All Over Albany

The Secret Language of Color

A few pages from The Secret Language of Color.

This author event caught our eye, even though the email was in black and white: Joann Eckstut and Arielle Eckstut, authors of the recently published The Secret Language of Color, will be at the Book House of Stuyvesant Plaza Saturday afternoon for a talk. Blurbage:

Anyone who claims to be an expert on color is a liar--so say Joann Eckstut and Arielle Eckstut, both of whom have built successful careers based on their color expertise. Indeed, the two felt well positioned when they set out to write a book about color, but their investigation quickly took them far beyond the realms of art and design that most of us associate with color and into physics, chemistry, astronomy, optics, neuroscience, geology, botany, zoology, human biology, linguistics, sociology, anthropology, art history, cartography, and much more.

Along the way, they learned why grass is not green (human brains perceive certain colors that other animal brains would perceive differently); why Starbucks got in trouble for coloring its strawberry frappuccinos (it was extracted from bugs), why red is universally the first color named after black and white (one word: blood), and why the colors in the mnemonic ROYGBIV aren't actually fundamental (Sir Isaac Newton arbitrarily selected these seven colors to match the number of notes in the musical scale), and much more.

A sample presentation of the book is embedded after the jump.

Joann Eckstut -- who, we hear, has a home in Rensselaerville -- is a color consultant and the founder of an interior design firm. Arielle Eckstut is one of the "Book Doctors" -- she's appeared at Saint Rose the last few years -- and co-founder of a kids apparel store. (And Joann is Arielle's mother.) Here's a short article about them and the book.

The Eckstuts will be a the Book House at 3 pm Saturday.

Using Color in Your Store! A presentation for booksellers