Colour Me Surprised

Colour Me Surprised

If you’ve ever wondered why Netflix is red and black or why Starbucks is green, we’re here to tell you that it goes way past aesthetics. It is a lot more calculated than you would have ever guessed.

Colours go deeper than we often understand. They are more than just wavelengths of light. They hold emotion, personality and influence and aid our self-expression. Starting in preschool, where the most common question was “What’s your favourite colour?”, we have used colour to set ourselves apart through the shade of our nail paints, clothing, stationary and even our bedroom walls. This importance given to colour did not come out of nowhere. This choice established our personality because it had the power to encompass a thousand words and feelings, in its hue. 

Naturally, the role of colour is amplified in setting the tone and emotion in art and film.

Take the Harry Potter series, for example. The first few movies have a colour palette of warm tones like orange and yellow. These movies provoke a tinge of hope and are imbued with a rosy glow of familiarity and belonging. However, as the series progresses, we see a stark shift in the colour palette to shades of blue, grey and greens. It sets an ominous tone marking a harbinger for a possibly bleak future, giving us feelings of loss, despair and fear.

 

If you take a look at Van Gogh’s painting, Sunflowers, as compared to his Imperial Fritillaries in a Copper Vase, you will find that the former evokes feelings of hope and joy while the other, not so much. An art critic may attribute these emotions to the layering, colouring and brushstroke technique. However, if it still evokes such strong emotion in a common man, with no prior knowledge or penchant for art, there must be something else there, right? Well, the answer lies in the colours.

 

So when colours play such an important role in altering perceptions, it’s no surprise that it plays an integral role in business as well; particularly in branding. Every decision made by a brand is intensely calculated. So it only makes sense that with the influence that colour holds, it too would have a significant role to play in brand perception and consumer behaviour. Branding is not a result of fleeting whims, but rather thorough research and study. This is where colour psychology comes into play.

As the name suggests, colour psychology is a study focused on the emotion and behaviours associated with colours. It provides a framework for how we interact with and are influenced by colours in our daily lives. While the rules of colour psychology are not fixed, countless research studies have provided us with colour-emotion connections that hold true most of the time. Take red for example, it’s known to slow down analytical thinking and speed up reactions. Most sale signs are in bold red so as to have you whip out your credit card and make purchases that you will probably regret later. Your favourite streaming apps, food delivery platforms and fast food chains like Netflix, Zomato and KFC use this same tactic to push you to binge on shows and food. Tech and automobile companies, like Intel and Ford, use blue as their brand logo as it is known to evoke a feeling of trust.

 

 

Infact, a single colour combination seen in daily life could bring a brand to mind. Yellow and red, once just a random pairing of colours to us now brings to mind McDonalds. By understanding and incorporating colour psychology effectively, brands can build themselves a distinct persona within their audience’s minds.  It presents to marketers a weapon that can completely transform a brand. But only if wielded right!

 

thinktree

thinktree

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