THE PSYCHOLOGY OF COLORS

85% of Human communication is visual. And what more aspect of visual communication can deliver excitement and variety than Color?

The Rainbow (The Universal intro to the Visible Spectrum)
Most people believe that the only colors of a rainbow are red, orange, yellow, green, blue, indigo, and violet, but a rainbow is actually made up of an entire continuum of colors – even colors the eye can’t see!

A designer should not use color without a specific plan or goal. Here are some of color’s principle uses:


o Conveying emotion and meaning
o Changing perception of space
o Changing apparent size
o Showing similarities and differences
o Parsing the visual field into chunks
o Linking spatially separated objects together
o Attracting attention
o Creating emphasis
o Smoothing to improve image quality
o Creating aesthetic and emotional appeal

What are some common mistakes in color usage?

o Using insufficient brightness contrast. This is the biggest sin,by far.
o Paying attention only to aesthetics
o Using color for color’s sake without a specific plan or color scheme.
o Assigning different colors to the same type of the same color to different types
o Using hue to represent a quantitative continuum
o Creating large fields of saturated color
o Using too many colors

How does color convey meaning?
OSHA (Occupational Safety and Health Agency), for example, has standardized

o RED: danger
o ORANGE: warning
o YELLOW: caution
o BLUE: notice
o GREEN: safety