What’s color got to do with it?

Over the last few months, I have been working and developing a client’s mobile site. The mobile site is aimed at taking the web experience, content and user base and tailor it to a handheld. I have always been vividly inspired by use of color. As a student of UX I was pleasantly suprised that color can play such a profound role in creating/tailoring an experience.

Colors can evoke emotions and create moods that enhance meaning and invoke physiological response (Poynter, . We use phrases with colors to define our moods. When we feel low, we call it the blues. Ironically Blues is also a sub genre of music. Color plays a very important role in our lives. We use many metaphors based on colors.

Color on the web:

Color is a universal phenomena and the connotations and perceptions do not change with the medium. Lynda Weinman (Adam, 1992) came up with ‘browser safe color palette. As web designers, we do need to consider the audience and the accessibility issues.

Here are some of the common connotations of colors:

• RED: Courage, Love (Happiness and Good fortune in Chinese culture)
• Orange: Stimulates appetite, reduces tension.
• Brown: Comforting color,  stimulates appetite
• Yellow: Cheer
• Green: Growth, Prosperity, Clean; negative connotations : jealousy and sloth.
• Blue: Serenity, Fertility..negative :  calming, sombre, saddeningg color.
• Purple: elegance and sophistication

(Fischer, 2004)

Here are some fun facts about colors I found/know of:

• The color receptors (cones) in our eyes understand three primary colors : R, G and B
• If you stare at any of the primary colors for 10 seconds at a stretch and then close your eyes, you see the complement (Green for Red and vice versa; Purple for Yellow and Orange for Blue).
• Yellow is the most visible color, it also evokes cheer. Yellow flowers sell fastest.
• Blue increases reading retention
• People score better on tests taken in a blue room
• Red makes food more appealing and palatable. Red and Orange make people east and leave fast.
• Black on Yellow is the most legible combination, followed by green on white and red on white
• Black on white is the easiest to read
• Black clothes make people look skinny (Hmmm)
• Gray is made up equal amount of R, G, B.

(Kumar, 2008; Poynter, 2009)

Complementary color wheel:

More when I have a bit more info…

References:

Adam, P.S, 1992, ‘Color, Contrast and Dimension in News Design’,  Poynter Institute, accessed 3rd Feb 2009, http://www.poynterextra.org/cp/colorproject/color.html

Alexander, D., 2006, Color in user interface design, accessed 3rd Feb 2009, http://deyalexander.com/resources/uxd/colour.html

Fischer, J.J., 2004, ‘Colors: Their connotations and perceived meanings’, accessed 3rd Feb 2009, http://ezinearticles.com/?Colors:-Their-Connotations-and-Perceived-Meanings&id=4510

Kumar, S., 2008, ‘Rebrand by color modelling – What color are you?’, User Experience Design @ Mindtree, accessed 3rd Feb 2009,  http://mindtreeux.blogspot.com/2008/11/rebrand-by-color-branding-what-color.html

Wikipedia, 2009, Complementary colors,