Mood Boards
Colour Psychology-
“Colours, like features, follow the changes of the emotions”
Pablo Picasso
For my parallax scrolling infographic project I have chosen the subject of colour theory, taking a brief look at its history in bite-sized info boxes, and looking at the effect of colour on the human brain, and looking at questions like:
Why do certain colours invoke emotional and chemical reactions in the brain?
Why do we associate red with danger? Pink with girls?
If possible I would like to give a brief history of colour theory, as an origin point to all this information, given that the first colour theory principles appeard in the writings of Leone Battista Alberti in c.1435 …just pre the Renessaince and continued in Leonardo’s notebooks c.1490. The tradition of ‘Colour Theory’ really began in the 18th Century, with Isaac Newton’s theory of Colour (Opticks,1704). He is credited with inventing the Colour Wheel.
The two founding documents in colour theory: the Theory of Colours (1810) by the German poet and government minister Johann Wolfgang von Goethe, and The Law of Simultaneous Color Contrast (1839) by the French industrial chemist Michel Eugene Chevreul.
It was Goethe & Schiller that first began to attach psychological meaning to colours, and in their “Rose of Temperaments” he uses the four personality types from the writings of Hippocrates to assign sets of colours to the four types.
I am thinking about using the marketing angle, as colour psychology in marketing is a hot topic at the moment and could serve to make the project more topical.
Infographic Elements
· Colour Psychology is the study of colour in relation to human behaviour.
· The model is based on 6 rules:
1. Colour can carry specific meaning.
2. Colour meaning is either based on learned meaning or biologically innate meaning.
3. The perception of colour causes evaluation automatically of the person perceiving.
4. This evaluation process forces colour motivated behaviour.
5. Colour usually exerts it’s influence automatically.
6. Colour meaning and effect has to do with context as well.
· Colour psychology has become hugely important in Marketing….Marketers need to be aware of the varying meaning and emotion that a particular audience may associate with a colour.
· The psychological and emotional effect of colour on an individual depends on factors such as past experience, culture, religion, natural environment, gender, race, nationality.
· Colour decisions can effect both direct messages and secondary brand values.
So… do colours affect consumers?
According to KissMetrics, they do…hugely….
v 93% of consumers make their choice on visual appearance above any other.
v 85% place colour as a main reason for buying a particular product.
v Colour increases brand recognition by 80%.
Colour is such a subjective and personal thing, that it is difficult to find reliable information, but there are several ‘fact-based’ studies that provide quality information, and while I cannot access all of these, for my purposes, there’s plenty.
Impact of color on Marketing -
The Interactive effects of colour -
Exciting Red & Competent Blue -
“Colours are the mother-tongue of the subconscious”
Carl Jung
Inspirations
This is absolutely gorgeous, I love the colour transtitions and the way they break from one color to another….very complex, love the way all the products get built…and also a great example of colour psychology in branding at work. The trees and underwater sections are lovely too.
Laura Marling album site, gorgeous hand drawn elements and a narrative that’s stunning. Drawings have a class and a datatype of sprite. Looks complex at the back.
lovely colours used and a nice narrative, explaining to people where donations go. Lots of images used in making it.
I like that all the action takes place within a defined area with this …possibly use the colour wheel in the same manner. It all appears to be made with code.
I like this for its colour palette, very asset heavy though and too complex for such a short time frame ….
...Planning to use white text on a coloured ground...something like this
I think this might be the one. Clean, simple Sans serif, made a little friendlier by the softly rounded corners.
