Salmon. The Colour.

On Languagehat, the language and literature blog, a discussion turned to the Financial Times pink newsprint.

Well, pink is pink is pink, but there are so many different shades of pink, from the serious FT pink to the girly Barbie pink. Each has a slightly different shade with different readings in HEX, RGB or CMYK.

It turns out that the FT pink is called 'light salmon' and has been the hallmark of the venerable oracle since 1893. And the word 'salmon' was first used in English to describe colour as far back as 1776.

Crayola introduced salmon to its choice of crayons in 1949. And on Apple Macs all applications that use the colour palette, including iWork's Pages, Keynote and Numbers, Salmon is in the box of crayons — the shade of pink with 0, 56, 38, 0 CMYK reading. It is slightly different from the Crayola salmon.

There is some confusion though regarding the Financial Times pink. The wikipedia article on FT links to this article that shows 'light salmon' colour. However, there is another article on Salmon as colour which says that the FT pink is 'pale salmon.' Pale salmon there has a definite orange tint, more like that of the paper, while 'light salmon' leans towards a more girly shade.

When you want to copy a colour you like — or to avoid copying a 'branded' colour — remember that wikipedia has numerous articles on colours, including, for example, gold. These articles have CMYK, RGB and HEX readings. You can replicate the desired colour by typing its reading into the colour palette. Click on the sliders icon in the Colors viewer, choose the format you need and type in the colour's reading.