Movie Posters Show Our Changing Color Bias Over the Years

Software engineer Vijay Pandurangan had a theory, that turned into an experiment, that ultimately turned into some pretty interesting results. His theory was that over the years our color bias, specifically where movie posters are concerned, has gone more dark and blue. To test this he analyzed 35,000 posters from 1914 to present day and came up with the visual representation pictured above.

Each row represents a year and is organized by color according to the standard spectrum (ROYGBV… indigo got the boot a while back). As you can see, he was right: going down the rows it’s obvious that we’ve steadily increased the use of dark, blue colors.

The results are interesting not only because it shows our cultural color bias changing, but because we’d love to see a similar study done with photography. The gradual move from black-and-white to color, the improvement of our ability to capture color, and now the general move back towards the “lo-fi” analog look of years past would be interesting to see charted in a similar way.

If you’re interested in seeing the full results, including an interactive version, head over to his blog for a more in-depth look at the experiment.

(via The Verge)