When watching international football I’ve always wondered why Italy wears blue, the Netherlands wears orange, and Australia wears green/gold since none of these colors are part of their national flag.

Both Italy and the Netherlands use these non-flag colors because of the ruling houses of their monarchy:

• Savoy blue represents the House of Savoy that unified and ruled the Kingdom of Italy from 1861 to 1946. Blue remains as a national color for Italy—as seen not only in sport applications but also in their presidential standard.

• Orange is the color of the House of the Orange-Nassau, the current reigning house of the Netherlands (which is a parliamentary monarchy).

As for Australia, green and gold were officially declared as their national colors in 1984. According to the Australian government: “Gold conjures images of Australia’s beaches, mineral wealth, grain harvests and the fleece of Australian wool. Green evokes the forests, eucalyptus trees and pastures of the Australian landscape. Green and gold are also the colours of Australia’s national floral emblem – the golden wattle.”

Now that I think about it there are many other examples of non-flag based national team colors like black for New Zealand, white for Germany, blue for Japan…

Here’s a Wikipedia page listing national colors for each country. Also interesting is that there are also semi-standardized colors for international auto racing.

The United States’ international auto racing color is “white with lengthwise blue stripes” as seen in this 1965 Mustang GT350, the first road car to feature racing stripes. Stripes do make your car go faster.

Bull-Doser, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Visual Frameworks is a library of “pictorial mental models”—a sort of visual toolbox to help visualize information. Anybody that loves to communicate visually (through a whiteboard!) should find it incredibly stimulating!

Visual Frameworks is a project by Dave Gray whom I first encountered at one of his workshops at the UX Week Conference in 2016.

The USPS is issuing Forever stamps honoring long-time beloved JEOPARDY! host Alex Trebek. It’s really cool to see stamps resemble the JEOPARDY! game board! You can purchase the stamps on the USPS online store here.

Remember that Forever stamps will always retain their value for First-Class Mail. I still use this set of “Flag for All Seasons” Forever stamps I bought in 2015:

(Found via Kottke.org)

Voyager 1, launched on September of 1977, is currently the farthest man-made object in space. Here’s where Voyager 1 and its sister Voyager 2 are in context of our Solar System and other launched spacecraft:

Via NASA/JPL-Caltech

NASA/JPL-Caltech, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Starting in November 2023, Voyager 1 had been transmitting unreliable data and scientists feared that it might mean the end of its mission. However, for the first time in months, engineers were able to bring Voyager 1 back to being operational!

Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 are the only operational spacecraft that have gone beyond the heliosphere into the “interstellar space” so their data is incredibly valuable.

You may also remember the Voyager spacecrafts both carry a copy of the “Golden Record”. I’ll probably post another blog post about this fascinating example of visual representation of information.

NASA/JPL, Public domain, via Wikimedia Commons

Do visit NASA’s Voyager 1 website and see all the contributions the spacecraft has made thus far, including this amazing timelapse when it approached Jupiter in 1979:

The design of public transportation fabrics is one of the most ubiquitous and consistent “beauty-in-the-everyday” visual experiences people have in relation to a space. One immediate example that comes to mind is the beloved PDX Airport carpet. This deep connection between design and space is often expressed in the myriad of merchandise available. People even get tattoos of the pattern!

PDX Airport Carpet; via Travis.Thurston, CC BY-SA 4.0, via Wikimedia Commons

PDX Airport Socks via The Athletic Community

PDX Airport Baby Drool Bibdana via Etsy

The Instagram account @idontgiveaseat is a large collection of public transportation fabrics and patterns. There’s definitely a mix of beauty and horror.

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by I Don’t Give A Seat (@idontgiveaseat)

View this post on Instagram

A post shared by I Don’t Give A Seat (@idontgiveaseat)

The type of fabric used on these seats is moquette and according to the London Transport Museum:

Moquette was chosen for public transport for two reasons. First, because it is hard wearing and durable. Second, because its colour and patterns disguise signs of dirt, wear and tear. On top of this moquette had the advantage of being easy and cheap to mass-produce.

My sister-in-law pointed out that the London Underground began creating unique moquette patterns to each line. Some of these designs are available for purchase in a wide variety of products and furnishings:

Multi-colored sweat makes a comeback. Is it in you?

Hyped to see Sydney McLaughlin-Levrone in the Gatorade ad. It will be really exciting to see her perform at the 2024 Paris Olympics after an awesome Tokyo 2020.

Here she is in one of those classic “This is SportsCenter” ads:

---

One of the OG Gatorade ads:

I learned today that in the US, according to federal regulation, the only traffic sign that is allowed to be round is the “Railroad Crossing Ahead” sign.

The “Do Not Enter” or “X is prohibited” signs are not round! They are white rectangular signs with round images.

Edit (5/29) - Why is this the only round sign? According to Richard C. Moeur’s Manual of Traffic Signs:

The greater number of sides on a sign, the more critical a message it conveys. This is why a circular shape was adopted for the Railroad Advance warning sign (i.e. infinite number of sides), as a collision between a train and a typical vehicle will nearly always end badly.

Not sure if it’s just me, but I have found it extremely difficult to remember what the laundry care symbols mean. Being paranoid about not wanting to ruin a piece of clothing, I find myself Googling what each of the icons represent: “what does the dot inside a circle inside a square mean again? Is it dry clean or no dry clean? Is the dot a good thing or a bad thing?”

The American Cleaning Institute (!!) has created a guide that actually helps! Instead of remembering every single permutation, you simply need to remember the following 5 symbols:

And the following modifiers:

Nonetheless, still incredibly confusing, since not all the icons adhere to this syntax. What does this mean?

The vertical three lines: drip drying; the diagonal lines: in the shade