The first lesson in color theory most of us have is mixing paints and seeing what new colors we can come up with. Nameless Paints takes this one step further. Instead of labeling each tube of paint with a name or a Pantone reference number, the Nameless Paint Set identifies each color using multicolored bullets, revealing exactly how that color would be created in a CMY printing process.
As you might be aware, the subtractive color model is often used in printing to create a much broader spectrum of colors by mixing just three pigments (cyan, magenta, and yellow, or CMY). So if you mix yellow and cyan, you get green, while magenta and yellow will get you red. Nameless Paints uses this model as a labeling system for 10 tubes of paint. Although each tube is uniformly white, you can tell what color is inside by mentally translating the CMY code printed on the side into a blended color. The Nameless Paints system even uses proportion to create shades of orange, green, and blue by using a little less pigment here or there (denoted by a slightly smaller CMY bullet) to create a broader palette.
The system is meant to encourage people to gain a better understanding of the mechanics of color theory. Nameless Paints was designed by Yusuke Imai and Ayemi Moteki, of the Japanese design duo Ima Moteki. "By not assigning names to the colors, we want to expand the definition of what a color can be, and the various shades they can create by mixing them,"explains Imai.
As a concept, Nameless Paints won a Kokuyo Design Award back in 2012; it's only now that the paint set is becoming commercially available. The Japanese stationery brand Campus will begin selling Nameless Paints in Japan for around $15 a set starting in October.
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