Color Fury: The Pitfalls and Shortcomings of “Color Psychology”
The other day, my friend shared a color psychology article with me that sent me into a fury. These sorts of analyses do a massive disservice to the design process. Making business communication decisions based on this type of vague, myopic thought is about as useful making business decisions based on your monthly horoscope.
Color perception is highly complex. The human eye, in combination with the brain, is a complicated mechanism that allows humans to differentiate among millions of hues. There isn’t one red. There are many. How can it be sensible that all of these contain a singular, universal meaning?
Color’s cumulative impact on a viewer depends heavily on context. It is affected by countless other factors including coverage, adjacent colors, scale, shape and subject matter.
Assigning sets of predetermined meanings to a few colors does not create a formula for effective color use. It restricts the potential vocabulary for capable visual communication and inhibits a more integrated approach in which color cooperates with a variety of other visual elements.
- A few useful resources on color theory and color physiology:
- http://www.dezignare.com/newsletter/Johannes_Itten.html
- http://www.worqx.com/color/index.htm
- http://kuler.adobe.com/
- http://www.cambridgeincolour.com/tutorials/color-perception.htm
