Painting The Town Nameless

A Japanese design duo have rewritten the rulebook for the way paints are labelled, creating a system that is both functional and educational. The minimal paint tubes in their set of paints have no names such as Cerulean Blue, Burnt Umber or Viridian, but instead show the colour inside by the proportions of its components cyan, magenta and yellow.

For fledgling artists this means a steep learning curve of picking up what makes the colour they want – if they want green, they are going to have to look for two blobs of cyan and yellow. Since receiving a 2012 Kokuyo Design Award, Yusuke Imai and Ayami Moteki have been busy refining their design. Nameless Paints are now on sale in Japan.