‘Ruby’ Kite; red both begins our name and concludes our logo. At first glance, red is our leading lady. However, what defines our ‘Seascape’ and ‘Flora’ collections are their diverse shades of blue. If you were unfamiliar with the colour blue and decided to ask Google, the response you’d receive is ‘a colour intermediate between green and violet’. Describing something as the middle ground between two such different colours only leaves you with an impossibly vast array of interpretations, which quite ironically, is a pretty accurate description.
It’s quite easy to see where our different relationships with blue come from simply by looking at nature. During daytime, we see a myriad of uplifting blues from azure to aqua, turquoise to cobalt; whereas the deeper shades of night-time can bring unease for some. Similarly, pale blue waters are something of beauty and exploration; the unknown, but the exciting kind. The blue of a deeper ocean however is vast and unpredictable. It seems in the natural world, we find more comfort in the lighter shades of blue.
Although dominant in nature, blue is a colour more commonly associated with artificiality. Those blue sweets when you were a child with unrecognisable flavours, were simultaneously intriguing and repulsive (and stained your tongue). Our smartphones radiate a similarly alien blue that health advisors warn us to consume less of.
But in these times particularly, blue is not symbolic of something extra-terrestrial, but of a face, familiar and warm; our NHS. Responsible and trustworthy, this blue is something that can be depended on, something that makes us feel proud, evoking a similar feeling to that brought about by the ‘blue skies’. In this way, I think the purpose of blue is to not make us feel one thing, but many. Unlike overly dramatic, self-assured red, which tells you what to feel, blue takes a more ambivalent approach, by encouraging you to figure this out for yourself.
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