Table of Contents
Purple is not just any old colour. It is different in terms of its underlying physics, and throughout history humanity has always afforded it special treatment. The ancient Phoenicians used tens of thousands of a particular species of snail to make just a few grams of purple pigment. Byzantine emperors were born in a room with purple walls. And it was the preferred colour of the Japanese nobility when it came to choosing their clothes.
The first artificial dye ever invented was purple: created by accident by a young chemistry student in the nineteenth century who was struggling to meet a deadline set by his tutor. And purple also has links to twentieth-century counterculture, feminist struggles, and iconic songs by Jimi Hendrix and Prince.
Basically, there is no shortage of anecdotes and trivia in the history of purple: today we’d like to tell you the juiciest!
What colour is purple?
As we already hinted, when it comes to the physics of colour, purple is not like other shades. It is sometimes described as a non-spectral hue – just like black, white and grey – since the sensation of the colour is not generated by a single wavelength reaching our eyes, but by a combination of two forms of electromagnetic radiation. In this sense, purple is very different from violet (which is one of the seven colours of the rainbow), although people often confuse the two.
Perhaps in part due to its physics, purple is a rather complex hue in colour psychology. It is associated with the unity of opposites, magic and mystery, but also has connections to spirituality and creativity. It is definitely a colour that never stands still, and it has acquired some negative meanings over the years too: certain cultures link it with mourning, while according to an Italian superstition it is bad luck to use it in the theatre.
The colour purple – or rather the whole spectrum of purple shades – is obtained by mixing blue and red in different quantities. This is true both when working on a screen and with the RGB colour model. In this case, the Hex code for purple is #A020F0.
However, if you are printing using the CMYK colour model, you get purple by combining magenta with cyan or black, or both.
The history of purple, the colour of royalty
Producing the colour purple is also anything but boring! Ever since ancient times, it has always been one of the most difficult colours to make.
In the ancient Mediterranean, the masters of purple production were the Phoenicians, and particularly the inhabitants of Tyre, in modern-day Lebanon, who created the renowned Tyrian purple (or imperial purple) from the secretions of a specific sea snail. Unfortunately, the recipe used to prepare this precious colour has been lost over the centuries, but it was certainly time-consuming, and required so many snails – 10,000 for a single gram of pigment – that Tyrian purple was three times more valuable than gold.
This was one reason why purple was only worn by the ruling classes: at the time of the ancient Romans, purple fabrics were worn solely by emperors, senators and generals who had achieved particular victories. Cleopatra was apparently crazy about the colour too.
In the centuries that followed, purple retained its association with power and royalty. The Grand Palace of Constantinople, the residence of the rulers of the Byzantine empire, contained a room decorated entirely in purple used for the births of emperors’ children, who were said to be ‘born in the purple’ or ‘porphyrogenites’.
In later western empires, like the Holy Roman Empire, and within the Catholic Church, purple was always associated with the highest and most regal echelons of society. This is why Catholic bishops wear purple cassocks, for example. However, in Catholic liturgy the colour is also associated with penitence and the preparations for the coming of Christ, meaning it is used during Lent and Advent.
Producing purple was also extremely challenging for the civilisations of the Far East. The Chinese made purple from the root of a plant, although recent studies claim that sea snails may also have been used. In Japan, purple was used only by the upper classes: commoners were expressly forbidden from wearing purple in any way, shape or form!
Purple for all: the start of industrial production
After the Middle Ages, the technique for creating Tyrian purple was forgotten, and although people tested out some bizarre alternatives – including insects, lichen and… erm… urine – usage of the colour declined.
All that changed, however, in the industrial age, when a young chemistry student, William Henry Perkin, discovered by chance how to synthesise the colour purple. The year was 1856, and Perkin, under the guidance of his professor, was trying to create an artificial quinine to combat malaria. The experiment failed, but the student was left with a precipitate that turned purple when dissolved in alcohol. The powder became one of the first ever synthetic dyes!
Following his discovery, Perkin opened one of the first synthetic dye factories near London, dedicated entirely to mauveine or aniline purple, the name he gave to his new colour.
It was therefore no surprise that purple came back into fashion in the Victorian era. And this time it was not restricted to the upper classes – almost everyone could buy purple garments. Nevertheless, rulers continued to be the colour’s biggest fans. Queen Victoria and Napoleon III’s wife Empress Eugénie both started wearing dresses dyed purple using the new invention.
Purple in the pop era: from feminism to psychedelia
With purple now democratised, it began to have a very eventful life. In the early twentieth century, the women fighting for the right to vote – the suffragettes – adopted purple to symbolise their cause, stating that purple represented the royal blood that flowed in the veins of each activist.
In honour of this choice, feminist movements in later decades, including the 1970s, and the modern-day LGBT+ movements, have shown particular fondness for the colour purple, which continues to symbolise justice and dignity.
In the 1960s, purple also started to make inroads in countercultural circles. In 1967, Jimi Hendrix composed Purple Haze, one of his most famous songs, which many people interpreted as a tribute to psychedelia. The following year, 1968, a band that would turn out to be one of the world’s most important hard rock bands formed in the UK: Deep Purple. Ironically, the band took its name from a 1930s pop song, a favourite ditty of the grandma of one of the band’s members!
In the 1980s, another iconic song was released dedicated to purple: Prince’s Purple Rain. The American singer used purple’s powerful symbolism to create one of pop’s most renowned ballads. The singer once described how the title came about: ‘When there’s blood in the sky – red and blue = purple… purple rain pertains to the end of the world and being with the one you love and letting your faith/god guide you through the purple rain’.
Purple in communication, marketing and design
Nowadays, purple’s power does not seem to have faded at all. Various shades of purple have been named as Pantone Color of the Year recently: Radiant Orchid in 2014, Pantone 18-3838 or Ultra Violet in 2018, and Very Peri – a periwinkle blue with reddy-purple undertones – in 2022.
Nor is it a coincidence that some of the most famous logos have decided to embrace this complex colour. Airline Wizz Air‘s logo is one such example, as is that of Yahoo!, one of the major players of the early internet era. The American firm first adopted a purple logo in 2009, before redesigning it in 2019.
The US transportation and shipping company FedEx has a purple and orange logo, designed in 1994 by Lindon Leader, while purple (or lilac, to be more precise) is the brand colour of Milka, a Swiss chocolate brand that has sported the recognisable coloured wrapping since 1901
In the sports world, the Fiorentina football team and the Los Angeles Lakers basketball team both traditionally play in purple. In cartoons, meanwhile, purple can be found everywhere: from the Cheshire Cat in Alice in Wonderland to Madam Mim in The Sword in the Stone, not to mention Skeletor, Ursula from The Little Mermaid, Fear from Inside Out, Yzma, the baddie from The Emperor’s New Groove, and Tinky Winky from Teletubbies (OK, not strictly speaking a cartoon!)
Purple continues to provide fertile ground for experimentation in the design sphere. Perhaps taking inspiration from the ancient Byzantine tradition, architect Stiliyana Minkovska designed an extremely purple birthing space, which she named Ultima Thule.
Purple is not often seen in architecture, so when it is used, it tends to be aiming to take people aback or to grab their attention. Meanwhile, some people claim that purple is making a comeback in interior design, mostly due to the striking yet regal effect it produces.
Now over to you! What use would you make of purple in a new graphic design project? And has this history of purple inspired you to give it a try?