Why is purple color taking over the world?

10 points by bluefone 3 years ago | 9 comments

I saw a clear trend in recent years. Almost every software is using purple color for its branding and main themes. While I'm not against the color itself, the sheep mentality of UI designers (if it was their decision), to blindly copy a single color, appears silly. Let me be honest - the color looks nice only when used for things in the foreground, and looks pretty ugly if you pour it all over a webpage or software.

muzani 3 years ago |

I ask people on Twitch why their bedrooms are so purple and not red or green, and many think it's unique.

Blue was the "corporate" color back in 00s. Nobody would complain that something was blue. The sky and sea is blue. It's a neutral soft color that shows more personality and technical ability than black and white. Then every site became blue.

Purple is likely the sexy, edgy color. If you wanted to stand out, you get purple hair. But it's also soft and neutral as a background.

klyrs 3 years ago |

I've noticed this, but orange and cyan seem to be rising in popularity as well. I know these colors were popular in the 70s, and in the meantime, red/green/blue seemed more popular. Makes me wonder if there's a periodic cycle between the popularity of primary and secondary colors.

smoldesu 3 years ago |

Purple is not a very natural color. It's appearance in nature is sparse, and traditionally creating "purple things" was a luxury few people could afford. Now that painting pixels is as cheap as powering an LED panel, people don't have the same restraints and can easily apply it to anything. I personally don't mind it, I think purple is one of the most tasteful of the cooler colors and is much more benign than using green or red branding. It makes sense that people would start picking it up more often for design purposes.

CLPadvocate 3 years ago |

It's definitely Gogol Bordello's fault ...

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=SkkIwO_X4i4

bluefone 3 years ago |

One reason why it sucks as background is, you generally don't find purple as background color in a natural setting. White (snow), blue (water), green (landscape), grey (clouds) - are all good choices for background because they are associated with natural settings. A strong color such as purple distracts the attention from the foreground, defeating the purpose of the background.

iostream24 3 years ago |

They are probably all doing it just to get your goat. Now that you publicly announced your dismay, the game is over and everyone will move on to orange.

colesantiago 3 years ago |

I see the color blue everywhere, are there examples of sites with purple?

al_borland 3 years ago | |

Not OP, but here are a couple that come to mind.

https://www.ally.com

https://purple.com

zem 3 years ago | | |

purple.com has more excuse than most (: