Masculinity, The Democratic Party, the sky, the ocean, and so many things in between: what does the color blue mean to you? The connotations have accumulated over time, so that the beauty (or the crudeness) of a color is truly in the eye of the beholder.
That's where Oliver Munday's fantastically-arranged color maps come in. Munday, a book designer, visualizes the cultural significance of a number of colors in Jude Stewart's book, "ROY G. BIV: An Exceedingly Surprising Book About Color" [Bloomsbury, $22.00].
In addition to Munday's maps, Stewart's book provides strange tidbits on the influence of various colors on historical events. Asks Stewart, "Why are pencils yellow?" The hue of our writing utensils dates back to the Ch'ing dynasty in China, when yellow was the exclusive imperial color for the country. Why do we associate baby girls with pink, and baby boys with blue? Well, we haven't always--the trend began in the latter half of the twentieth century. Up until then, babies were often dressed based on their complexion rather than their gender.
So, what does your favorite color really mean?:
Here are more maps of what different colors signify:
