OT: The Yellow and Blue?
My wife and I had an outstanding visit to Michigan recently, and we made our way through the campus for dinner and whatnot. I was looking to pick up some things and stopped into the MDen and Moe's, when my wife made the comment, "Do you notice how there's no maize any more? It's yellow."
And I looked around. For the most part, she's right. It never occurred to me until that point.
Actually, it's not a camera trick. The older maize was indeed a darker color. In my day (when we walked barefoot, both ways, to school and wrote on birch bark with charcoal)...the early 90's...no one would have worn the highlighter garbage. It would have been sold at Meijer to non-students/alums.
I didn't really say it was a camera trick - rather that its more noticable because of the better technologies.
"Highlighter" garbage.... well, that's just your opinion, man. In my day - the mid 90's - Meijer sold fugly orangish maize shirts.
I'll take today's maize over the dull, darker gold any day.
To me, it's much ado about nothing. Sure there used to be the orangish maize in past, but really the difference isn't as bad as people make it out. Notice in the student pic above that there are 3 years of student shirts represented, including the latest. They all look the same to me, except the old nikes seem a little faded.
I'll take Anthony Carter over Breaston (who I love), Tate (who I hope becomes "the man") and the hot-dog-vendor shirts (that suck most terribly)!
A.C. forever!!!!!!!
If we changed the shade of maize, it happened before then. I still have an Amani Toomer #18 jersey I got in 1993 (made by Russell Athletic, then our apparel manufacturer), where the yellow numbers are identical to what we use now. I also used to have a pair of official maize basketball shorts (which we debuted in 1991) and those were also the same shade. The Fab Five definitely did not wear yellow-orange.
A +1 to you and the guy below me. Although I'm not a jersey guy, I can see your point. I guess I'm thinking more of the color of t-shirts than official on-field/court apparel. T-shirts didn't become highlighter yellow until recently. Those of my generation typically see the student shirts these days and say, "WTF"?
used to be.
Go into Moe's, and look at the old pair of pants in the display case. They are more khaki, than yellow.
And yes, "Highlighter yellow" is a rather accurate, if not noble, description for what we have now. It doesn't bother me to think of it that way. Look at the cap of the hightlighter on your desk. There's probably nothing else in your house that approximates the color better.
And yes, I am quite certain that the color-shift is due to the fact that the new yellow photographs better, and translates onto video better, than our old color, which really did look more like "yellow, the fields where ripens the grain, and yellow the moon on the harvest wain..."
Hail.
It used to be, when Michigan game photos were reproduced in the newspapers, either in color or in black and white, there was so little contrast with the old yellow, that it was a little odd-looking. I thought our unis looked a lot different in photos than they did live, and it was sort of off-putting.
The new color pallette just photographs better. I think it is as simple as that. If you look at the photos of Tate & co. above, even those images seem to "tone down" the brightness of our current unis. Doesn't bother me at all. Seems like progress to me. Optical progress.
As for all of the M logos, there have been more than I can count. And some of the old designs have even found their way into the new stadium detail features. Including the style of "M" that you see in the bronze marker in the center of the diag.
SI cover, from the 1950's:
And here is how the old "maize" translated in black and white photography in the 1960's:
I can buy that the shade has changed, but I think it's been much more gradual than people think, and I doubt it was consciously done. The fact that film and photography quality has massively improved probably makes us think we're seeing huge changes when part of it may be due to technology (and when you see those old pants at Moe's, keep in mind that those may have faded over the years - uniforms aren't normally made to last decades on end). I think the shade of blue has slightly changed over the years, too (from nearly black to something a tad closer to royal blue), which in turn may affect the way we perceive the accompanying maize.
Yes, the "maize" color change has been gradual.
Yes, I don't think that anybody ever envisioned any dramatic changes.
No, it is not an illusion of better-quality photography; I've seen the changes over the years with my own eyes, starting as a little boy in '65 and '66. If we had the four game-worn helmets of Ron Kramer, Ron Johnson, Anthony Carter and Tate Forcier in front of us, you'd see four noticeably, if not dramatically, different versions of "maize."
And, finally, Yes, Michigan's modern unis are little lighter blue since the days of cotton jerseys. It might be the appearance of the fabric as much as anything else, but I'd be the first to concede a tiny shift to a lighter shade.
is big on contrast. As you said, it translates much better into black and white and also accentuates action, such as a slot ninja cuttin' through the secondary and into open field. Still, Nike can't change any colors at all without athletic department approval, so someone gave the greenlight.
I'll tell you one thing... if we wanted an ironclad answer to this question, we should talk to Jon Falk.
As I noted above, Nike had nothing to do with this. I have two home football jerseys - a Toomer jersey from '93 (made by Russell Athletic) and an Anthony Thomas jersey from '98 (made by Nike) and there is no discernable difference in the shade of yellow used.
If you were to ask Falk, he'd probably laugh at the suggestion that there was some directive from the athletic department about this. It most likely happened gradually and some of the "change" in the yellow may actually be caused by the shade of blue changing. The blue seems to have become slightly lighter, which would suggest a hint more green in it - which would accordingly affect the way we perceive the yellow (making it more "neon").
That looks like Lorenzo Lamas on the right? Or is that my eyes playing tricks on me? EDIT: I know its Kramer...
Speaking of which, does the Honolulu Blue look paler these days? I keep thinking it gets closer and closer to the Carolina Blue, but that might be my perception as well.
See a plain blue t-shirt with "MICHIGAN" printed on the front. The M-Den shirts are in maize, and the shirts from nearly everywhere else are yellow.
Story - University had football stadium painted in the early 80's. Canham told the painter he screwed up, and demanded he repaint and use MAIZE rather than yellow.
Why not The Maize(v. Yellow) and Blue? In the late 1800's/early 1900's, yellow started to be used to mean cowardly, and "yellow" journalism was used for muckrakers. Some historians say this is when the use of "maize" and blue came into use.
Love the photo of Anthony the darter Carter.