background of the article is like a white sheet of a book, and the white logo at the top of the page is modest and does not distract from reading.

Refinement: Valentino

Fashion house Valentino was founded in Rome in 1960 by fashion designer Valentino Garavani.

The real success came to the fashion designer when he created the legendary "White Collection" in 1968 and showed it in the White Room at Palazzo Pit in Florence. All items in the collection were white, but to make them not boring, the designer added shades of beige, cream, sand. In the era of hippies and rock and roll, against the backdrop of their riot of colors and variegation, the White Collection seemed unusual. In the autumn of the same year, Jacqueline Kennedy was married to Aristotle Onassis for the second time - in a white dress from Valentino.

Many fashion magazines wrote about Valentino Garavani, Vogue declared the "White Collection" a triumph for the designer, and some called the fashion designer "a white poet." Both before and after, he worked with other colors, in particular, the visiting card of the fashion house is red. But the "White Collection" is recognized as the most successful and one of the most famous in the history of the Valentino house.

For a designer, white is sophistication and luxury. And as Valentino himself said, white is a color that leaves no room for error: if you do something wrong, it will be a disaster.

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