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Dissertation Abstract

Title:

The understanding of color psychology and the effect it might have on the human mind when implemented in branding and marketing

Abstract:

The aim of this dissertation is to research and analyse the concept of color psychology, the effect it has on the human mind and potentially discover new design ideas and methodologies that could be implemented in a certain context.

I would start off by trying to define what color psychology is, how it affects the human mind, explore the general principles of the term and potentially dwell into the past, examining how colors were interpreted then and how it might have changed throughout the years.

After learning the fundamental aspects and defining the meaning of the term itself, I would start to explore and analyse the way colors are being used in marketing nowadays. Is there something more that meets the eye ? How is it that companies can use color to effectively manipulate and attract more clients ? The main focus of this chapter will be to identify good examples of color design implementation in branding,

After learning the fundamental aspects of the term itself and learning about it’s history, I would shift my focus on the modern day and explore how color psychology is being used in marketing. How do certain colors affect us psychologically ? Is there something more in what we see ? In what ways might color psychology be used to manipulate the general public ? The goal of this chapter is to identify professional practice and find methodologies relevant to my own work.

Project Ideas

Create motion graphics that innovatively demonstrate the possitive effects of a healthy lifestyle

A healthy lifestyle

What does it mean to live a healthy lifestyle? It is a way of living that allows you to enjoy more aspects of your life in a more fulfilling way. It is not just about trying to avoid one illness after another, or trying to just not feel as bad as you normally do. It is about feeling and being well physically, mentally and socially. It is about making specific choices that give you the opportunity to feel your best for as long as you can. Living a healthy lifestyle is about saying YES to life.

Three Essential Ways to Live Healthy

Do you want to have a body that can support you well into your old age? Do you wish to have mental clarity, quality relationships, good working internal functions, or even an overall feeling of well being? Well, living a healthy lifestyle is what can get you there, or at least improve your condition. There are three specific things that you should do:

1. Exercise

You shouldn’t be surprised that this one is on the list. It is unavoidable. Physical activity is essential to healthy living. The body was meant to move, and when it does not, it can become unhappy and ill. Physical activity stimulates the body’s natural maintenance and repair systems that keep it going. It improves circulation to our heart and lungs. It gives us strength to stave off injuries, and it increases the mobility in our muscles and joints. Physical activity also releases endorphins; the feel good hormones that create a sense of general well being. Physical activity is good for the body and the mind.

Exercises include brisk walking, cycling, dancing, swimming, rowing, elliptical workouts and jogging. Yoga, and pilates are also good exercise workouts; however, they should be performed in conjunction with the cardiovascular-type workouts mentioned above.

2. Eating healthy

Have you ever heard of the saying “you are what you eat” or “garbage in garbage out”? Well, it is true. What you put into your body directly affects how you feel physically, your mood, your mental clarity, your internal workings, and even your skin. Eating healthy does not mean eating expensive foods with little taste. As a matter of fact, there are some fantastic health recipes online and in cookbooks that are very healthy. Basically, you want to aim for a diet that is low in salt, fat and unprocessed foods and is high in fruits, vegetables, whole grains and omega-3 fatty acids. It is also good to take a multi vitamin to ensure you are meeting your nutrient requirements.

3. Reduce stress

We have got to get rid of all of this stress. Stress happens when your life becomes out of balance physically, mentally or emotionally. This imbalance can be caused by internal stress like worrying too much, environmental stress like pressure from work, family or friends, or by stress from being fatigued or overworked. Being stressed out has the potential to affect your health in a variety of ways. You can become tired, sick, tense, irritable, and unable to think clearly. If you want to live a healthy lifestyle, you will need to manage the stress in your life so that it does not overtake you. This means taking charge of your thoughts, emotions, tasks, and environment to get your body back in balance.

Action Items

Here are some specific action items for living a healthy lifestyle:

Use the food pyramid as a guide to how much of what to eat

Eat less processed foods

Reduce your sugar intake

Grill, boil, or bake foods rather than frying them

Reduce the amount of meat you eat

Eat a lot of fresh locally produced vegetables and fruits

Avoid adding salt to your meals after they have been cooked

Regulate your portion sizes (a portion is about the size of your fist)

Reduce your alcohol consumption

Reduce caffeine consumption

Don’t eat foods that have a lifetime warranty (unless we have some sort of disaster and you have been storing them in your basement for just that case)

Stop smoking

Laugh a lot

Exercise at a moderate intensity, for at least a half an hour three to five times per week.

Find ways to eliminate stress (meditate, exercise, guided imagery, music)

Give to others with no strings attached

Smile at strangers

Learn to say no

Avoid people who put their stress on you

Take control of your life

Always say please and thank you

http://www.lifeoptimizer.org/2010/06/17/living-a-healthy-lifestyle/

Project Ideas

Create a healthy lifestyle “survival guide”, experiment with a leveling system

TYPOGRAPHY AND THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAPE

The psychology of shapes extends into any typography you include in your logo design. Carefully consider the shapes of your chosen typeface and compare them to what the intended message is. Jagged, angular typefaces will prompt the same response as diagonals and may come across as aggressive and loud, but they may also be used to suggest dynamism and vibrancy. Soft, rounded letters are the same as using curves and are often used by companies keen to give a youthful, fresh, friendly impression. Curves and cursive scripts will also often appeal more to a feminine market whereas bold, linear lettering is more commonly used to appeal to masculine markets.

HERBALIFE NUTRITION LOGO ANALYSIS

Shapes: Main - Circle (Stability, Endurance), Curves + Sharp Edges (Movement, Positive)

Colour: Green

Font: Diverda Sans, Stone Sans

KEY WORDS FOR LOGO DESIGN

http://publications.cancerresearchuk.org/downloads/product/YSLPCH07.pdf

THE PSYCHOLOGY OF SHAPE

Shape is of utmost importance to logo design, and to art and design in general. The human brain is hard-wired to understand and memorise shapes: it’s how we learn things. A distinctive shape is stored in the memory long after we see it and the ability to create a new shape that people will remember is the mark of a great logo designer. The McDonald’s Golden Arch, The Nike Swoosh, The Olympic Rings: all of these are examples of memorable logos.

But there’s more to it than simply remembering a shape; the chosen shape must also convey the right message. Curves, diagonals, horizontals, verticals, circles, squares and triangles all communicate a different meaning and a skilled logo designer must be able to harness these meanings to make their design promote a specific message.

Curves

Curves tend to illicit a positive, comforting response. They can stand for tenderness, love, friendship, care, support, protection, affection, and compassion. Curves imply movement and are often used to mimic a smile to promote happiness in a product – but beware the inverted curve which looks more like a frown.

Vertical lines

Vertical lines suggest stability, strength, and balance. The precision of verticals also imparts strength and professionalism. They are often used in corporate logos in competitive industries to promote a sense of professional reliability and efficiency. However, vertical lines are often hard to pull off as they can come across as cold, aggressive, domineering, and aggressive. Unless this is what you’re looking for, vertical line-based logos require careful thought.

Horizontal lines

Horizontals stand for tranquility, community, silence, and composure. They have a calming orderly effect that can help to soothe. A horizontal line promotes trust and are often used to negate the menace and aggression present in verticals and diagonals.

Diagonal lines

Diagonal lines give a sense of dynamism and rapidity. Diagonals explode in the subconscious mind and logos with lots of diagonals tend to belong to lively, vibrant companies keen to make themselves heard. Overuse of diagonals is a danger, however, as the logo design can quickly seem dangerous, volatile, and untrustworthy.

Circles

Circles, particularly interconnecting circles, suggest partnership, stability and endurance. Consider the olympic rings. It’s complex meaning of the five continents coming together in unity is made stronger by the positivity of the circle. If the designer used interconnecting triangles, the logo would communicate a very different message.

Squares

Squares and rectangles are solid, reliable shapes and carry the balanced reliability of both vertical lines and horizontal lines. Logo designers have to be careful with squares, however, as without proper colour balance, shading, and other effects they can seem a bit boring. I don’t think any brand in the world desires to be seen as boring.

Triangles

Triangles have all the dynamism and danger of diagonal lines in a simple solid structure. They are often used in logos for science, religion, and law to promote a sense of power. Triangles are often used in logos for companies with a masculine market.

Source: http://www.idesigni.co.uk/blog/psychology-of-logo-design/

#research #logo

Logo Design Research

Nike Swoosh: the combination of curves ending in a sharp point offers a strong suggestion of movement.

Circles, ovals and ellipses

They tend to project a positive emotional message. Using a circle in a logo can suggest community, friendship, love, relationships and unity. Rings have an implication of marriage and partnership, suggesting stability and endurance. Curves on any sort tend to be viewed as feminine in nature.

Squares and Triangles

They suggest stability in more practical terms and can also be used to imply balance. Straight lines and precise logo shapes also impart strength, professionalism and efficiency. However, and particularly if they are combined with colours like blue and grey, they may also appear cold and uninviting. Subverting them with off-kilter positioning or more dynamic colours can counter this problem and conjure up something more interesting .It has also been suggested that triangles have a good association with power, science, religion and law. These tend to be viewed as masculine attributes, so it's no coincidence that triangles feature more prominently in the logos of companies whose products have a masculine bias.

Vertical Lines: masculinity, strength and aggression.

Horizontal Lines: community, tranquillity and calm.

Jagged, angular typefaces may appear as aggressive or dynamic.

Soft, rounded letters give a youthful appeal.

Curved typefaces and cursive scripts tend to appeal more to women, while strong, bold lettering has a more masculine edge.

Colors Demonic and Divine: Shades of Meaning in the Middle Ages and After By Herman Pleij, Diane Webb

Colour has been a subject of heated debate for as long as anyone can remember. Is it an innate part of material objects or a trick of perception and light? Is it merely superficial and decorative, or does it reveal deeper meaning? Is it the manifestation of divine presence on Earth or evidence of Satan's cunning? This debate captured the medieval imagination and influenced every aspect of life in the Middle Ages -- an era that was truly obsessed with colour.

Unlike the drab images popularised in films and television programs, parades of vibrant colour were on display at every level of medieval European society. Not only did clothing sport gaudy and often clashing colours, but food, statues, animals, and even hair and beards flaunted the most brazen coloration. Yet not everyone revered colour; many believed it to be an ephemeral, worldly deception and a symptom of immorality. As the Middle Ages drew to a close, perceptions of colour gradually became emblematic of broader cultural issues. Black and blue -- which were primarily associated with asceticism, sorrow, and humility -- became the colours of choice for royalty and the urban aristocracy, while bright, flashy colours came to be associated with the devil -- who, it was believed, had painted the world in tempting hues to lure humanity into sin and away from the path to eternal salvation. As a result, every God-fearing person began to avoid colourful displays, choosing instead more somber shades, a preference still seen today in the blacks and dark blues of evening wear and business attire.

Colors Demonic and Divine ranges over painting, fashion, poetry, heraldry, religion, and history to tell the story of medieval attitudes toward colour and the profound and pervasive influence they still have on modern society.

Color Psychology and Color Therapy: A Factual Study of the Influence of Color on Human Life By Faber Birren

Faber Birren is not a theorist but a very practical craftsman. Whether he is reading the works of mystics, or of biologists, or of psychologists, he is reading and studying them not for their theoretical structures, and one might say not even to know whether what they're saying is true but, quite simply, in order to find something to use in picking the colors for a mental hospital or a battleship, or a missile base, or to make new kinds of colored paper to print on, or to make a new home attractive, or to make new kinds of colored bricks for buildings.

Most of us bring our preconceptions and prejudices wherever we go. We are like horses with blinders on, going only in the direction we have been set to go. What is so extraordinary and so fruitful about Faber Birren's practicality is that it goes everywhere quite utterly without prejudice. Unlike most of us, Faber Birren, now just as when he was a young man, is willing to learn from anybody. He has learned from the most diverse people, from people who contradict each other, from people who denounce each other, from the occultists and mystics as well as from the biologists and agnostic scientists. He dares to learn from the occultists and mystics as well as the scientists.

It is necessary to emphasize this because otherwise Part One of this book, "THE HISTORICAL ASPECTS," may appear to the reader to be a speedy commentary on a dead past, to be read as mere background after which one can turn to the rest of the book for some really scientific knowledge. Faber Birren does speak of "superstitions," "cults," and similar invidious terms, as if to show that he is not being taken in. But these terms should not obscure the full extent of his acknowledged debt to the mystic arts.

Persuasive Imagery: A Consumer Response Perspective By Linda M. Scott, Rajeev Batra

This volume synthesizes and advances existing knowledge of consumer response to visuals. Representing an interdisciplinary perspective, contributors include scholars from the disciplines of communication, psychology, and marketing. The book begins with an overview section intended to situate the reader in the discourse. The overview describes the state of knowledge in both academic research and actual practice, and provides concrete sources for scholars to pursue. Written in a non-technical language, this volume is divided into four sections: Image and Response-illustrates the difficulty encountered even in investigating the basic influences, processes, and effects of "mere exposure" to imagery. Image and Word-presents instances in which the line between words and pictures is blurred, such as the corporate logo which is often pictorial in nature but communicates on an abstract level usually attributed to words. Image and the Ad-contributes to our appreciation for the exquisite variations among advertising texts and the resultant variability in response, not only to different ads but among different viewers of the same ad. Image and Object-carries the inquiry of visual response over the bridge toward object interaction. Having traveled a path that has gone from the precise working of the brain in processing visual stimuli all the way to the history of classical architecture, readers of this volume has a new respect for the complexity of human visual response and the research that is trying to explain it. It is of interest to those involved in consumer behavior, consumer psychology, advertising, marketing, and visual communication.

Colour psychology

Colour psychology is the study of hues as a determinant of human behaviour. Color influences perceptions that are not obvious, such as the taste of food. Colors can also enhance the effectiveness of placebos. For example, red or orange pills are generally used asstimulants. Colour can indeed influence a person; however, it is important to remember that these effects differ between people. Factors such as gender, age, and culture can influence how an individual perceives color. For example, males reported that red coloured outfits made women seem more attractive, while women answered that the colour of a male's outfit did not affect his attractiveness.

Colour psychology is also widely used in marketing and branding. Many marketers see colour as an important part of marketing because colour can be used to influence consumers' emotions and perceptions of goods and services. Companies also use colour when deciding on brand logos. These logos seem to attract more customers when the colour of the brand logo matches the personality of the goods or services, such as the colour pink being heavily used on Victoria's Secret branding. However, colours are not only important for logos and products, but also for window displays in stores. Research shows that warm colours tended to attract spontaneous purchasers, despite cooler colours being more favourable.

Color coordination and conversions

The psychological principle known as the Isolation Effect states that an item that "stands out like a sore thumb" is more likely to be remembered. Research clearly shows that participants are able to recognise and recall an item far better — be it text or an image — when it blatantly sticks out from its surroundings.

Two studies on colour combinations, one measuring aesthetic response and the other looking at consumer preferences, also find that while a large majority of consumers prefer colour patterns with similar hues, they favour palettes with a highly contrasting accent colour.

In terms of colour coordination, this means creating a visual structure consisting of base analogous colours and contrasting them with accent complementary (or tertiary) colours:

Another way to think of this is to utilise background, base, and accent colours, as designer Josh Byers showcases below, to create a hierarchy on your site that “coaches” customers on which colour encourages action.

Why does this matter? Although you may start to feel like an interior decorator after reading this section, understanding these principles will help keep you from drinking the conversion rate optimisation Kool-Aid that misleads so many people.

Consider, for instance, this oft-cited example of a boost in conversions due to a change in button colour.

The button change to red boosted conversions by 21 percent. However, we can’t make hasty assumptions about “the power of red” in isolation. It’s obvious that the rest of the page is geared toward a green palette, which means a green call to action simply blends in with the surroundings. Red, meanwhile, provides a stark visual contrast, and is a complementary colour to green. 

We find additional evidence of the isolation effect in multivariate tests, including one conducted by Paras Chopra published in Smashing Magazine. Chopra was testing to see how he could get more downloads for his PDFProducer program, and included the following variations in his test:

Can you guess which combination performed the best? Here were the results:

Example #10 outperformed the others by a large margin. It’s probably not a coincidence that it creates the most contrast out of all of the examples. You’ll notice that the PDFProducer text is small and light gray in color, but the action text (“Download for Free”) is large and red, creating the contrast needed for high conversions. 

A final but critical consideration is how we define “success” for such tests. More sign-ups or more clicks is just a single measurement; often a misleading one that marketers try to game simply because it can be so easily measured.

Source: https://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of-color/

Colour trends for men and women

One of the more interesting examinations of this topic is Joe Hallock’s work on “Colour Assignment.” Hallock’s data showcases some clear preferences in certain colours across gender (most of his respondents were from Western societies).  The most notable points in his images are the supremacy of blue across both genders and the disparity between groups on purple.

It’s important to note that one’s environment—and especially cultural perception—plays a strong role in dictating colour appropriateness for gender, which in turn can influence individual choices. Consider, for instance, this coverage by Smithsonian magazine, detailing how blue and pink became associated with boys and girls respectively, and how it used to be the reverse.

Here were Hallock’s findings:

Men's and women’s favorite colors

Men's and women’s least favorite colors

Additional research in studies on color perception and color preferences show that when it comes to shades, tints, and hues, men generally prefer bold colors while women prefer softer colors. Also, men were more likely to select shades of colours as their favourites (colours with black added), whereas women are more receptive to tints of colours (colours with white added).

Although this is a hotly debated issue in colour theory, I’ve never understood why. Brands can easily work outside of gender stereotypes — in fact, I’d argue many have been rewarded for doing because they break expectations. “Perceived appropriateness” shouldn’t be so rigid as to assume a brand or product can’t succeed because the colours don’t match surveyed tastes.

Source: https://www.helpscout.net/blog/psychology-of-color/

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