They are color palettes based on Swiss design that originated in the 1950s, and a big influence on the look of flat design now. Not so much the function; Swiss design (international typographic style) placed an emphasis on removing visual embellishments to make design an effective tool of communication. The minimalism and simplicity were a means to an end, not an end in itself.
Here is a fun example of the bright colors preferred by these designers:
Hey, thank you! So, if I'm understanding this a Swiss-Style <T> is a T that is simple and effective.
Your reply starts by mentioning color palettes based on Swiss design, but is that the case here? It seems colors individually are not part of ITS, but how they are used (and therefore all colors can be used on it, as long as properties of this design philosophy are observed).
You got it! While there isn't a "Swiss palette", bright and contrasting colors were popular for both technical and stylistic reasons:
"The following points must be considered whenever it is planned to use colour: the effect on the viewer, its usability in the various advertising media and the technical possibilities of reproduction.
The sparing, but methodical and logical use of colour has a more telling effect than a combination of many different colours. If colour is used, it should be plainly visible and the reasons for its use immediately apparent."
- Josef Müller-Brockmann The Graphic Artist and His Design Problems (1961)
which is a good book even now, it's a practical guide with plenty of examples, so you can get a good look inside his head, even if you don't necessarily agree with everything he wrote.
I'm not questioning what you're saying, as it seems to be correct based on what I know (I may or may not have watched the Helvetica documentary) but what's with the graininess in the color picker? It doesn't fit with anything else I'm looking at on this topic.
My guess is to simulate how the colors will look on paper, they always look like they "pop" (god I hate that word lol) on a screen more than when printed out. You can turn it off by clicking "noise" at the top right.
The Swiss style seems to have influenced the covers of a lot of old sci-fi books, so I mentally associate these kinds of color schemes with faded old paper and sitting indoors on a rainy afternoon.
Swiss-Style has nothing to do "being in the style of Switzerland." Rather, it refers to the "Swiss Style" aka "International Typographic Style," a school of graphic design.
Seems like it's trying to generate a bunch of aesthetically-pleasing 4-color palettes, and present them in a helpful way.
I suspect that the building shape is engineered to create a border between each pair of colors. (The standard alternative would be, say, 4 vertical bars, which only shows you how 3 of the color pairs look against each other.)
The noise might be working under the assumption that you're going to apply noise to the colors when you use them, too.
Nope, that's Helvetia.
Helveticus is the adjective (Helvetica is the feminine.
English has Helvetic as a less common form of "Helvetian", which indicates primarily an ancient Swiss inhabitant but could also broadly refer to a Swiss of today.
Closest thing I found is http://www.smashingmagazine.com/2009/07/lessons-from-swiss-s... which includes a link to https://www.flickr.com/photos/20745656@N00/3053656134/ and looks similar to this.