yellow, or if you like yellow. it is, like, totes and full on the colour of the year. that year, of course, being 2015, or whichever year it happens to be that yellow is the colour of the year, look you see.
in accordance with this, i thought, or if you will presumed, quite like to see how different countries around the world interpret yellow. well, two, or at a push three. you will see.
i have, as some of you are all too aware, been issuing easter cards all over the place. i have been getting very good deals on them, as i am sure i mentioned in a post recently, and have found myself to be quite taken with the yellow ways of the envelopes they come with.
one of the cards - one of several - i have sent went to my sister. she was kind enough to reciprocate, and her easter card arrived today. before this conversation goes any further, i think a visual point of reference is required, so here it is.
at the forefront of this image is a sample of the yellow envelopes that i got all excited about and thus promptly bought 20 or so of the cards that go with them. in the background is the envelope that my sister used to send us her card in.
inside, or within, her card she made the comment that what New Zealand believes to be yellow, for she was given assurances that the envelope was yellow, is not quite what the rest of the world, or at the least England, have come to accept as being yellow. it certainly does, at a glance, seem to be a dull, dour, almost sh!tty version of yellow that they accept in New Zealand.
how much, you ask, does it cost to buy one of these cards and to post it around the world? well, let's have a look at that, shall we. be prepared, however, to be horrified by the profiteering on the go. here, you people like charts and stats, don't you, have a look at this.
no, you are not being tricked or fooled, those figures above are correct. i used a calculator and everything.
some form of modest profit is, i think, acceptable. everyone, after all, needs to make a living, do they not, and ventures such as postage are only worthwhile if coins of money can be made as a consequence. the question then becomes one of just how much is enough. for Royal Mail of the UK, it would seem, there is never, ever, enough.
New Zealand's mail service puts the cost of postage at being 125% of the cost of the card. this is reasonable and fair, considering the base cost. this pricing would, you imagine, cover costs and allow for a few cents of profit per item. not so with Royal Mail, who charge a staggering 512% to post an item in relation to the cost of the actual item.
are Royal Mail ashamed of this? do they consider themselves disgraced on the international stage of post offices of the planet? probably not. i suspect they may wear this high relative percentage as a badge of honour, to be quite frank.
still, the matter of importance is that i got my smart card off of my sister, and she got the equally smart, in a much more yellow envelope card off of me.
i suppose that for the 512% factor you at least get to issue proper yellow to the world, which is a very nice thing to be able to do. at the moment my thinking is that the New Zealand interpretation of yellow is quite deliberate, and is intended as a slight (if that's how you spell it) or dig at their neighbours. pure yellow, or if you like canary yellow, is of course associated with sports people off of Australia. they wear the colour with pride. it is understandable, then, from a sporting rivalry perspective, that they would not wish to promote the purer shade of yellow. the idea that they would do this is, to me, exciting.
for a neutral comparison of the two yellow envelopes, here they are contrasted against what is considered the benchmark of yellow. it is an unspecified item from an unspecified nation, but there is no doubt at all that it is the item of yellow which all other items of yellow are graded against.
the UK, you would say, has got yellow right where NZ seems to have got it not quite as right as it could have.
is it important for a nation to promote and present the right shade of yellow? perhaps, but maybe not. it's not really my place to go right ahead and condemn all of New Zealand just because of what they think is a yellow envelope. i would totally include them films about the midgets in the field with a ring too in such an act.
if for some reason you are interested in how yellow is presented, perceived and ultimately accepted around the world, i trust that this has been of some interest to you.
be excellent to each other!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
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