After completing 3 designs for The 16(32) (triangular 7 of 9 version) and 16(2) (diamond shaped similar design) Sets, in 3 different shades of cardstock, I've decided to change my design direction for coloring to a vintage television inspired RGB theme. Follow along with the images in this slideshow to see what I mean. I think almost anyone would agree with me when taking a look at these 2 official designs right now that the maroon one (the second color in my rainbow set I now own) looks way better than the lavender (the third last) because the lighter shade of purple doesn't provide enough poppin' contrast with the holoprismatic gold.
As you can see, I wound up photographing the lavender one under less intense light, bringing out a more gentle type of rainbow hue to match the light cardstock. More intense lighting didn't seem to match well enough. But I'm much more interested in a furiously intense rainbow effect and overall look.
For a long time now I've been aware that the set of business / office / mature darker rainbow colors didn't seem like it was going to look good with things like light beige or yellow, and I've been wondering how to source better colors individually to supplement my supplies.
I found this process challenging since dark colors are rare in cardstock and it's next to impossible to get dark shades of 8 rainbow colors at all. But in the end, I was ultimately thrilled with how the decision unfolded to just use dark red, green and blue for the entire 16 and 8 card series.
I've included images here of the exact colors I'm interested in buying for the RGB sourced exactly from the Amazon product images. As you can see, the Amazon product image looks a little different than the photograph I've taken of the cardstock, and throughout my photos, the colors of the physical items look different in different lighting. Long story short, I know these colors for the RGB still look a bit light, but I've judged based on experience that they will physically look a little darker than this — enough to look as good as KEYS 1 & 2 in maroon. I've got them picked out and once I have the $60ish for it, I will order these. Then I'll have an epic supply and no colors will go to "waste" (be given out for free on the craigslist free section).
Unfortunately, it's going to be quite a while before I get around to reflecting that choice on the 16(2) page, because I just finished doing mock up plates with the previous colors I thought I would be using, and that took forever. So there's not a chance I feel like redoing it just like that. But that's no big deal.
The Symbolism of RGB
As most people know, old fashioned televisions used to form all the colors on the light spectrum using three colors : red, green and blue. I'm not alone to find a lot of inspiration from retro glitch effects which immitate the strange anomalies that used to happen to those TV's where the red, green and blue would separate and form psychedelic looking waves. In fact, the old 16 KEYS videos from 2019 or so were done with a retro glitch effect of gorgeous RGB waves, which sadly I cannot find anymore. But if I could I would use it again for sure, because it always expressed something that I felt about The 16 KEYS, which is that it's a media classic.
Technically, The 16 KEYS has been broadcast through mainstream media only by me, through YouTube. But I always also felt that stars who I love the most, not only bands but also television and movie artists, would definitely resonate thoroughly with The 16 KEYS contextualized not only with their art but with themselves personally.
For that reason, I often styled my videos to seem like a retro television show. I didn't only use the RGB glitch filter — I also made sure my intro and outro on every video seemed like a cheesy old television classic you'd remember from the 80's or 90's. In fact, I still joke around with myself to this day about some ridiculously funny old classics like the old religious program The Jack and Roxalla show, which was a Christian program which was so hilarious. I think it would be so funny to do a rendition of that show someday. I'm not Christian but I just love these ideas. It reminds me of how Kurt Cobain was really into some TV commercials like a certain iconic furniture warehouse salesman at the time.
It's not all just comedy though. I also love the psychedelic effect of RGB. It's well worth exploring designers that get into that indepth, like Rob Sheridan, an artist who works often for Nine Inch Nails. If you check Rob on instagram, you'll see a lot of really inspiring elaboratins on this.
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