Colour Symbolism

RED - Excitement, energy, passion, love, desire, speed, strength, power, heat, aggression, danger, fire, blood, war, violence, all things intense and passionate

PINK - symbolizes love, romance, and excitement

BEIGE - Beige and ivory symbolize unification. Ivory symbolizes quiet and pleasantness. Beige symbolizes calm and simplicity.

YELLOW - Joy, happiness, betrayal, optimism, idealism, imagination, hope, sunshine, summer, gold, philosophy, dishonesty, cowardice, jealousy, covetousness, deceit, illness, hazard.

BLUE - Peace, tranquility, cold, calm, stability, harmony, unity, trust, truth, confidence, conservatism, security, cleanliness, order, loyalty, sky, water, technology, depression, appetite suppressant.

TURQUOISE - Turquoise symbolizes calm. Teal symbolizes sophistication. Aquamarine symbolizes water. Lighter turquoise has a feminine appeal.

PURPLE - Royalty, nobility, spirituality, ceremony, mysterious, transformation, wisdom, enlightenment, cruelty, arrogance, mourning.

LAVENDER - symbolizes femininity, grace and elegance.

ORANGE - Energy, balance, enthusiasm, warmth, vibrant, expansive, flamboyant, demanding of attention.

GREEN - Nature, environment, healthy, good luck, renewal, youth, spring, generosity, fertility, jealousy, inexperience, envy, misfortune, vigor.

BROWN - Earth, stability, hearth, home, outdoors, reliability, comfort, endurance, simplicity, and comfort.

GREY - Security, reliability, intelligence, staid, modesty, dignity, maturity, solid, conservative, practical, old age, sadness, boring. Silver symbolizes calm.

WHITE - Reverence, purity, birth, simplicity, cleanliness, peace, humility, precision, innocence, youth, winter, snow, good, sterility, marriage (Western cultures), death (Eastern cultures), cold, clinical.

BLACK - Power, sexuality, sophistication, formality, elegance, wealth, mystery, fear, evil, unhappiness, depth, style, evil, sadness, remorse, anger, anonymity, underground, good technical color, mourning, death (Western cultures).

Colour symbolism in Eastern culture

Marriage: White and pink are favorite just as in the western world.
Green: Eternity, family, harmony, health, peace, posterity
Happiness: Red
Helpful: Grey
Wealth: Blue, gold and purple
White: Children, helpful people, marriage,
mourning, peace, purity, travel
Gold: Strength, wealth
Evil or sadness- Just like in the western world- black.

Colour Symbolism - associations

Colour can be separated into two associations; psychological and cultural. Good design requires the knowledge and awareness of how and why colours communicate meaning. Some meanings are obvious such as red, which conveys passion and blood but some are less universal and will only relate to certain audiences and be more complex. Colours in nature are omnipresent and recognised across the world, for example blue will be associated with the sky and a feeling of calmness, another example is the fact that green is the colour of vegetation.

Colour in the context of psychology generates a different level of meaning, this occurs from cultural and contemporary subjects. Because of this colours may differ from their natural associations such as green instead of being natural can be linked to good luck or even extra terrestrials, money or greed, all of which have nothing to do with plants.

gravure

Gravure image areas consist of cells or wells engraved into a copper cylinder and the unetched surface of the cylinder represents the non-printing areas. The image cylinder rotates in a bath of ink. The excess is wiped off the surface by a flexible steel doctor blade. The ink remaining in the thousands of recessed cells forms the image by direct transfer to the paper as it passes between the plate cylinder and the impression cylinder. Gravure printing produces excellent reproductions of pictures, but slightly scruffy type.

Lithography

Modern offset lithography relies on supple aluminium, polyester, mylar or paper plates to work with the photographic process. The imaging process begins when the rough surfaced plate is covered in a photosensitive emulsion, a negative image is then placed in contact with the plate and exposed to ultra-violet light which develops so that the emulsion reveals the postive of the negative image. Another technique includes the use of a platesetter which uses lasers to transfer the image directly from a computer.

Offset

Offset printing is a technique where a plate transfers an inked image to a rubber sheet then to the printing surface. This method is most commonly used to print books and and newspapers.

Colour sells

If you use red to sell your product, you’re probably going to have more success. The same is true with yellow, which is the next best color choice. Advertisers and marketers have known this for many years, but scientists know it, too. The science of color says that reds and yellows make people want to buy things. Their heart rate increases and their pupils dilate just a bit. The colors excite these people. Sometimes an advertiser will use a color simply because it draws attention to a product. Other times color is used because it has a specific association with something the product relates to or something that the advertiser wants the consumer to think of. In the past colors were just chosen almost randomly, but the science of color is something that most companies and advertising firms take very seriously in today’s competitive market.

For companies who are concerned about health, green is a good choice. Because it symbolises nature and makes people think of plants and healthy, growing things and rebirth it only makes sense that these companies would want to use something that would connect with consumers in that way. The science of color isn’t just used for food, though. It can be used for hundreds of different types of products and it all depends on what kind of message the company wants to convey. This science also tells us that we should have no more than three colors per item when it comes to advertising and product packaging, because too many colors are confusing and can send a mixed message that consumers find unappealing. It is important that messages in the advertising industry be clear if products are to sell well.

The science of color can extend to people, too, and the colors that they choose to wear. If a person wears red or purple, he or she exhibits passion and strength and power. Some say that purple (not lavender) is the color of royalty. Yellow indicates a sunny disposition, and people who wear blue or green are usually calmer individuals – and they help make others feel calm, as well. Black and white are often used for elegance, such as men’s formal attire. Not everyone wears a particular color because it makes them feel good, but color is important in many aspects of our lives, and it can make a difference in how we feel and how we relate to our environment and others around us.

Pantone Plus series

A really insightful video into the new pantone plus series, I especially like the 28 colour printer that they use to print the pantone chip books, the only one of its kind in the world.

Were the greeks colour blind?

As seen through the eyes of the Ancient Greeks, color perception is a very different thing than our own color perception. In Homer's writing he often described colour by comparing it to objects for example he described the sea and sheep as the colour of wine he also strangely used 'chloros' (green) as the colour of honey and kyanos (cyan) as the colour of Hectors hair. but was his hair really blue or was his perception of color reflect on himself, his people, and his world. We'll never truly know but other ancient greeks used the same descriptions so is our translation of their language and colour descriptions wrong or were they colour blind. In Ancient Greece vision is shown, to be a very subjective practice and a different process from our own visual process. The importance of vision and color held a different place in the mind of the Ancient Greek, but this is the truth of vision everywhere. Sight is a gift to us, and it is a gift that we choose to use, it is a sense whose effect on us is in part created by ourselves individually. Whether we use it one way or another is simply a cultural or biological difference, and in studying the sight of others we can grow infinitely in our appreciation of our own vision and the strength of our minds over our biological and physiological processes.

Opticks by Isaac newton

Both Isaac Newton and Johann Wolfgang von Goethe were pioneers in colour theory and philosophy. In Newton's 'Opticks' he observed that a narrow beam of light splits into different bands of colour when passed through a glass prism. He used the word Spectrum in the same study to describe his experiments in colour and optics. Originally Newton divided the Spectrum into 7 colours, Red, Orange, Yellow, Green, Blue, Indigo and Violet, though other philosophers suggest that Indigo is a shade of Blue or Violet as the human eye is quite insensitive to Indigo's frequencies. What I find most interesting is Newton's hypothesise of light being amade up of particles of different colours (corpuscles) and that each colour moves at a different speed so that when light passes through the prism red is moving faster than violet resulting in violet bending more sharply that red creating a spectrum of colours.

Words and thoughts in RGB

An amazing documentary investigating the spectrum.

print

Print

Print

OUGD102 - John Rankin

OUGD102 - Tomoko Takahashi

OUGD 102 - Henri Cartier Bresson

OUGD 102 - Sebastiao Salgado

OUGD 102 - Roni Horn