12.09.2010

The NHL Color Scale: Purple, Green, Gray, and Natural

Its Thursday and we're down to the final four color scales.  First, a quick thanks to Buddy Oakes at the View From 111 for the re-tweets and links.  Speaking of which, you can follow me on twitter here.  Finally you can see the first two color scale blogs here (blue) and here (Red/Gold/Orange).


These are smallest of all the scales, and its a bit of a shame in my opinion.  I think the NHL as a whole seriously lacks greens, and purples are almost unheard of outside of Los Angeles.

Some would argue that Colorado should've appeared in the red scale, but the maroon-ish color they has enough purple for me to keep Los Angeles from being the sole user of purple in the league.  Despite the loudness of the Kings's throwbacks worn this season, the current purple worn on their primary jerseys is actually a brighter shade.  Again on the green side you see San Jose which could've found a home on the blue scale but ultimately fit better on the green scale.  Looking at Dallas's green, I really wish they had kept more of the color when the switched to their current jerseys.

And to round off the whole series we have two scales that are almost exclusively secondary, tertiary, or accent colors.  Its worth noting that Edmonton's and Nashville's blocks are both metallics.  We have our first shared shade with Minnesota and Phoenix using the same sand color for their uniforms, numbering, and lettering.  If you've looked at all the other scales then you can see that Columbus uses a ton of colors in their new third jerseys.  Finally you can the Rangers's "antique white" or throwback white, or whatever you want to call it.


And those are the color scales.  For those who are interested I can throw together a large image of all the scales together or provide the scales on this page individually.  Other than that I'm going to put these guys on the back burner in case I come up with any swell ideas for them.  I hoped you enjoyed taking a look at what colors are used in the NHL and how each team uses them.  One of my favorite exercises that went along with this project is seeing how different the shades often looked when paired with the other color(s) in a team's uniform.

Look for my Feature Friday artist/album profiles tomorrow for some recommended listening and some new music to hate or love.

3 comments:

willn's said...

Good work studying the league colors and laying out the entire scales menu’ obviously.

Interesting, I like that naturally some colors are related with positive and negative emotions thereby justifying the broad tradition of blue and its relation to water, the beach ,comfort and hope, Green-calmness , and the metallic colours happiness and positive emotion. Sure when’ the emotional and reactional responses exceed the expressive use, choices could be determined.

Link said...

I'm considering doing a deeper analysis of team colors. Color symbolism and communication is a passion of mine and I've written a few papers on the subject while earning my degree.

willn's said...

Sure, Your reviews and association of color with communication in previous Posts is outstanding.
I'll look forward to your observations and their impact.