Use of colour in Graphic Design

Booklet content:

The use of colour in graphic design holds infinite importance. Colour influences us all at a basic, even primal level. Over the thousands of years of human evolution, we have learnt to ‘read’ the world around us using colour. We see red as ‘danger’ because of blood and fire, we see green as ‘peace’ because of nature. Understanding the power that colour holds over us, and harnessing this effectively is what graphic designers strive for. However, colour is also very subjective. What evokes one reaction in one person may evoke a completely different reaction in someone else. This may be due to personal preferences, or even cultural background. For example, Western colour associations see Black as the colour of ‘mourning’, whereas, in many parts of Asia, that colour is white. There is also some evidence that our age is a factor in our preference of colour. Expert Faber Birren, in his book ‘Color Psychology and Color Therapy’, found that blue and red “maintain a high preference throughout life” but also that “with maturity comes a greater liking for hues of shorter wavelength (blue, green purple) than for hues of longer wavelength (red, orange and yellow)”. When working on a brief, a graphic designer would have to take into consideration their audience and base their colour decision-making on studies such as the one carried out by Faber Birren.

Meanwhile choosing colours for a design can be highly scientific; it is more often so than not, highly subjective. Colours have the ability to influence mood, emotions, and perceptions; take on cultural and personal meaning; and attract attention, both consciously and subconsciously. That is why, for the graphic designer, the challenge is in balancing these complex influences that colour can have, and conveying them into an attractive and effective design. To tackle this challenge, the basic understanding of colour theory is vital.  Traditional colour theory can help the designer to understand what colours work well together and what kind of effect different combinations of colour would have on the design. The elementary understanding of the colour wheel, hue, shade, tone, tint, saturation, and value can have a massive positive impact on design decisions. Small alterations to any of the qualities of colour can entirely change the communication of a design.

The psychology of colour is another aspect of colour theory that can be highly utilized. Thinking back to the idea of colour association at a primal level, there are certain subconscious moods and emotions that different colours can induce within the audience, depending on the context they are presented in. Specifically in Western culture: Red can be warmth, danger, energy, liveliness, violence, power, and love; Orange can be cheerfulness, activity, energy, optimism, creativity, and youthfulness; Yellow can be happiness, cheerfulness, friendliness, freshness, caution, and quarantine; Green can be nature, life, growth, health, freshness, wealth, and illness; Blue can be peace, cleanliness, calmness, sadness, trustworthiness, stability and professionalism; Purple can be royalty, honor, mysticism, religion, luxury and femininity; Black can be power, luxury, sophistication, death, evil, mystery, mourning, and neutrality; and White can be purity, innocence, goodness, perfection, sterility, cleanliness and minimalism.