The flag in this painting of the Yale 1859 crew team is believed to be the first documented Yale Blue, though the photograph is in black and white.[1]
Since the 1850s, Yale Crew has rowed in blue uniforms,[2] and in 1894, "dark blue" was officially adopted as Yale's color, after half a century of the university being associated with green.[3] In 1901, this was amended to "dark blue of the shade known as the color of the University of Oxford",[4] 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.[2] 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."[3] 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.[2]
The university administration defines Yale Blue as a custom color whose closest approximation in the Pantone system is Pantone 289.[3][5] Yale Blue inks may be ordered from the Superior Printing Ink Co., formulas 6254 and 6255.[2]
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.[9] However, UC Berkeley uses a slightly different shade, Pantone 282 , from that adopted by Yale.[10] The "Pomona Blue" (Pantone 2935 [11]) used by Pomona College is similar to Yale Blue and is a reference to the role of Yale alumni in the college's founding.[12]
The official color "DCU Blue" of Dublin City University is Pantone 289 , very close to Yale Blue, but with no acknowledged connection.[14]
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.[15]
