Grapheme Designer

I was discussing books on the way to work with a collegue the other day and she happened to mention finishing Daniel Tammets, 'Born on a Blue Day', about the authors life dealing with Apergers Syndrome and the titular Synaethesia. Synaethesia occurs in many forms, the most common of which involves perceiving sensations in more than one way such as 'hearing colours' or 'tasting sounds' so that the normal cognitive pathways in the brain are subtly rewired to allow the synaesthete to apprehend sensations in other ways different from the normal five senses. Tammets title refers to a common condition where the person associates or 'sees' a colour in relation to a letter, word or number, this sensation is invariably consistent and memorable. For example the number 1 may appear to a person with synaethesia as red or blue each time they encounter it or think of it. The discussion in the car made me think about something that I had taken for granted since I was a child, the colour associations I have with days of the week - Monday/Red, Tuesday/Green, Wednesday/mid Blue, Thurday/Chocolate Brown, Friday/Dark Blue-Purple, Saturday/Bright Yellow-White, Sunday/Yellow. I also have strong associations with numbers and colours and looking further into the condition, this colour association is called 'Grapheme Synaesthesia' .

Until I heard of the concept of Synaethesia, I didnt give my associations of colour a second thought, but looking back now, its easy to see how this connection with colour informed my life. As a kid, one of my favourite things to play with was a packet of felt tip pens and it still is today. Not so much drawing with them as having the set of coloured pens ranged together so I could admire them. Another favourite item was an eraser encased in a series of connectable plastic 'bricks' that you removed as the central eraser wore down and added them back on to the pile at the back, forming a handle, The colours of the bricks were almost always matched to the colours of the pens, with the obvious addition of a white block. Colour has always been very important to me and seeing the inclusion of colour codes in things always drew me to them, such as the colour code of Thunderbirds vehicles or the bright colours of Spacex toys and Hot Wheels cars.

 Cereal premiums often included standard colours in their production, most notably Kelloggs with Crater Critters and Totem Tribe, which had bright blues, oranges and violets amongst them. Some years ago, Kelloggs joined with Lego to include a range of themed premiums to support the Bionicle figure line and the six premiums included in the cereal reflected the strong colour associations that had been introduced in the figure line - six hero figures each having an elemental power and a colour such as Blue for Water, Red for Fire, Black for Earth etc.

 The small two inch high figures were a natural draw for me for a number of reasons, not least as a fan of Lego and premiums, but also due to the strong colour code. Each figure came with a weapon and a spinner, not unlike the ones from the Triang Nuclear Pulse. Putting the spinner into the upraised hand of the figure and slotting the toothed weapon into the side, the spinner could be launched with a quick pull and a satisfying whirr into the air.

 The red, green and blue figures represented half of the original heroic side and the black brown and white figures were the enemy forces. These slightly ungainly figures had a disk shooting mechanism in place of their arms which held a small frisbee like disk.

 The consistent colour code appears in a number of different toy lines even today, probably a more extreme example might be the Bandai Power Rangers which highlights the colour theme intentionally. Ill be looking at other examples of the use of colour in toys over the next few weeks.