I seem to recall that the development of a blue led came fairly late. Until then, it was much cheaper to produce green or red. Of course, that’s leds. Monitor phosphors might be a different story entirely,
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How about black for retro UI? Hasn’t been mentioned yet… IE: Game & Watch style handheld games and digital watches
but there have been many Environmental psychology studies on the effect that our surroundings have and they find that blue skies and close proximity to bodies of water have a measurable calming effect on people and this seems to be common to all cultures (though more study needs to be done on the subject).
Now the exact reason for this is not yet found but it might just be that we have an evolutionary desire to be in a nice green field next to a tree and a river.
While I’m sure there are subtle psychological effects from color choice, I’d expect that when designers are choosing a display color for a fictional computer, they’re modeling it on other considerations that are more cultural and technological, esp. since “calming” isn’t usually what they’re going for so much as “cool.”
I think you’ll find that it’s green
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In there article one of the observations was
(And it’s true that there’s not much blue in nature other than the sky and ocean. No idea what they mean by “arguably not blue” though. There are few blue plants because most insects don’t see well in that color spectrum, so it’s a deterrent to pollination. There aren’t many blue minerals either. This is why blue pigments tended to be most expensive for a large part of human history.)
But my comment is that, even though the “rare in nature” bit is true, the “and that’s why it has a mystical quality” bit rings false to me. It just sounds like overreaching.
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Star Trek: TNG’s LCARS interface was designed to look cool and futuristic in the background on standard definition TVs.
But then countless nerds (including myself) tried to create LCARS interfaces for real-world programs. LCARS turned out to be a garbage UI for even the simplest of apps.
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Other than one friend who uses it on a Pebble watch… Yeah, I’ve never seen it used as a good, functional interface for anything.
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This reminds me that if ever I am in a Star Wars movie as a Jedi knight, I will have a BLACK lightsaber. (not glowing, either)
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Yup. Space Booze is always blue. It’s the law or something.
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well for the same reasons blue is the overwhelmingly preferred colour for adults of all cultural backgrounds both male and female.
yeah… getting blues and teal to work on an NTSC screen is a nightmare.
And future screens are always worse than anything we already have. Scan lines. Glitches.
I think the blue thing has more to do with the ‘orange & teal’ thing
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Reminds me of early color TV tubes, where the red was a sick orange instead of read. Ecch. And round.
What I don’t like in movies (like Avatar) are the stupid monitors that are transparent. Talk about useless.
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well it makes sense for Flora and Fauna (hence the Smurfs in Avatar) but it makes no sense for more abstract things like an UI since blue is quite common in the world in the form of sky and water.
Could it be the orange & blue thing, and only bad guys use orange terminals?
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http://www.bunkerofdoom.com/tubes/crt/crt_phosphor_research.pdf
lists various phosphors “of interest to the experimenter”
blue phosphors were used in oscilloscopes, apparently
if only the future had some type of portable pad used to run daily tasks, watching TV broadcasts and as a entertainment center and reading news articles.
The only way that could have been more realistic is if it hit the newspaper’s paywall…
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Where are all my residuals from inventing the combination of overdeveloped matte and black scene UX? The texture-vision people should have a check for me by now? Seriously, what about the displays in Until The End of The World(1991)?
The characters toy with the UX for a while when the opening scenes in Stanislaw Lem’s Solaris (the movie with the going to the sun) wound down into normal introductions. IIRC the discussion of daily cycles (it was noon, and the birds had already given up for the day, etc.) and plenty in green and aqua had been managed through agreeable antipathy to keep the ship in accord when the crew were of course immersed for hours in their specialties. (I should mention it’s a horror plot with a few fun mechanics on otherwise; only falling in ‘like’.)
It vexes me that I forget which Amiga apps (and Gnome 1.x things) would make LCARS happen to all the elements. a MUI 2.8 skin? I thought it wasted too much space (and there weren’t 4K displays then,) though.
Everything’s a 'scope in the future! Check that fate-o-scope again! (Done kinda literally 2 ways in Escaflowne. Very different feel in the movie than the TV series.) Why haven’t those glowy panels that you can fall into and back out of come in yet? I’m ready for another Alien v. Baby’s First Holotutor matchup.
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