Design

In a design school in Italy, students were asked to design coloured shapes, with colours each student had mixed him/herself. The result was, that the colours mixed by students from Northern-European countries e.g. Scandinavia, were much lighter than those of students from Southern-European countries like Spain.

Why?

The light in ares further from the Equator, is less bright and strong due to the curvature of the Earth. Rays hitting the extreme North or South of the Earth's surface are much weaker, since they have more atmosphere to travel through. Many rays don't hit the surface directly, but bounce off at a tangential angle, making the light's effect weaker that at the Equator, where the light is very intense. (curtesy of 3.bp.blogspot.com)

The Ancient Greeks decorated the facades of their temples based on this principle: they realized that their artful relief decorations, need not be sculpted too deeply, since the intense light of the sun would bring out their shapes and curves perfectly. In Northern countries however, carved details on Classical architecture need to be sculpted quite profoundly to create the same 3-D effect.