The Psychology of Colour

https://themarketingindex.com/the-marketers-guide-to-psychology-of-colour/

by SoStoked • 7 years ago

142 30 7 years ago

themarketingindex.com

malloryerik• 7 years ago

I'd much prefer something like this:

https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4383146/

Color and psychological functioning: a review of theoretical and empirical work

leeoniya5• 7 years ago

i have this unpopular opinion that a lot of design advice - like much of psychology - is a bunch of p-hacked pseudo-science.

i've had to sit through enough corporate branding meetings with agencies to select adjectives that describe companies and mission statements. the aura of importance is palpable. invariably, every company ends up with some form of "trustworthy reliable innovative and customer-focused.", but it takes 5 meetings and 4 c-levels to arrive at the exact ordering. i just bring the popcorn now.

(round shapes are more trustworthy & straight sharp edges are more striking)

so they have proven that round shaped designs result in what? better lifetime value? higher customer retention or aquisition?

the adjectives assigned to colors are hilarious

Yellow – Happy, Friendly, Warning

so, both friendly and warning. or is that a typo and they meant Warming? and the CAT logo is there - a heavy industrial equipment mfg? yes, the CAT color is appropriate because it matches a yellow construction sign. and most of the crap that mcdonalds produces is some shade of deep fried yellow-orange. they're appropriate colors but imo have questionable connections with warmth/friendliness.

most of this advice is dubious at best. it's like the apt statement about advertising spend, "half of it is wasted, i just don't know which half"

/rant

rubatuga• 7 years ago

Just think of this article of not mostly a science, but a reflection of the common trends that consumers experience and expect. Design trends are good to follow because they are familiar and comforting to users. At the very least, it'll prevent you from making egregious design errors.

gridlockd• 7 years ago

The color associations are useless, they're not only varying with cultures, they're varying with individuals, but most importantly they vary in relation to other colors.

What's true is that that certain colors "harmonize" better with others, but little of value can be said about any one color in isolation.

leeoniya5• 7 years ago

i'm on the side of color theory in terms of visual harmony. just not on the definitive psychology side of it.

tgv• 7 years ago

I don't think there's any kind of research that could possibly back up claims about the influence of color on something as brand perception. There is only "29 UCLA psych undergrads reacted 18ms faster to small red squares in comparison to small blue triangles on a monitor at 40cm distance in 2003".

mark-r• 7 years ago

I wouldn't rely too much on the attributes ascribed to each color, they really are dependent on the individual. This is obliquely admitted to when talking about cultural differences.

But I will say that color is hugely important to branding. If I see an ad I can instantly tell who it's from if the company uses consistent color choices.

leeoniya5• 7 years ago

yes, i'm not dismissing the importance of color/design. i think it has to be easily recognizable/consistent and i doubt many would choose the color red for environmental causes. but these things are obvious to any 10 people you survey. it's the advice on the specifics which i find hugely inconclusive.

paggle2• 7 years ago

There is some repeatable science to it: https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bouba/kiki_effect

leeoniya5• 7 years ago

sure, but what would be the difference in actionable application?

are we to conclude that rounded designs will be preferred by people? should everyone use rounded deigns? if not, who should?

gehwartzen• 7 years ago

I haven’t looked into any scientific work around color perception but I would imagine at least some of the attributes are rooted in our evolutionary past.

Yellow=warning. Many poisonous critters use this color as a warning (snakes, salamanders, etc)

Blue=calming. Maybe triggers feeling of being near water which I’m sure long ago was quite reassuring when access wasn’t guaranteed.

DoreenMichele2• 7 years ago

Some of it is due to historical context, for example:

Violet – Luxurious

Historically, most clothes for most commoners were pretty bland. Dying something purple was very, very hard and expensive. Thus, it became associated with royalty because no one else could afford it.

The association still persists, though now any schmuck in most developed countries can wear something purple.

https://www.livescience.com/33324-purple-royal-color.html

DoreenMichele2• 7 years ago

Yellow: so, both friendly and warning.

It depends on how it is used and the exact shade of yellow.

Bright yellow is a really strong color. If you use it in large swaths, yes, it is alarming.

It is why we use it on buses: So you can't miss them. They have researched this. Yellow is the easiest shade to see without trying. It's the hardest shade to overlook.

But touches of a less-strong shade of yellow as an accent color do help warm things up and signal "friendly" and "happy." So a trustworthy shade of dark blue with small touches of yellow can be a good color combo.

I have read research-based books about color and had a class in Cartography for GIS. There is research on various aspects of color -- it's literal perception (like yellow being hard to overlook) and it's subjective perception, which can be influenced by culture. For example, some cultures wear black to funerals and others wear white to funerals.

So you do have to be aware of cultural context when trying to brand something. If you only ever try to brand stuff for Middle Class American Consumers, you may not realize that. But if you ever try to branch out to Asia or whatever, stuff that works here may not work there.

Daub• 7 years ago

I completely agree. As an art teacher, I am often called upon to teach 'colour theory'. Well... find me a theory in the true sense, and I will teach it. Goethe's 'Theory of Colour' is no such thing. Past that, received wisdoms like 'yellow comes forward, blue recedes', is provable bunk.

The core problem is that from the very birth of colour science, the subject has attracted floppy thinking. Newton himself added an accurate colour to his colour wheel for no other reason than he thought it should correspond with the classical musical scale.

kdmccormick• 7 years ago

Did they proofread this?

The primary colours(yellow, red & blue) we were taught to paint with in school are wrong. The actual correct primary colours are yellow, magenta & cyan. The proof is in your printer cartridges.

...but two paragraphs later:

Primary: red, yellow and blue, these colours can not be made from any other colours and are the building blocks of the other categories.

(My vague and possibly-incorrect understanding is that any three hues can be used as "primary hues", but different choices will result in different hue spaces, and it's just that CMY and RBY produce spaces that are useful in printing and painting, respectively.)

hvindin2• 7 years ago

Both of those statements are correct in context.

RGB if a thing is emitting light.

CMYK if a thing is reflecting light.

So it is true to say "Red, green, and blue are the basic building blocks of other colours"

It is also true to say "When you were told in primary school that the primary colours for your paints were red, green, and blue, this was untrue"

I do actually think that this is an example of a somewhat muddled thought process that is jumping from one thing to a other pretty eratically, or perhaps of something being edited such that it is now confusing to a reader going over it for the first time, honestly the whole thing reads a little like it was written by someone who really enjoys stimulants and can't keep their focus on one thing. But _technically_ I don't think any of the content is _wrong_ (obviously this means excluding ~70% of the content because it's largely about how people feel, and this is probably never _wrong_ but it's also not a matter of fact...)

hvindin2• 7 years ago

No, actually, my bad, I went back and read that bit over again for a third time and it does actually say red yellow blue aren't primary, but that the primary colours are red yellow and blue.

You were correct and I jusy managed to misread the article twice....

weinzierl3• 7 years ago

It is also true to say "When you were told in primary school that the primary colours for your paints were red, green, and blue, this was untrue"

The reason that red, green and blue are sometimes stated as primary colors in the context of mixing ink layers is that red and green and blue are rather vague terms. What is meant by red in this context would more exactly be called magenta and green is used to designate cyan. Wikipedia puts it this way[1]:

Before the color names cyan and magenta were in common use, these primaries were often known as blue and red, respectively, and their exact color has changed over time with access to new pigments and technologies.

Also I think education about primary colors is just a mess and the same Wikipedia article[1] talks about this too:

Elementary art education materials, dictionaries, and electronic search engines often define primary colors effectively as conceptual colors (generally magenta, yellow, and cyan; or red, green, and blue) that can be used to mix "all" other colors and often go further and suggest that these conceptual colors correspond to specific hues and precise wavelengths. Such sources do not present a coherent, consistent definition of primary colors since real primaries cannot be complete.

[1] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_color

weinzierl3• 7 years ago

A common problem when people with different backgrounds discuss primary colors is that they associate different notions with the term "primary color". There are at least four different concepts regarding "primary color":

1. a set of real colorants or colored lights that can be combined to produce a gamut of colors -> "real" primaries like RGB or CMYK

2. a set of imaginary colors that can be combined to produce the whole gamut of colors a human with normal vision can see -> color space primaries like XYZ or LMS

3. a set of colors that an observer perceives as pure -> psychological primaries or more precisely unique hues like those used in NCS or CIECAM02

4. the colors that are best examples of the (considered to be universal) basic color terms -> psychological primaries or more precisely focal colors (focal colors are a different concept than unique hues but empirically they seem to coincide with the unique hues, so the primaries from NCS or CIECAM02 are good examples here too.)

(My vague and possibly-incorrect understanding is that any three hues can be used as "primary hues", but different choices will result in different hue spaces, and it's just that CMY and RBY produce spaces that are useful in printing and painting, respectively.)

If you are happy spanning any arbitrary gamut than any three hues will do. If your ambition is to cover the whole gamut of normal human vision no three real colors will do. You will either have to use more than three or allow imaginary colors. On the other hand there are infinitely many sets of primaries to span a certain gamut. Wikipedia expresses this probably much better than I can[2]:

All sets of real and color-space primaries are arbitrary, in the sense that there is no one set of primaries that can be considered the canonical set. Primary pigments or light sources selected for a given application on the basis of subjective preferences as well as practical factors such as cost, stability, availability etc. Color-space primaries can be subjected to meaningful one-to-one transformations so that the transformed space is still complete and each color is specified with a unique sum.

[1] https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC1404500/

[2] https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Primary_color

layoutIfNeeded• 7 years ago

According to Wikipedia RYB aka artist’s primaries work by accident:

“One reason the artist's primary colors work at all is due to the imperfect pigments being used have sloped absorption curves, and change color with concentration. A pigment which is pure red at high concentrations can behave more like magenta at low concentrations. This allows it to make purples that would otherwise be impossible. Likewise, a blue that is ultramarine at high concentrations appears cyan at low concentrations, allowing it to be used to mix green. Chromium red pigments can appear orange, and then yellow, as the concentration is reduced. It is even possible to mix very low concentrations of the blue mentioned and the chromium red to get a greenish color. This works much better with oil colors than it does with watercolors and dyes.

The old primaries depend on sloped absorption curves and pigment leakages to work, while newer scientifically derived ones depend solely on controlling the amount of absorption in certain parts of the spectrum.

Another reason the correct primary colors were not used by early artists is they were not available as durable pigments. Modern methods in chemistry were needed to produce them.”

udkl• 7 years ago

Some links about color theory in general (from my notes) :

* Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs - http://jamie-wong.com/post/color/

* Practical Color Theory for People Who Code - https://tallys.github.io/color-theory/

* http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html

krm01• 7 years ago

As a senior designer who, for the last 10+ years worked on so many software products I can tell you this: none of these things are applicable for 99.99% of businesses. Google did some a/b testing on which blue tone links converts better. Because, they are Google and .0001% improvement can be significant. But, even tough I was spoonfed the same theory in Design School, really, the practicality of it is negligible.

thecaio• 7 years ago

This s pseudoscience. Working with large consumer brands in the last 10 years, I’ve never seen any of this applied to real life. This has no value and I’m surprise it was voted to HN frontpage.

kelsolaar• 7 years ago

Interesting to note, our eyes can only pick up certain light wavelengths as seen below in the visible and invisible light.

Light by definition is the "radiation that is considered from the point of view of its ability to excite the human visual system" thus there is not such a thing as invisible light.

http://eilv.cie.co.at/term/659

m0llusk• 7 years ago

This seems super shallow. Most of the interesting psychology of color comes from grouping with contrast. Forests are mostly green, Brown, gold, and rusty red. It is the combination that evokes mood and reaction. Looking at single colors on white may have some limited application for marketing and promotion, but combination and contrast is more closely related to psychology of interpretation.

The Psychology of Colour

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