From a humble eight colors in 1903′s original Crayola box, an explosion of diversity has arisen in the Crayola ecosystem. Designer Stephen Von Worley has analyzed Wikipedia’s list of Crayola crayon colors and created an infographic (shown in miniature above) demonstrating the Crayola Explosion of the past 107 years. Von Worley even coined “Crayola’s Law,” stating: “The number of colors doubles every 28 years!”
There are currently 133 “standard” colors in the Crayola lexicon (although some have been fired), and a variety of bizarre “specialty” crayons with glitter, scents, stripes, and so on. With all this diversity, I’m not sure what my favorite color is. Oh, who am I kidding, it’s obviously Bittersweet Shimmer, one of many colors in the Metallic FX collection that sound like, let’s be frank, stage names for exotic dancers.
Further reading: 5 Times Crayola® Fired Their Crayons, Retro Video: How Crayons Are Made, and the Wikipedia page on the term Crayon: “a stick of colored wax, charcoal, chalk, or other materials used for writing, coloring, and drawing.”
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What fun…I never realized what specific memories I had of the crayon colors until I looked at the Wikipedia list. Some of my favorites have been retired (thistle! maize!) and others live on. My new favorites are the True to Life crayons that my son uses.
posted by Jen Sweeney on 1-18-2010 at 7:26 pm
I want a lap dance from “razzmatazz”
posted by Danielle on 1-18-2010 at 7:48 pm
My favorite is and always will be Cerulean.
posted by natashalynn on 1-19-2010 at 6:28 am
I would love for someone to figure out the HEX or RGB numbers for every Crayola crayon color. This way I could recreate my favorite colors EXACTLY as they come from the crayon in Photoshop.
posted by Justin L on 1-19-2010 at 11:05 am
Justin – click on the Wikipedia site for the crayons. The HEX numbers are there! :)
posted by Jen on 1-19-2010 at 11:43 am
Wouldn’t it be more appropriate to know the CMYK values of the various colors, considering the medium? I wonder if anyone has Pantone numbers for them — *that* would be reliable. :D (The wikipedia link *does* give “representative” RGB values, although I have no idea how they color matched.)
For some strange reason, my favorite-to-exist color has always been burnt sienna. It may not be my favorite-to-use color, but I’ve always been happy it’s there.
posted by CJ the Colorful on 1-19-2010 at 12:21 pm
To me, there are very few pleasures in this world greater than that first Blast-o-Smell when opening a new box of Crayola Crayons. *sigh*
posted by Helenann on 1-19-2010 at 3:37 pm