One blip in the news this morning was Ubuntu’s announcement that they’re evolvoing their brand, most notably that they’re finally moving away from brown.

Thats great and all, I’ve been quietly rooting for Ubuntu for years. But the thing that really caught my eye was the proposed cover design for their notepad:

Why? If you’re familiar with Ideas On Purpose it’s pretty obvious:

This is almost certainly just coincidence. It’s not like anyone can take credit for inventing the thought bubble, Imaginary Forces has a similar mark, so does Meebo. And then there’s the din of speech bubbles. Orange is a miserable color to try and recreate with RGB primaries and people don’t perceive a lot of variation in true orange before the hue jumps to yellow, red or brown. Yet despite all that, it seems like everyone is using orange these days.