WHY colour MATTERS
So why is colour so important, and how does it affect our everyday lives? Colour has a powerful psychological effect on our emotions and impacts the way we perceive the world around us. We have delved into the secret language of colour and looked at how colour affects our everyday decision making. We question where we find our colour inspiration, how we use colour to our advantage in business and how we place colours in varying categories.
Georgia O'Keeffe, Crab's Claw Ginger Hawaii, 1939.
“I found I could say things with colours that I couldn’t say any other way – things that I had no words for. ”
Why is colour an important element in branding?
Colour has always been an integral part of providing meaningful information. It translates a mood; we are wired to respond and to feel certain ways about particular hues. Colour is used to evoke emotions and is therefore key in the portrayal of brand values. It’s an imperative element when designing logos to attract the target audience and to ensure the company logo matches the personality of the services and products, too. Like anything, perception of colour varies––emotional associations are often rooted in our cultural upbringing, religion, and gender, and can be ever-changing with market trends. For example, red in South Africa means mourning, in China, it means good luck, and in Western cultures, it conveys love, passion and danger. Therefore, when building a brand identity or refreshing an existing one to speak to and attract a new audience, we must consider what colours best convey the brand and what will generate the appropriate response.
Part of our job as designers is to express the personality of a brand through colour, we use mood boards to understand the client’s needs and begin building the story. Mood boards are also a great way to describe colours and help distinguish subtle differences between colours.
The fact that colour has unique qualities in evoking emotions helps to evoke our long-term memory. For example, a short and sweet tagline used with a strong colour palette will create a more recognisable and memorable brand. For example, the worlds largest fast food restaurant chain, McDonalds, is one of the best-known brand names with its strong palette of red and yellow with tagline “I’m lovin it”. Read more behind the success of its brand logo here and see further examples of famous brand slogans and taglines via Adobe.
Strong colour palettes can help you connect with your customers and enhance brand loyalty; this is often done by reminding your customers of memorable moments, nostalgia and touching on shared experiences.
As a rule, warm colours, such as oranges and reds, evoke feelings such as love, passion and anger. In contrast, cool colours, such as blues and greens, are more stoic and associated with reliability, strength, calmness, and sadness. Blue is seen as a trusting colour, so we use it when designing for businesses and bodies that operate for and within the financial industries. Take a look at the brand identity we created for T–Bridge. An eclectic mix of contrasting colours can also help to provoke feelings of playfulness, and hint at times gone by.
Vincent Van Gogh was an expert at evoking emotions through the use of colour and their underlying emotional connotations.
Van Gogh, Café Terrace at Night, 1888.
“Instead of trying to reproduce exactly what I see before me, I make more arbitrary use of colour to express myself more forcefully.”
The Natural - Artificial Debate
We have long taken inspiration from nature to denote feelings about subjects. The majority of our subconscious reactions to colour are influenced by the components found in nature and the temperature of various environments. For example, the colour combination of black and yellow often depicts danger in nature and our industrial world, seen in wasps and used as hazards and warning signs. Character often plays a key part in the inspiration for colour palettes, and many believe colour harmony begins in nature. Therefore nature and natural forms provide continual inspiration for visual design and the portrayal of values.
Colour is filled with emotion, and so it's a powerful tool in nature and plays a significant part in how living organisms pick up signals and communicate. Charles Darwin believed that the bright colours of the male birds of paradise help attract favourable mates. Some studies have shown that females use a male's colour's brightness as an essential indication of his health and vitality. Therefore, the male birds with the most intricate and interesting patterns and colours are the most attractive and desirable. It's interesting to think of these birds with their bright coloured coats as these colours in our industrial world would be described as neon. So what is a neon colour? Many would regard neon as an artificial, man-made colour, seen in nightclubs in plastic glow sticks and 80s acrylic leg warmers. However, these saturated and electric colours are seen in nature and have existed long before we began to produce and study colour.
Cavallini Colour Wheel.
Colour is an incredibly broad subject and here we touch on some of our key ideas and thoughts. The perception and significance of colour is a very personal one and it’s safe to say that we all experience colour differently even if they are subtle. Furthermore, those with colour blindness and types of synesthesia will experience colour vastly differently from those who are neurotypical.
Test your COLOUR memory
Must-see exhibitions that present beautiful colours include Larry Bell: New Work at Hauser&Wirth, Rana Begum: Dappled Light at Pitzhanger Manor and Yayoi Kusama: Infinity Mirror Rooms at Tate Modern.
Read about the wonders of Wes Anderson’s colour palettes via Another Magazine.
Familiarise yourself with Queen B’s go-to colour combinations here.
To delve further into the world of colour, we are sharing the 10 must-see colour blogs.
Book to experience Van Gogh’s colourful world here.
