Friday, June 25, 2010

World Cup colours


As football mania sweeps the world, it is timely to plug a recent article in our online journal. Have you ever caught yourself wondering during any of the World Cup matches exactly what you concentrate on the most when watching a football game (or any team game for that matter)? Let's say there is a World Cup match on and you aren't too bothered which team wins, do you think the colour of the players' football strips will influence how long you watch a certain team? And will the colour of their shirts have any impact on the end result?

These are the sorts of questions that are raised in a recent article in Colour: Design & Creativity (see
http://www.colour-journal.org/ in issue 4) by a team of scientists at Kyoto University of Technology (Japan) working with colleagues at the University of Leeds (UK). Research has shown, that colours used in sportswear and sport goods have been have been found to get more and more saturated over the years. This may be due to commercial reasons, such as the demand from sport sponsors to get the attention of viewers.
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But perhaps a more important reason is that players need to easily distinguish themselves from the other team on the field and thus increase their chances of winning the game. If the football strips of both teams are similar in colour, the players will find it difficult to distinguish between their team mates and their opponents. But, if the colour of a uniform has a high contrast colour against the background colour, say red uniform against green grass, the high colour contrast may improve the team's performance.
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Interesting stuff! To read more about this study, pelase click here to read the full article online here. And don't forget that if you wish to know when new content is published in the journal, you will need to sign up (for free) here. Also, did you know that you you can now view the full contents of the journal in a searchable 'at-a-glance'' document? Click here to view (PDF).
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by CMcN