The Secret Life of Color: Using Color Psychology for Better Design

1. Introduction: Hey, everyone. And welcome to my course the secret life of color using color psychology for better design . In this course, we're going to discover what color psychology is and how we can use it for better design to give you a little information about myself. I am a trend researcher and creative strategist, and I use color psychology to create better future forecasts and to understand the mood of the time. It's essential for a trend researcher toe. Understand why we're drawn to certain colors at a particular moment in time. In order to forecast trends, I helped design teams across industries, Jews and develop color palettes that will take their product development to the next level and connect with their clients and customers on a subconscious level. This course is for anyone who is interested in pushing their design further by speaking to the subconscious of the target audience. If that sounds like you, then you should definitely take this course and let's get started 2. The Color Wheel : color impacts us on a daily basis, and I'm not just talking about seeing colors around. It impacts the way our food tastes, the items we pick off the shelf at a store, as well as our perception, based on how people are dressed in which colors they are wearing before diving into color psychology and how color of excess. Let's take a quick look at the color wheel. We have three types of colors represented here on the wheel. Primary, secondary and tertiary colors. The primary colors are the pure colors, meaning that they can never be achieved by mixing two or more colors. Together. They are red, yellow and blue. When you mix primary colors, you get secondary colors green, purple and orange, and the tertiary colors are created when you mix secondary and primary colors together, and those are the ones in between. On the Columbia, in addition to the color types, we can also categorise the wheel into cool colors and warm colors. As you can see, the cool tones are going to be the colors that are mixed with blues. While the warm are mixed with red, the color wheel is the foundation of color theory and is a tool that every designer should have mastery over. Our first assignment for this course will allow for you to sharpen your knowledge of it, and in the end you'll have your own color wheel to reference in the future. You can follow along with me in the next video as I make my color real digital, lead using in design or print out the PdF version and fill in the color real with markers, colored pencils, paint or whatever you have handy. 3. Class Assignment 1: Alright, guys, let's get started and feel filling in our color wheel. So it's already here for you and all your going to need to do is click on the color and then switch it from being outlined, toe filled in. So every color is already ready for you. You just need to switch it to fill in the solid color. Then once you are finished going around this, you will have the color wheel at your disposal. And that is the point of this exercise is to have a color wheel that you can reference throughout the class. So I'm just gonna finish up switching these. Andi Great. So now let's make labels for each of them p for primary. As for secondary T for tertiary. So I'm just going to get a text box here, make it nice and big type of P. Let's format this so it looks a little bit nicer, highlighting it and going to my properties tab. Okay, let's change the fund under character. Maybe. Let's go. I'm gonna use Montserrat, but feel free to use whatever you like, and we're just gonna make it a little bit bigger. 30. She good and change it as well. Toe extra bold. Perfect. Now that's just clean it up a bit by right clicking and fitting the frame to content so that it's nice and tidy on the screen. All right, so I'm just gonna place the P in the primary colors. Oops, eso red, yellow and blue. And I'm just holding down the option key and clicking and dragging to copy these without, um, using copy paste. So now let's and you'll see. That's why these little double arrows appear. But I'm just trying to make it clean and aligned. But that's move on because that's not so important right now. So copy this and let's make the S. It's to upper case. There we go. Okay, so now into the secondary colors. So green. Mm. Oh, copy this and copy this and take it over toe orange and let's take one that's down to purple. Great. So now that's do the tertiary colors. So could be that again. Make a T and switching to my toe. As you can see, I use a mixture of using my toolbar and also the shortcuts, but feel free to do it. However, you feel comfortable just going to fill in thes last Turchie Eri colors. And there we have it. Let's check out our color reels. And now we have everything. I'm just doing some little alignments and here we go. We have our color wheel perfect. 4. Foundations of Color Psychology : So let's get into the foundations of color psychology. When we approach color psychology, we can think of it as an iceberg. The tip is what we notice about colors in our daily life. The things that we are conscious about noticing it could be our preference towards one color rather than another, or that we feel happy when we see someone wearing yellow. Everything under the water is the way these colors affect us, that we don't notice. And that's because thes colors are affecting us on a subconscious level in a way that is deeply ingrained into our humanity. It's important to keep in mind that wall color affects us on this subconscious level. So does the culture we are surrounded by. So although what you're going to learn in this class are the general rules for color psychology, it's important to always consider the way a color is perceived in the culture that you are doing. A project for, for instance, rides in North America where white while in India they were red. This is just a very simple example, but this can show you that the color red has a very different perception for someone in the Indian culture than it does in North America. So if you're working on a project that involves a culture that is not your own, it's very important to do research and take into consideration how these colors are ingrained in the culture. The foundations of color psychology start with four colors. Red, blue, yellow and green. These colors represent the four elements in nature, earth, wind, fire and water and were first associated with the way people are affected by them in 4 90 BC These colors were then revisited later on by psychologist Carl Young, who was the first to pop popularized color psychology. He also referred to them in their natural senses. So cool blue earth, green sunshine, yellow and fiery red. When we look at these colors individually, they have very different of Exxon are being read is a physical color, which means that the effect that it has on us is physical. When we're surrounded by read, our heartbeat raises, as well as our pulse were physically changed by the presence of the color. Red blue, on the other hand, affects our intellect. Our mind is stimulated by the color blue, evoking thought and analytical thinking yellow is our emotional color. It can completely change the way we feel about something we'll see later on in the course that every color can evoke a positive or a negative impact, depending on how much of the color is used in which tones are selected. Yeah, those one that it's very clear to see the opposite sides because we feel it on an emotional level. Green is the color of harmony. It bounces all three areas mind, body and emotions. It is a color that dominant that dominates in the natural world. So it's no wonder when we are in nature, we feel balance between our physical, emotional and intellectual sides. As I mentioned briefly before, depending on what shade the color is, it changes the way it affects us. When a color is deeper or more saturated, it's more stimulating, whereas if you move to the opposite side of the spectrum to the lighter shades of it, it transforms into ah, more soothing experience. This is key to keep in mind when designing. For example, if you're an interior designer and you want to create a room where your client feels like they can unwind and switch off their brain. A shade of light blue will work wonders where a dark blue would do the opposite, making it a space where the person's mind is very stimulated instead. So with that in mind, it's not only important which color you pick, but also which tone are stayed you choose of the color. 5. Red: Now that we have an understanding of the foundations of color psychology, let's take a closer look at each color individually and see how they impact our subconscious for each color. We will look at their positive and negative traits as well. A. Some examples of how the color is used in practice read, as we said earlier, is a color that affect our physical being, the positive sides of red, our passion, warmth, energy, excitement, strength, lust, courage and rebellion. The negative sides are aggression, anger, annoyance, exhaustion, defiance, confrontation and overwhelming Keeping in mind that red is a physical color, it is often used to evoke us to physically do something that could be something like subscribing to a YouTube channel or stopping at a stopping at a stop sign. An example for red in branding is virgin. The company is seen as quite rebellious and often uses tongue and cheek advertising, so their selection of red is a perfect color to communicate their brand identity. 6. Pink: I think, as you might know, is a very light shade of red. Keeping in mind what we learned earlier in the course, the lighter shades of a color have a soothing effect. We see that this shows true with pink. The positive sides of pink are nurturing, caring, empathy, love and coziness. And the negative sides are needy, helpless and weak. In a series of experiments in the seventies, a researcher by the name of Alexander G. Xiao's examined the color pinks effect on human behavior and mood. Out of hundreds of pink, he found one that consistently lowered heart rate, blood pressure and pulse. He convinced to military officers to let him paint the holding cell at the US Naval Correctional Center in Seattle, this particular shade of pink and observed how the detainees behaved. It was found that after only 15 minutes of being exposed to the Baker, Miller Pink reduced aggression significantly, Even when they left the pink room for up to 30 minutes later, they were still not able to show signs of aggression. Their bodies physically couldn't get angry because their heart rate couldn't raise fast enough. The color truly had a tranquilizing effect Another interesting use of pink in society is the new craze of millennial pink. It was Pantone's color of the year in 2017 but still now in 2020 were seeing millennial pink everywhere. Normally, a hype in color like this sticks around for a season or two, but millennial pink isn't letting up. We're seeing it in interiors, advertising and even food. When we take a deeper look at why this is, we can speculate that as the millennial generation joins Theobald, population Little is looking very bright. They have staggering debt, record breaking levels of anxiety and have a very uncertain future ahead. It's no wonder that this generation, with that onto a color that's soothes com's and makes them feel cozy with everything uncertain around us. The color has become the safety blanket for a generation in branding. We see the color used for Airbnb Think might not be the first color you think of when you are designing a logo or identity design. But Airbnb is the perfect example for a pink local. Airbnb is essentially selling a home away from home, a more cozy and personal experience than staying in a hotel. The logo is done in a shade that doesn't make us feel so tranquil, tranquilized that we don't that we don't book the vacation but rather makes us feel that we are in for a nice, comfortable experience. 7. Yellow: yellow, as we learned, is the color that dominates our emotions. The positive traits are happy, uplifting, confident, optimistic and positive. You may have noticed by now that the negative tends to be the direct opposite of the positives. And with that in mind, you might be able to guess that the negative yellow traits are irritation, anxiety, nervousness and depression. Yellow is a natural pick for a company. That identity is based on being happy. Think about happy Meals in the clown. It's supposed to be happy and uplifting, and that's great for the people who quickly pop in and pump outs have a quick meal. But the workers who are subjected to the yellow interiors for long hours the adverse effects start to take over this example shows that it is essential to think about how the color effects all the people that come into contact with it. Situations like this can be offset by something as simply simple as painting the break room , a contrast in color to give the mind a break from all of the yellow yellows. Adverse effects come into play when we need to create caution. Anxiety and nervous nervousness are normally seen as a bad thing. But when it heightens your senses and makes you pay extra attention, it could be a good thing in certain certain situations, such as curvy roads or wet floors. 8. Orange: orange. One of our secondary colors, which is a mix of red and yellow, takes on a bit of both of their foundational characteristics on the positive side. Oranges warm, energetic, fun, playful and abundant. And on the negative. It's childish, frivolous, cheap and unrefined. For those who aren't familiar with this company, easyJet is a low budget European airline. Using orange for their it into design is spot on their selling a warm, fund filled holiday and using the adverse Orange Association to communicate that it isn't going to cost you a lot to do it. This is a great example of how the adverse side of a color doesn't always have to be a bad thing. Another example of orange in branding, which is a very interesting example of the use of color. Orange is Hamas, which is a luxury brand that is known for their leather craftsmanship. They're not particularly playful, fun or warm. The color became part of their identity after the war because there was on the orange boxes to ship their product with the color, then became associated with Hamas, and even when they could change the boxes, they decided to stay with orange because they knew the power of color in identity and brand design. They did, however, infused orange with more brown tones. As we'll see later on, Brown can communicate heritage, giving them a bit more of a refined orange. I'm pointing this out because it's a very rare occurrence where a design used a color completely the opposite of the brand, and it's still were. I wouldn't recommend to go with orange if you're looking to start a luxury brand today. But this is just an interesting case study like I mentioned earlier in the course. Different cultures have different correlations with color. Orange is a great example for this as it is the color that Buddhist monks, where if you grew up in a country where there was a strong Buddhist following and seeing monks in their orange carbs is normal, the color will take on a completely different layer of meaning, with spirituality becoming one of the core elements for the color 9. Green: green, as we talked about, is a color that evokes our mind, body and emotions. The positive side of green is balance, harmony, life rest and growth, which then, of course, means the negatives are boredom, stagnation and decay. Put yourself in the shoes of someone in the grocery store. I'll looking for an ICO friendly or bio product. Naturally, your mind is going to scan the shelf for any little green symbols that tells us that the product is a a bio product. If your package design doesn't use the little green symbol but is actually a bio product, you're losing out on a lot of sales. Just be based on our minds filtering for the color green. Some companies take advantage of this like BP, which is an oil company that strategically picked a green color for their identity design in order to make people subconsciously link them with being environmentally friendly. While we may know on the surface level that BP is not an environmentally friendly company, when we sub consciously C two gas stations one that is BP with their green local and any competitors gas station that probably uses red or blue in their identity design, your mind will automatically think that BP is more environmentally friendly than the competitors. On the other side of the green spectrum, we have companies like Starbucks using a deeper green in their local. The green was selected because Starbucks, when it first came out, was a bit of a revolutionary place. It was a place where you were meant to sit and relax for a while with a book or chatting with a friend. Now this seems normal to us for cafes, but at the time, that was new, and the green was there to make you feel like you can rest and re balance yourself inside Starbucks. 10. Blue: as we talked about earlier in the course. Blue is the color that targets our intellect. On the positive side, Blue communicates logic, clarity, trust, calm, loyalty and connection. And on the negative side, it can be seen as aloof, called uncaring, even poisonous. A lot of corporations such as IBM, use blue as our local color. They're using the color to communicate trust and loyalty to their customers and clients. On the other hand, it can be used to represent the blue colored workers. And this is a great color for this, because Blue is actually the favorite color of the world. Regardless of gender, people tend to prefer blue. And lastly, you may have noticed that a lot of social media platforms use blue as their logo. I think Facebook and Twitter. That's because blue is the color that communicates connection. 11. Purple: When blue and red come together, we get purple, a unique blend of intellect and emotions. The positive side is creative, spiritually awareness, energy, integrity and royalty. And on the negative side, it could be seen as inverted, nasty, cheap or even out of touch to make the purple pigment before synthetic dyes were invented. It was very expensive because purple is quite rare in nature, and that's why the color purple was reserved for the noble or royal class. The platform twitch, which is a gaming platform where you can watch and interact with other people playing video games, is very energetic and vibrant, so the color they selected for their logo is spot on. I just wanted to point out one quote from the book The Color Purple, and it says, I think it pisses God off. If you walk by the color purple in a field somewhere and don't notice it, I think this quote goes to show that purple has been seen as a color in history that is super unique and eye catching, and that's why it is always perceived as this creative and aware color, because it isn't a color you see every day 12. Brown: moving on to our first neutral color. We have brown and brown, as we talked about earlier, is a very dark shade of orange, and on the positive side, it's seen as safe, grounded, dependable, supportive and heritage. And on the negative side, it's dull, lifeless, boring and heavy. When we use brown in packaging design, it's similar to when we add a little bit of green to symbolize. The product is organic or eagle friendly that we talked about in the green section. But when we use brown, it communicates that this is a natural product, that the ingredients inside come from a natural place, even if they don't, that is what the low for them, that is what the packaging design is communicating. Recently, we have seen Brown come back into fashion for interiors as well as clothing. Previously, the prefer to neutral was gray. The movement away from gray and into brown could be seen as societies movement towards trying to reconnect with a more natural and grounded way of living 13. Grey: the concept of airspace is a theme in architecture and into 14. Black: black is the color. That means there is actually no color. It's the absence of color, and the positive sides of black is authority, glamour, luxury, sophistication and elegance. And on the negative side, it's menacing, unapproachable, serious, scary or suffocating. Black food has become a trend recently in the food industry. From ice cream to Michelin starred chef serving black food at the restaurants, it has become an elevated and sought after experience. The idea of making a food black gave it this extra layer of sophistication. And that's why when people saw something that's already elevated so say a Michelin star chef, putting out a black food, it gives it this level of luxury that became sought after in branding Nikes. Black logo is perfect for them because it communicates that they are the authority for sports as well as apple. Using a black logo, the logo tells you, not only are they the authority for electron ICS, but they also put a level of elegance onto their design 15. White: white. Being the opposite of black is the presence of all colors. On the positive side, it communicates purity, peace, quiet simplicity and clarity. On the negative side, it's sterile, uncaring, diminishing and cold. Using white in UX design is very popular because any time that you pair a color with white , it is really going to pop out. So whether you use another color as the base and white as the top a song, as the color is in a dark shade, the color is going to pop. Of course, if you're using a light shade of yellow, maybe why does not the best color? But in general it can be used as a way to get attention, but without being overbearing. Because, of course, it's representing simplicity and peace, so it's not going to be as jarring as when you see a button using the color. Red hospitals and dental offices use a predominantly white color scheme to make people feel like they are in a clean environment, which is really good for the short, quick visit in and out. But for somebody who's been admitted into the hospital and needs to stay a bit longer or for the workers, it can quickly become a cold and uncaring atmosphere 16. Class Assignment 2: All right. So getting started with assignment to we are going to be making mood boards for each color that we've gone over. So as you can see there a sheet here for every color I'm going to demonstrate with White. I've already made a folder here, so I'm just going to start bringing over some images. And I picked these based on what they represent. So for me, this marble is this cold, but a really beautiful side of cold for white. Now, I'm gonna bring in some clean sheets to give this clean effect one version of clean and just gonna move some things around. Just interesting. Let's bring in a photo to represent purity to when I'm adjusting these frames. If you just make your frame the size you want Of course it's cutting the images. If you're not familiar with in design, so then just hold control, option shift and see. And the image will fit to the frame. Or you can right click and fit to frame. Um, so now you'll see, I'm bringing in more photos. I'm just gonna drop everything in and then kind of arrange it, so I'm not gonna worry too. much about arranging it right now. I'm just trying to get the overall mood and that I would like to use in my designs for white and what it communicates subconsciously. So I'm really going for the clean purity and simple five. So that's where why, you see, like the white architecture with the clean, simple lines and the bathtub, with the also very simple shelves built directly into the wall. And for me, peaceful could be a lot of these images. And but a girl in a white dress in the middle of the desert feels peaceful. There's this sense of a piece to it. Um, where is the girl with the little girl in the white dress? This is very pure purity. So now I'm just moving things around. But I think what I'm gonna do is just make two rows to keep it nice and clean, because after all, this is right and it should be representing clean and purity. I'm staying away from the negative sides of white here, so that sterile environment that we talked about in the lessons that's not something that I want to communicate with with white in my in my designs in my practice. So least for this mood board, it's not something I want to communicate. Of course, there's times where it's good to communicate that. But here I'm trying to go for for the more positive sides. And so there you have it, a nice little mood board to represent the positive sides of white. So now you can go ahead and find images for each color and what the colors psychology represents, and then just fill in each box and you'll have a mood board for every color. 17. Harmonies: So now we have a strong understanding of the psychology behind individual colors, but a lot of times in design, we're not using a monochromatic color scheme. We work with all types of color schemes and harmonies, so it's important for us to understand not only the color psychology behind individual colors but harmonies as well. Now we're gonna look at the right theory that was developed by Angela Wright in 1984. The theory was developed by looking at the relationship of patterns in color combinations and the effect on human behavior. The results found that there are four total color harmonies that affect our behaviour in different ways. The first is the spring or playful palate. You can instantly see that all the colors in this room are warm, clear, delicate and bright. They're yellow based, which is what gives them their warmth, and they contain absolutely no black, which is what gives them their clarity. Thes colors haven't inherit bounce and vitality to them and all the lively, happy energy that we associate with springtime this spring and playful pallets. Personality is outgoing and spontaneous. It has a sense of childlike fun. It communicates a very eternal or youthful nature, and it's warm and lively. The second palate is the summer or serene palette. This is one of the two cool blue based color groups. With these colors, we have moved from the bright, playful energy of the spring palette into a relaxed, soft mood of a hazy summer's afternoon. Each of these colors has a varying percentage of gray added to it, which is what gives it this calm and cool, delicate tone. The colors in this group are subtle and understated, and they can be dark but never happy. The personality behind summer serene is dignified and composed. It communicates cool, calm and collected. The third palate is the autumn earthy palette, like the spring and playful pallet. All the colors in this group are warm, yellow based, but they have more of an intensity than the first pallet. Each has a varying percentage of black added to it, which is why the colors have more depth and are a bit more rich than the first pallet. Remove the black from these colors, and you'll find that they're exactly like the spring pellet. In this palette, you can feel the earth Penis and the grounding energy that we associate with autumn. The autumn earthy personality is warm and caring. Its intrinsic nature is one that is hourly, intensively expressive. The Last Pallet is the second of the cool blue based groups. The colors here are bold and dramatic. They are very intense, and I see much like a minimal winter landscape. There is a sense of drama and power to these colors. There is nothing subtle about this group. This is the only palette that contains pure white and pure black. The personality of the winter minimalist palate is glamorous and sophisticated. It has a sense of drama and a commanding presence. It definitely communicates confidence and and also innovation. And depending on how it can is used, it can be seen as oven guard as well. So those are the four color harmonies within the right theory and within the theory, it says that these are universal color harmonies, so you can always apply these rules to create your color hot your color palette, and as long as you stay within the spring, summer, autumn or winter within one of those it will always work. But as soon as you mix something from autumn to winter. The color palette will automatically not work, and that's because these pallets are communicating fundamentally different things subconsciously. So when we see a palette that has a mix between the four harmonies, it's very confusing for us to see this on a subconscious level. 18. Class Assignment 3: Let's get started with your final assignment in this assignment, where you are going to be making a mood board and color palette based on the design brief. Given. I've already finished mine. I've done my for interior design, but you can do yours for any design, just fill in your design type and get started so immediately. What came to mind was this Beach Shack relaxing atmosphere. So I made my color palette based around what I would do for an interior design for a beach shack and then found images as well. I created my color palette using this serene and summer harmony, because for me, that's what fit the best with the brief. And in order to do that, I pulled colors from the images that I found. And then I added gray layers on top to make sure that they were all in the same harmony. And I also added this gray layer on top of my mood board in order to make sure that everything fits together and is in the harmony, not drawing to look at and confusing. But rather it all fits and looks cohesive 19. Ending Statement : thanks for joining my course the secret Life of color Color psychology for better design. I hope that you feel prepared to use this knowledge to create design that evokes a response in the viewer, client or customer. Don't forget to upload your assignments and feel free to reach out and ask questions.