Australia Ugliest Color
Australia
According to an Australian survey, the excrement brown color (Pantone 448C, or “Opaque Couché”) is the ugliest color in existence and is to be used on cigarette packs.
The agency GfK asked a thousand smokers which color they found most visually offensive, with a view to covering cigarette packets with it, and Pantone 448C came out top. Respondents associated the color with “dirty”, “death”, and “tar”.
To deter smoking, Australian officials required Opaque Couché to be the main color on cigarette packages and now the UK is following suit. Apparently, Australian officials first referred to the color as “olive green” but the Australian Olive Association was none-too-pleased.
Pantone itself is grumpy about the choice of Opaque Couché. “At the Pantone Color Institute, we consider all colors equally,” Pantone’s executive director Leatrice Eiseman told The Guardian. “There’s no such thing as the ugliest color.” Rather, 448C was associated with “deep, rich earth tones”, popular on sofas and shoes and other things that might be found in a house.