According to Kassia St Clair's The Secret Lives of Color, blue is most people's favorite color. We've seen this play out in our sales of tee shirts and mugs - it is almost always the first color to sell out. And look at book jackets! Many of your favorite books are cloaked in blue, and there are even associations between the particular hue and book genre. Funny books often feature a blue-tinged aqua, while historical novels, particularly ones set during World War II, are often on a field of navy.
All your blue books will look smart poking out of our new royal blue tote bag, as seen with Jen (above right). Along with classic black, eye-popping purple, bright red, and Harry W Schwartz green, this tote will tell the world you love books and particularly love books from this particular Milwaukee book store. We've now got a special Boswell Stuff page where you can find our mugs, glasses, tees (adult and toddler), and totes in one place.
And then we got this note from Hayley, our friend at the Shorewood Public Library: "I just read your newsletter, and I want to follow up with the color blue. There was a time when I used to read The New Yorker front to back, and I remember reading why Facebook is blue. Turns out that Mark Zuckerberg is red-green color blind:
From the article: "He walked into the house, which is painted in various shades of blue and beige, except for the kitchen, which is a vibrant yellow. Colors don’t matter much to Zuckerberg; a few years ago, he took an online test and realized that he was red-green color-blind. Blue is Facebook’s dominant color, because, as he said, 'blue is the richest color for me - I can see all of blue.'''
Blue is also the color of loyalty so it’s used a lot in branding. Think Walmart, Culver’s, etc.
This got us thinking about logo colors. CVS and Walgreens both use red, which we think comes from the Red Cross, which we think comes from blood. Green is so closely allied with finance and nature that it's easy for financial firms and outdoor retailers to use it but hard for anyone else. Purple skews young and female (and Daniel), yellow is too hard to read, brown reads muddy (though I love the shade chocolate brown, which was popular in clothing for a hot minute), and orange reads red (and fast food). There are lots of attempts to link color and illness fundraising, but nobody did as good a job as breast cancer charities did with pink. Now it's hard to think about pink in any other way for adults.
Our bag manufacturer also had navy fabric, but we thought it read black. But I liked it. Especially for carrying novels about World War II.
It's going to take us a long time to work our way through these tote bags but if we did another printing, which color would you want? The additional Envirotote cotton canvas color options are navy, burgundy, kelly green, brown, yellow, pink, gray, and natural. Natural and yellow won't show white ink. The teal, which is actually turqouise (teal is much darker) doesn't come in the 15 oz stiffer cotton, only 10 oz.
Oh, and if you wind up making totes from Enviro-totes, please mention we sent you and ask for Sarah.
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