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Not My Favourite Colour Day
"My eyes, my eyes! Ouch!"
Originally conceived as an April Fool's joke by yours truly, this "just for a laugh" tartan has unexpectedly earned a spot on the calendar for Smokeout Day. Designed with deliberate distaste, the "Dirty Lung" tartan features none other than "the ugliest color in the world," Pantone 448 C—also known as Opaque Couché. This sewage-toned greenish brown was crowned the most visually offensive hue in a 2012 study where a thousand smokers weighed in. Its initial use? To coat plain cigarette packaging in Australia, paired with stark health warnings aimed at deterring smokers from lighting up!
Adding to the ghastly palette, the tartan includes an ensemble of equally off-putting shades to complete this visual horror show: Chartreuse, evoking a medicinal expectorant; Violent Purple, a nod to the smoker's hack; Stargoon, a peachy beige reminiscent of questionably old salmon; Smoke White, a whisper of "cough, cough"; and Black, for those telltale mascara smudges under bloodshot eyes.
Interestingly, a brief tour through art history yields countless examples of famous artworks that make heavy use of opaque couché and its close relatives. For starters, Leonardo da Vinci’s “Mona Lisa” wears a dress and shawl in a shade quite similar to Pantone 448C. Hmmmm ... something to ponder on a warp and weft Wednesday ... stay healthy, folks! 💚 🤎 💜 🤍 🚬 🚬 🚬 🚭 🚭 🚭 😜
The only tartan designed to be as loathsomely coloured as possible, this tartan was originally conceived as a textile prank for April Fool's Day, and named for World No Tobacco Day.
The prominent colour in this tartan, Pantone 448 C, also called "opaque couché, is a sewage-tinged hue determined by experts to be "the ugliest colour in the world," and was derived by an Australian study on tobacco product packaging, whose mission was to specifically target and influence smokers purchasing habits.
In 2012, the Australian government hired a research agency to spearhead the new package design for all tobacco products. But instead of the marketing firm's usual goal, they were tasked to create a carton and packaging that would look as unappealing as possible, as a way to discourage smoking over the long-term and improve overall public health.
After three months, seven studies, and gathering data from more than 1000 regular smokers, the researchers finally settled on what was deemed the most offensive color, Opaque Couché (Pantone 448 C) to print alongside new graphic health warnings.
In addition to Pantone 448 C, also included in this particular tartan design are some runner-ups for the most unappealing colours to smokers (and to most people in general):
Chartreuse - the greenish-yellow colour of infected lung phlegm
Stargoon - the color of faded salmon, a neural-net generated fleshy beige colour with its distinctive AI-generated name, for stained teeth
Smoke White - puff, puff
Black - the colour of mascara stains under blood-shot eyes
Violent Purple - dark broken veins in face due to a hacking smoker's cough (note: although this is a not unappealing colour, itt really highlights the Chartreuse)
Designer's note: Ironically, the addition of the colour Puce, another heavily disliked color (named for the color of bloodstains on linen or bedsheets (even after being laundered), from a flea's droppings, or after a flea has been crushed), somehow made this tartan more attractive, and so was not used after all.
All questionable humour aside, the focus of World No Tobacco Day is to increase awareness on: the negative impact that tobacco has on people’s lung health, from cancer to chronic respiratory disease and the fundamental role lungs play for the health and well-being of all people. Yearly campaigns also serve as a call to action, advocating for effective policies to reduce tobacco consumption and engaging stakeholders across multiple sectors in the fight for tobacco control.
Is this the world's ugliest tartan? Is beauty in the eye of the beholder? Colour associations are deeply personal, and although it's not difficult to make a tartan that hurts the eye with a poor choice of sett or bright contrasting colors, it's surprising difficult to intentionally design a truly ugly tartan.
For a list of the the ugliest colours and their nasty associations, click the Opaque Couché cigarette packaging for one colour theory pundit's humourous assessment.