Color (:
Importance to Design
Color is one of the most important elements of design, if not the basis of all of it. If you are designing anything, you need to put effort and thought into your color scheme so that it looks pleasing to the eye and brain. After all, you are designing to improve something. Color is very powerful in design. It can set the mood the instant you walk into a room. It is also used to communicate basic ideas, such as the red in stop signs. Likewise, word associations can be recollected from the visual stimulations of color such as red, white and blue should be reminiscent of the United States, or branding of companies like green Starbucks and blue Facebook. Lastly, color is important for designers because it used to create hierarchical statements in visual communications by making certain words or elements stand out against bland or monotone palates.
Excitement from Lecture
I was very excited from this lecture because I love colors! A lot of times in my life, a determining factor if I like or hate a painting, TV show, house, or even a whole city will be if there is enough colors in it! I am also really interested in the science behind colors. How they affect the human brain and psychologically associate to different moods. The physics of the light waves is rather amazing, also. The prism divides white light into its spectrum by nanometers, who knew that rainbow was hidden in the seemingly transparent white light!?
Sources of Further Information
1 - Website
Color Perception Is Not in the Eye of the Beholder: It's in the Brain
Here is a study done by the University of Rochester that claims color perception all occurs in the brain and is swayed because of our experience in the world. Everyone's retinas can vary up to 40% from each others, yet we all agree yellow is "yellow." Furthermore, they conducted a study using colored contacts for several days to weeks on participants who still continued to label colors properly. A very interesting article for those interesting in anatomy behind color!
Jonathon Serwood
University of Rochester
2 - Video
Can Colors Affect Your Mood
This brief video gives some interesting facts regarding how color can affect test results. Using computer screens, test participants were subconsciously subjected to blue or red screen colors which in turn seemed to affect how well they performed. Furthermore, this informational video also gives some more test results of how color affects men and women's interactions.
3 - Website
A Guide to Choosing Colors for Your Brand
This blog is interesting because it is aimed towards an audience of companies attempting to create a successful brand/icon. It gives a chart of colors and their mood associations along with examples of popular present-day companies. This site gives tips in choosing a brand color, such as "choose the opposite color as your competitor!"
4 - Book
An Anthropologist on Mars by Oliver Sacks
This book is a collection of seven unique neurological mysteries. The chapter that is relevant to our color research is entitled The Case of the Colorblind Painter. It is an account of a painter that is unfortunately involved in a drastic car accident. He survives with only a concussion that leaves him in a fog for several weeks, however he lost his vision of color. What is amazing is that he did not even know this for months! As a painter, he shows a dramatic change from before and after the crash in his choices and organization of colors in his works of art, often making messy, blurry paintings. Before the crash, he created perfectly contrasting and organized colorful art pieces. The artist still paints today with color and is learning to overcome hardships through adversity. This story is a wonderful tragedy of the colorless life of a colorful person.
5 - Website
The Absolutely Scariest Colors Imaginable
This article is interesting since it speaks of common phobias and the colors associated with them. For example, the fear of needles and the associated colors include dark and blood reds along with silvers and grays. It is also cools because it touches upon the fear of colors! Who knew?!
