Psychology of Colour - Are you easily influenced?

[samanime]

Man that's a pricey book, that means it must be good.

[Ethan-27]

It's actually really easy to figure out. Study what the governments, politicians and big businesses use for different situations. Backgrounds of certain speeches, colors of ties, charity adverts, beauty products. If they are using the same situation for whatever reason they normally use the same colors.

Unfortunately we've been programmed to respond to these small changes, unfortunately to an extent where most dismiss it

[transio]

Man that's a pricey book, that means it must be good.

It's about 200 pages of color theory! Amazon.com: The Art of Color: The Subjective Experience and Objective Rationale of Color (0723812289288): Johannes Itten: Books.

Itten was the professor of color theory at the Bauhaus (the greatest art school in the history of mankind). The book delves into depths of color theory most people haven't even considered (e.g. religion).

He also created a "cliff notes" version called "Elements of Color" which is significantly smaller and cheaper, and expresses the same general concepts in a less verbose and philosophical manner.

[YuriKolovsky]

@transio
That definitely got me interested, will try and get my hands on that book now, or at least the cheaper one.

[samanime]

It does look good. I just dropped about $70 yesterday on a few design books (Web Designers Idea Book Vol 1 and 2 and Logo Design Love). I don't even do design anymore really (I'm a developer =p), so it's hard to justify another $70 right now... but I'm gonna put it on my wish list for later. =)

[transio]

Yeah, with books, I prefer to go for the classics rather than one-liner contemporary books that have content you can find in 100 blogs for free and will be out of date in a couple years... some of my other favorite "non-web-design" books that apply well to web design:

Ogilvy on Advertising
The Psychology of Everyday Things
The Do-It-Yourself Lobotomy

[samanime]

Off Topic:


Some of those sound like good for usability too.

The books I ordered I ordered mainly because they have lots of pwetty pictures. =D Just something to flip through when I'm looking for an idea. It's not really for -learning- anything (though from the reviews I probably will =)).

(Figured I should wrap this in an off-topic. =p)

[kohoutek]

Do you think it's a good idea to alter colours and their representations on the web? If we become so familiar with certain colours and their associations, should it really be changed? Isn't that just making us a bit more confused or is it healthy to create a new outlook?

I'd say yes for sites that have no business in adhering to the norm. Fashion sites are one example. Designers' sites or niche sites, like a font foundry, extreme sports sites, web/mobile app sites, gaming sites, are other examples where a design can be more daring in terms of breaking some design conventions. For other sites, e.g. a news site or a travel site, I'd stick to proven concepts for the most part in terms of color branding.

[transio]

For other sites, e.g. a news site or a travel site, I'd stick to proven concepts for the most part in terms of color branding.

Do you think there are color "standards" for branding things like news sites? The 4 news sites I visit (CNN.com, MSNBC.com, WSJ.com, and MiamiHerald.com) each use unique color palettes.

[kohoutek]

Do you think there are color "standards" for branding things like news sites? The 4 news sites I visit (CNN.com, MSNBC.com, WSJ.com, and MiamiHerald.com) each use unique color palettes.

Transio, I'd say, yes, there are color standards for news sites. I'm trying to think of a news site that does not make use of either of these colors. It's almost always a combination of blues, greens, and reds. I've rarely seen a news site making use of pink, purple, brown, yellow, orange, etc. unless it targets a special niche/topic. I'm not saying these sites don't exist. I'm sure they do, but the majority stick to these colors, at least that's been my experience.

[transio]

Transio, I'd say, yes, there are color standards for news sites. I'm trying to think of a news site that does not make use of either of these colors. It's almost always a combination of blues, greens, and reds. I've rarely seen a news site making use of pink, purple, brown, yellow, orange, etc. unless it targets a special niche/topic. I'm not saying these sites don't exist. I'm sure they do, but the majority stick to these colors, at least that's been my experience.

I can't really argue with that... though Blue, Green, and Red is a pretty wide gamut of colors.

[Ethan-27]

I think something to remember when choosing colors is to relate to the outside world rather than too much in the cyberworld.

For example if your website is a blog or perhaps even a forum like this it's good to have a whitish background as people normally write on white paper and read from books printed on white paper. If it's a football website perhaps have two prominent colors which take dominance over different pages as fans can associate 'home' and 'away' kits. All these things are picked up by our middle brain.

Colors like yellow are always used by royals, pinks by powerful women trying to look softer but it really is as easy as just looking around a bit.

[JacksSmith]

Color of the websites influence every one. Dull and very dark color not liked many people. For a good website the color should be light and the layout of the webpage should be proportional with respect to various different panes. Web page should have enough white space. Now days there is color scheme selector software which selects a good color for our sites.

[chrisranjana]

Colors sometimes depend on the genre of the website you are creating isn't it ?

Like children's website need to use bright colors, website dealing with nature maybe green color etc

[xhtmlcoder]

I can see that there are subtle colour influences going on within Hazel's signature that seem very soothing. So I can tell it's a subject she has a great deal of interest in; perhaps there is some use of colour psychology there too.