Orange & Teal

Abstract

‘Orange & Teal’ has become the preferred ‘look’ of the Hollywood movie industry. Is this craze just another arbitrary fashion? Possibly not, because ‒ apart from the name ‒ this palette has been around for ages in the visual arts. It is variously known as ‘painting in cool and warm,’ drawing a trois croyons, use of a ‘limited palette,’ and so forth. This leaves open the question of whether there might be one or more fundamental reasons for the preference for this particular dichromatic pair. Why not yellow–blue, red–turquoise, or green–purple? Reasons might be sought in human anatomy/physiology, physics of surface scattering, or the ecology of the human Umwelt. An in-depth analysis reveals that all these factors cooperate to render the orange & teal complementary palette indeed special. It involves world, body and mind and has to be understood in a proper semiotical (biological) setting.

How much blue is turquoise? How much red is purple? Interaction of colors and backgrounds.

“…In our experiment, we used a similar, but very particular method of verbal color naming/connotation to study background effects; different methods for background effects could be directly compared in future works as well as in color-rendering studies. Then, in reference to previous studies, which have evaluated a series of color attributes (Albertazzi et al, 2015; Koenderink et al, 2020, 2021; Koenderink & van Doorn, 2021; Olkkonen et al, 2009; Ou et al, 2004a, 2004b; Xin et al, 2004) among which the warm/cold polarization seems to be relevant; it would be interesting to test the colors of our experiment with the semantic differential to see whether those or other attributes related to warm/cold (such as transparent/opaque, light/heavy, wet/dry, etc.) can be evaluated in a similar way.…”

“…The least studied aspects are the interaction of the connotative properties of color, such as the subjective warmth and coldness of colors (da Pos & Valenti, 2007; Gibson et al, 2017; Koenderink et al, 2020, 2021; Koenderink & van Doorn, 2021; Ou et al, 2004a; Xin et al, 2004), on the relations between surface colors and the background. It is known that a slight blue tinge causes a white color to be perceived as whiter than a white of identical luminance measured to be perfectly neutral on generically white surfaces (Vik & Viková, 2019).…”

Affective Responses to Image Color Combinations

“…Teal-orange is the basic gradation in the visual arts (Fig. 13; Koenderink and van Doorn, 2021;Quiller, 1989;Note 16). It also comes out prominently in the experimental phenomenology of single colors (Albertazzi et al, 2015).…”

“…There are six dichromatic chords that are generally considered harmonious; most important of these are CB (teal) and RY (orange) (Koenderink and van Doorn, 2021). Other ones, like GY are often considered somewhat 'off-key.'…”

Warm and cool reheated

“…This distinction has long been embraced in the visual arts 4 and in some industrial applications and may be closely associated with the widely-used "orange-teal" color scheme. 5 This opponent-like dimension of color appears to be fundamental and independent of culture. 6,7 A long-standing issue concerns whether it is of sensory or cognitive origin.…”