
The Psychology of Colour - SoStoked
https://themarketingindex.com/the-marketers-guide-to-psychology-of-colour/
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leeoniya
i have this unpopular opinion that a lot of design advice - like much of
psychology - is a bunch of p-hacked pseudo-science.

i've had to sit through enough corporate branding meetings with agencies to
select adjectives that describe companies and mission statements. the aura of
importance is palpable. invariably, every company ends up with some form of
"trustworthy reliable innovative and customer-focused.", but it takes 5
meetings and 4 c-levels to arrive at the exact ordering. i just bring the
popcorn now.

> (round shapes are more trustworthy & straight sharp edges are more striking)

so they have proven that round shaped designs result in what? better lifetime
value? higher customer retention or aquisition?

the adjectives assigned to colors are hilarious

> Yellow – Happy, Friendly, Warning

so, both friendly and warning. or is that a typo and they meant Warming? and
the CAT logo is there - a heavy industrial equipment mfg? yes, the CAT color
is appropriate because it matches a yellow construction sign. and most of the
crap that mcdonalds produces is some shade of deep fried yellow-orange.
they're appropriate colors but imo have questionable connections with
warmth/friendliness.

most of this advice is dubious at best. it's like the apt statement about
advertising spend, "half of it is wasted, i just don't know which half"

/rant

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mark-r
I wouldn't rely too much on the attributes ascribed to each color, they really
are dependent on the individual. This is obliquely admitted to when talking
about cultural differences.

But I will say that color is hugely important to branding. If I see an ad I
can instantly tell who it's from if the company uses consistent color choices.

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leeoniya
yes, i'm not dismissing the importance of color/design. i think it has to be
easily recognizable/consistent and i doubt many would choose the color red for
environmental causes. but these things are obvious to any 10 people you
survey. it's the advice on the specifics which i find hugely inconclusive.

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esrauch
Why not red for environmental causes?

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leeoniya
at least in my neck of the woods it doesn't match the colors most abundant in
nature. and if you look at earth as a whole, you wont find much red in it. i
imagine blue/green/yellow/brown would work better.

again, it's all highly dependent on 1M factors.

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esrauch
Makes sense, thanks for explaining. I was actually thinking red implying
danger or warning could be a good fit for many environmental causes.

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udkl
Some links about color theory in general (from my notes) :

* Color: From Hexcodes to Eyeballs - [http://jamie-wong.com/post/color/](http://jamie-wong.com/post/color/)

* Practical Color Theory for People Who Code - [https://tallys.github.io/color-theory/](https://tallys.github.io/color-theory/)

* [http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html](http://www.handprint.com/LS/CVS/color.html)

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krm01
As a senior designer who, for the last 10+ years worked on so many software
products I can tell you this: none of these things are applicable for 99.99%
of businesses. Google did some a/b testing on which blue tone links converts
better. Because, they are Google and .0001% improvement can be significant.
But, even tough I was spoonfed the same theory in Design School, really, the
practicality of it is negligible.

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malloryerik
I'd much prefer something like this:

[https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4383146/](https://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC4383146/)

Color and psychological functioning: a review of theoretical and empirical
work

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m0llusk
This seems super shallow. Most of the interesting psychology of color comes
from grouping with contrast. Forests are mostly green, Brown, gold, and rusty
red. It is the combination that evokes mood and reaction. Looking at single
colors on white may have some limited application for marketing and promotion,
but combination and contrast is more closely related to psychology of
interpretation.

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kelsolaar
> Interesting to note, our eyes can only pick up certain light wavelengths as
> seen below in the visible and invisible light.

Light by definition is the "radiation that is considered from the point of
view of its ability to excite the human visual system" thus there is not such
a thing as invisible light.

[http://eilv.cie.co.at/term/659](http://eilv.cie.co.at/term/659)

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thecaio
This s pseudoscience. Working with large consumer brands in the last 10 years,
I’ve never seen any of this applied to real life. This has no value and I’m
surprise it was voted to HN frontpage.

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kdmccormick
Did they proofread this?

> The primary colours(yellow, red & blue) we were taught to paint with in
> school are wrong. The actual correct primary colours are yellow, magenta &
> cyan. The proof is in your printer cartridges.

...but two paragraphs later:

> Primary: red, yellow and blue, these colours can not be made from any other
> colours and are the building blocks of the other categories.

(My vague and possibly-incorrect understanding is that any three hues can be
used as "primary hues", but different choices will result in different hue
spaces, and it's just that CMY and RBY produce spaces that are useful in
printing and painting, respectively.)

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hvindin
Both of those statements are correct in context.

RGB if a thing is emitting light.

CMYK if a thing is reflecting light.

So it is true to say "Red, green, and blue are the basic building blocks of
other colours"

It is also true to say "When you were told in primary school that the primary
colours for your paints were red, green, and blue, this was untrue"

I do actually think that this is an example of a somewhat muddled thought
process that is jumping from one thing to a other pretty eratically, or
perhaps of something being edited such that it is now confusing to a reader
going over it for the first time, honestly the whole thing reads a little like
it was written by someone who really enjoys stimulants and can't keep their
focus on one thing. But _technically_ I don't think any of the content is
_wrong_ (obviously this means excluding ~70% of the content because it's
largely about how people feel, and this is probably never _wrong_ but it's
also not a matter of fact...)

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hvindin
No, actually, my bad, I went back and read that bit over again for a third
time and it does actually say red yellow blue aren't primary, but that the
primary colours are red yellow and blue.

You were correct and I jusy managed to misread the article twice....

