| Yale Blue | |
| Hex: | 00356B |
| Source: | Identity Guidelines |
| Isccname: | Deep blue |
Yale Blue is the dark blue color used in association with Yale University.
Since the 1850s, Yale Crew has rowed in blue uniforms,[1] and in 1894, "dark blue" was officially adopted as Yale's color, after half a century of the university being associated with green.[2] In 1901, this was amended to "dark blue of the shade known as the color of the University of Oxford",[3] although Oxford Blue, while only 2° different in hue, is now substantially darker than Yale Blue, with a brightness of 28% compared to Yale Blue's 42%. In 2005, University Printer John Gambell was asked to standardize the color.[1] He had characterized its spirit as "a strong, relatively dark blue, neither purple nor green, though it can be somewhat gray. It should be a color you would call blue."[2] A vault in the university secretary's office holds two scraps of silk, apocryphally from a bolt of cloth for academic robes, preserved as the first official Yale Blue.[1]
The university administration defines Yale Blue as a custom color whose closest approximation in the Pantone system is Pantone 289.[2] [4] Yale Blue inks may be ordered from the Superior Printing Ink Co., formulas 6254 and 6255.[1]
Yale Blue is one of the two official colors of Indiana State University,[5] the University of Mississippi,[6] and Southern Methodist University.[7]
Yale Blue is an official color of the University of California, Berkeley, adopted in 1868 by the university's founders, who were mostly Yale graduates.[8] However, UC Berkeley uses a slightly different shade, Pantone 282, from that adopted by Yale.[9] The "Pomona Blue" (Pantone 2935 [10]) used by Pomona College is similar to Yale Blue and is a reference to the role of Yale alumni in the college's founding.[11]
The color is similar to Duke University's Duke Blue as both are derived from prussian blue, where Pantone 289 remains an acceptable approximation.[12]
The official color "DCU Blue" of Dublin City University is Pantone 289, very close to Yale Blue, but with no acknowledged connection.[13]
The zine produced by Yale's campus radio station WYBC is named Relatively Dark Blue Neither Purple Nor Green in reference to Gambell's description of the color.[14]
