Photo from Stiftung Archaeologie

Stark white marble temples and statues. That’s what the scupltors of the Renaissance saw, and copied. And that’s the visual language that informed the architects of our nation’s capitol. But what if the original sources were not at all like everyone imagined? What if the ancient Greeks and Romans actually painted their works of art in riots of vibrant color?

That’s apparently what they did, according to the research of Vinzenz Brinkmann, an archaeologist who has been studying the hidden colord of the Greeks and Romans. Apparently, the organic and mineral pigments used by the original artists wore off with age. Later cleaning by well-meaning archaeologists and collectors further removed any evidence of the original colors.

Imagine the Parthenon or the Coliseum painted in dazzling reds and blues. Had the pigments lasted, would Michelangelo have been inspired to render David in full color? Would the White House have been painted in the colors of the Rainbow flag?

• Read about the research at Stiftung Archaeologie (German)
• Learn about recent exhibition: Gods in Color: Painted Sculpture of Classical Antiquity

Via the Color + Design Blog

In fact, if you ask people directly about potential changes to their work flow, they will likely tell you that they’d rather keep their current routines, thankyouverymuch, than have to learn something new.

We humans are pretty darn adaptable, though. Turns out some innovative research over a century old demonstrated our ability to effect an “experience flip.” The research method? Inversion goggles. The result? Within 3-5 days of seeing everything upside down, people can “rewire” themselves to adapt to this startling change in experience.

You can read about the research at graphpaper.com.

The takeaway? Don’t shoot down an approach to your redesign for fear of disrupting users. If the adaptation effort pays off with a much improved experience, your users will most likely thank you in the end.

Via Daring Fireball.