In 2005, University Printer John Gambell was asked to standardize the color.

[3] He had characterized its spirit as "a strong, relatively dark blue, neither purple nor green, though it can be somewhat gray.

"[4] 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.

[10] However, UC Berkeley uses a slightly different shade, Pantone 282  , from that adopted by Yale.

[15] 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.