The Real Reason that Prince and Burke Live Purple
Microsoft’s default or core color is blue. The official Apple colors are black and grey. And Google covers basically everything, everywhere, all at once with the primary colors of paint and light.
But really, what’s in a color?
Microsoft’s blue represents security, trust, and loyalty. Apple’s black is about sophistication, power, and mystery. Hmm … mystery. And Google? It’s plausible that the real reason is Google’s first server was built with Lego, in blue, red, yellow, and green.
So, what’s with Burke’s purple?
The tagline of Burke’s playground and recreation products is “Play that moves you.” But, not just in a physical way. So much goes into research, design, and development in each play element and product and how it fits into an overall system to ignite cognitive, social, emotional, and imaginative skill development. It’s more than just a “playground”, but we’re not supposed to know that. We should see it as an awesome thing to climb on, slide on, swing, jump, and laugh on, while leaving the technical stuff to the experts.
Purple is a color that encourages the mind, body, and soul to live in harmony. It brings together balance of mental clarity with emotional stability. It’s the color of enlightenment, welcoming all schools of thought. It’s unbiased and civilized, as it promotes understanding and acceptance.
Yep, colors have meaning. I didn’t know how much, until I went down this rabbit hole.
Did you know that purple is the most powerful visible wavelength of all the colors of the rainbow? It stimulates our mood while it calms the mind and nerves. It’s uplifting, as it encourages imagination, creativity, playfulness, and uniqueness. This is why many musicians, writers, poets, and artists respond well to purple.
But, that’s not why Prince embraced the color. Purple represents royalty and according his sister Sharon Nelson, it made him feel more “Princely”.
Royalty, strength, prestige, ability, and innovation are all represented by purple, while on a more human scale, empathy, peace, happiness, compassion, spirituality, and inspiration.
What’s in a color? Well … more than meets the eye, apparently.
Wait, I hear Prince playing in the background; “I only want to see you laughing in the purple rain …”