Jul
28

Psychology in Colors

By lauren // Art // No Comments

I’ve been in my basic design class for a couple of weeks and recently my teacher handed out our options on what we can do for our final project. We have a lot of creative freedom to use any media we want and with any idea we have – as long as we include some deign aspects we’ve learned in class. The options that interested me most was to design a CD cover, a movie poster, advertisement for a newspaper or magazine or a stamp….ok maybe not a stamp but the others seemed interesting!

Last night I was thinking about what I could do for some design ideas – What colors should I use? How can I add in things I’ve learned about lines, movement, colors and other elements? Then I remembered how psychology was used in design.

I took a psychology class and a communications class. Both talked about how colors are used to influence how people see things. For example in restaurants - sit down restaurants, I don’t think this concept works the same in fast food – you usually see warm and earthy tones. So you would see greens, yellows, reds, oranges, ect, ect. Also the lights are usually dimmed. These techniques are used to relax you and make you want to stay longer – and hopefully add to your bill.

Hollister is similar. Once in my Business class we started talking about how loud and dark Hollister was – I don’t remember if this had anything to do with what we were talking about but eh oh well. We were talking about how we didn’t really like going to that store – not my style and everyone else were mostly adult males, not the type to shop there – and someone chimed in and said it was made for teens, of course.

If you never been to Hollister it’s a teen clothing store with very loud music and the lights are almost completely turned out – it’s pretty dark. The person in my class who spoke out said that the store was design like that so it would feel more like a party rather then a clothing store. That same person said that maybe it was so loud and dark so that you can’t see the price and you can’t hear a sale associate tell you the price. Clothing here is very expensive.

So with these examples in mind, how can I design a movie poster or a CD cover? Personally, I think designing a CD cover would be more interesting to do. I was thinking about some band CDs I’ve seen – Korn has some strange art, kind of animated and creepy. Disturbed uses their symbol and mascot a lot and some of Metallica’s covers has something to do with death or violence. None of this is surprise coming from heavy metal bands haha. The main colors used in album covers are black and red. Black is the universal color for rock but it also gives off death, remorse, evil, fear, sexuality and mystery – all of which are strong emotions which rock music tends to focus on. Red is powerful, energy warmth, strength, anger, desire and anger. Also these two colors contrast each other in a pleasing sort of way.

Each color says something and you can control what they say by how you present it.

Dark blue - sadness and cold

Light blue - peace and calm

Dark red – violence and blood

Light red - energy and strength

Yellow – Happiness and innovation (I don’t think there’s usually dark and light yellow hahaha)

Dark green – envy and environment

Light green - nature and luck

Purple - wisdom, mystery, nobility, and spiritually (To me, these things would mean the same whether this color was dark or light)

Black – evil, death, anger

White – purity, peace, innocence

Dark colors tend to give off negative emotions and light colors give off positive ones. Colors can often influence the way someone think and feel. I’ll have to really think about how I’m going to design my CD cover!

Psychology in Colors

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