Tabletops: Midnight voyage
Midnight voyage
This week's newsletter is as much a fruitless investigation as it is an open question: what is the origin of Midnight Blue?
Yes, the color Midnight Blue. Hex code #354152, to be exact, or C:68%, M:63%, Y:26%, K:50%, the more saturated version fit for print and paint. When and why was it first used in Apple Retail? Last week's newsletter on new store logos inspired some archive digging.
If you attended an Apple Store opening between 2016 and 2021, there is a fairly good chance you encountered Midnight Blue somewhere. Easels, temporary barricades, vinyl window coverings, webpages, and t-shirts all carried the inky hue.
Midnight Blue was never consistently applied to all stores or marketing materials, but it was used frequently enough to become synonymous with Apple Retail events.
I started paging through photos of store openings to triangulate the color's first appearance. The Fifth Avenue temporary store seemed like a good place to start. It opened on January 20, 2017:
That wasn't early enough.
My next theory was that Midnight Blue was a product of the New Store Design. New design, new color, right? Angela Ahrendts formally introduced the updates at Apple Union Square on May 19, 2016, eight months after the New Store Design soft launched at Brussels and Infinite Loop.
Sure enough, Union Square used Midnight Blue:
But that wasn't it either. I dug further into the archive until I discovered this December 2015 photo from my friend Filip:
When renovations began at Apple Regent Street, a temporary store was created in the basement, and the windows were covered with vinyl. This is the earliest example of Midnight Blue signage I can find. Earlier stores used black, white, or gray signs and temporary barricades.
This answer was deeply unsatisfying because it reveals no causal link. What makes Midnight Blue so special?
Enter the Apple Watch. No product since the iPhone has had a larger influence on the design of Apple Stores. This was especially true in the early years of the Watch, when the focus was fashion.
In the weeks leading up to the original Apple Watch launch, Apple Store employees were given new t-shirts. This old MacRumors article describes their color as a "dark shade of navy blue," which sounds (and looks) like Midnight Blue to me.
At the time, stainless steel and gold Apple Watch models offered Midnight Blue leather bands, and Apple had a growing accessory line to match. It's not a stretch to imagine the shirts were designed in tandem. But there's one more piece to this puzzle.
On September 9, 2014, Apple introduced the Apple Watch during a keynote at the Flint Center in Cupertino. In a bespoke hands-on building constructed adjacent to the theater, Apple Watch models were displayed on Midnight Blue leather mats. These same mats were brought to all Apple Stores in 2015 for use during try-on appointments. This is the earliest example of Midnight Blue in a retail context that I can find.
Correlation does not imply causation, so it would be irresponsible for me to conclude that the original Apple Watch is the reason my t-shirt from a store opening in the Dallas suburbs is blue. Still, there is a fascinating through line from that demo table in 2014 to store openings as recently as 2021. If you know of any earlier examples of Midnight Blue in use, let me know.
Featured image
Apple 渋谷
Photo via @akane_pictuers on Instagram.